Francis Brinkley

“ What has been said above of painting applies with equal truth to sculpture. In both alike the impress of Japanese genius shows itself chiefly in tenderness, grace, and, above all, humour. It is doubtful whether the Japanese pictorial artist ever scaled the heights on which the greatest of the Chinese masters stood. It is virtually certain that the converse is true in the case of sculpture. But these are mere differences of degree. The distinction becomes radical only when we consider the characteristics of humour, tenderness, and grace. ”

“ What perplexes many students, too, is that the same brush dashes out at one moment a design of colossal boldness, and devotes itself, the next, to work of marvellous detail. Let us, by way of illustration, refer to Kanaoka and Hokusai, names very familiar to Western connoisseurs, the first because he is erroneously supposed to have laid the foundation of pictorial art in Japan, the second because, with equal error, he is imagined to stand at its pinnacle. ”

“ Even the great founders of the Kano School, men whose works support comparison with the masterpieces of Chinese genius, had no fear of degrading their art or alienating aristocratic patronage when they depicted episodes from the kitchen, the stable, the farm-yard and the work-shop. The truth is that in the rise and development of the Popular School we must trace, not a new artistic departure, but simply a reflection of the changes which the civilization of the era was undergoing. ”

“ While accepting the indisputable truth that the art of Japan in its greatest phases is but a reflection of the art of China—a reflection frequently vying with its original in vigour and vitality, but more frequently displaying the weaknesses incidental to imitations in general—we must avoid the inference that the native genius of the Chinese artist was wholly responsible for his successes. ”

“ The problem of real interest is to separate foreign inspiration from native originality; to determine whether this art, which has so greatly moved the world in modern times, is a mere by-product of inspiration emanating in the first place from Greece, and becoming more and more deflected from the line of identity as it passed through the refracting media of Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese assimilations, or whether any part of it may be regarded as the unmixed offspring of Japanese genius. ”

“ The ukiyo-ye seems, in short, to have arrived in the regular order of evolution, for the artist passed from a knowledge of low keys and simple colour compositions, developed in the Chinese schools, to a profound sense of the wider scope and fuller harmony of high, diversified colours, and thus succeeded in combining the flame and glow of sunshine brilliancy with the tenderness and refinement of twilight tints. ”

“ We speak here of the rank and file of the profession—the men who, being without originality of conception, are obliged to substitute skill of pencil, and who find in the mere processes of the great masters a sufficient equipment for the purposes of every-day art. Unfortunately such mechanists of the brush have abounded in every era. Their skill as copyists constitutes a barrier to foreign appreciation of true Japanese art. How many collectors or connoisseurs in Europe or America have had an opportunity of examining genuine works of great Japanese painters? ”

“ One of the facts which the student of the Far East soon learns to expect is that Occidental precedents must be reversed to suit Japanese methods. In Europe or America the engraver, even though a copyist, must be a skilled draughtsman: must be able to draw with perfect accuracy an inverted, and often a reduced, reproduction of the original. Hence the credit of the picture does not belong solely to the artist but is shared equally by the engraver. In Japan the engraver has no honour: he is a mere artisan. ”

“ It may be laid down as axiomatic that an intimate relationship exists between Japanese caligraphy and Japanese painting, and that the Japanese eye detects in brush strokes an æsthetic beauty too subtle to appeal to men living outside the ideographic pale. Touch, as has been well said by a great connoisseur of Japanese pictorial art, is not by any means the most important quality in a picture, but it nevertheless contributes largely to the flavour and vitality of an artist’s work. ”

“ Japanese pictures are hidden away among the heirlooms of temples or in the store-houses of noblemen and wealthy merchants. They are practically inaccessible. A not uninterested or unintelligent observer may have lived for years in Japan before the trivial estimate he has formed of Sesshu, of Shiubun, of Motonobu, of Cho Densu, of Tanyu, or of the other masters is rudely disturbed some morning by a revelation that startles him into a new belief. He may never have that revelation at all. The chances are a thousand to one that it never comes to a resident of a foreign settlement. ”

“ They relied upon line and colour to produce effects which are due in nature to the uneven distribution, absorption, or reflection of light. Hence while they show us with admirable accuracy the folds of drapery and the patterns winding and flowing through all its plies, they fail to tell us whether the surface represented is that of velvet, or of silk, or of cotton. It has been well said that in judging pictures we must consider what the painter succeeds in doing and not be forever critical about what he fails to do. ”

“ It may be said of all Japanese painters down to the twelfth century, perhaps even down to the thirteenth, that they regarded the religious picture as the field of highest achievement, and that, when their subject was a Buddhist divinity, a Nirvana, an Arhat, or a Rishi, they sought inspiration either directly from the Chinese masters or indirectly from the latter’s most famous disciples. Religious paintings, like religious propagandism, appeal either to the intellect or to the senses. ”

“ It involves the assumption that her art has no elements permanently worthy of preservation; no intrinsic merits fit to survive independently of environment. The fact is that if the present era is without giants of the brush like Okio or Sosen, it is not without masters of great talent and high technical skill. Twenty years ago Bunrin died in Kyoto: an artist of whom it has been well said that he “fixed upon paper and silk with exquisite refinement and suggestiveness the most striking of the atmospheric effects that cast a fairyland glamour over the scenery of Japan.” ”

“ Thus it is at once radically differentiated from the picture of Occidental art, the picture which must be seen from one special point of view and with light coming from one fixed direction. Thus, also, linear perspective and cast shadows are necessarily excluded. Vanishing points, horizon lines, and such things mean that only one aspect of a picture is delightful; every other, painful. The Japanese artist understood these things thoroughly. It has been said of him reproachfully that he remained perpetually ignorant of perspective, and that he never discovered the theory of shadows. ”

“ But though the individuality of each master impressed itself on his style sufficiently, perhaps, to justify this independent classification, both are nothing more than great representatives of the naturalistic sentiment of the era, and both are differentiated from their Ukiyo-ye contemporaries chiefly by the fact that they never devoted their talents to the purposes of the wood-cut or the chromo-xylograph. In force, grace, tenderness and accuracy of line Okio has no superior among Japanese artists. ”

“ Kiyosai, the greatest modern representative of the Popular School, used to say exactly what Véron has said, namely, that nothing in nature pauses to be portrayed, that there is motion everywhere; if not actual motion in the object itself, then motion of the light falling on it or of the atmosphere surrounding it; that without elasticity of line the sense of life can not be obtained, and that elasticity of line is incompatible with what the classicists call strict accuracy. ”

“ She does not pretend for a moment that her own painters have ever surpassed their models, the great masters of the Tang, the Sung, the Yuan, and the Ming dynasties, and she treasures the latter’s works with all the reverent love that an Occidental virtuoso feels for the gems of Rubens, of Angelo, of Titian, or of Holbein. ”

“ He himself, if he has any pretensions to be a connoisseur, is familiar with sixteen different styles of touch for painting scenery, thirty-six for painting foliage, and nineteen for painting drapery, which constitute the classics of the brush, each having its own distinctive name and clearly established characteristics. To Western intelligence these facts suggest mannerism and formalism. Such analytical elaboration seems incongruous with the spirit of true art. ”

“ If again we pass from the caligraphic training of the hand to the hand itself, we are confronted by a fact which the most cursory observation confirms, namely, that nature has endowed the Japanese people with hands singularly supple and sensitive. Manual dexterity ought to characterise such a nation. If we find them wielding the artist’s brush with admirable strength and accuracy, we look also to find them revelling in microscopic elaboration of detail ”

“ The picture is the sole object of his consideration; everything is sacrificed to it. He builds a special gallery for the exhibition of these treasures, if he is so fortunate as to possess a sufficient number, and he takes care that nothing in the gallery shall clash with its prime purpose, the display of the paintings. But a Japanese never shows more than one picture, or one set of pictures, at a time. If he has a large collection, he keeps them in his fire-proof storeroom, and gives to each in turn a temporary place in the alcove recess. ”

“ In flowers the Chinese were less successful owing to the absence of true chiaroscuro, but they were able to evolve a better picture out of a single spray of blossom than many a Western painter from all the treasures of a conservatory. If we endeavour to compare the pictorial art of China with that of Europe, we must carry ourselves back to the days when the former was in its greatness. Of the art that preceded the Tang dynasty we can say nothing. ”

“ Still we must recognise the merits of the decorative system also; above all such a system as the Japanese elaborated by centuries upon centuries of subtle effort. The “picture” obliges us to isolate ourselves from our surroundings; to gaze through an open window without any consciousness of the room in which we are standing. ”

“ Dozens of studios are devoted to the manufacture of painted parodies which no Japanese connoisseur would regard as pictures, and not a bric-a-brac store is without rolls and albums of weak daubs poured out from these workshops. On the evidence of such paintings it is that the great majority of foreign critics base their estimate of modern Japan’s pictorial ability, ignorant that they have before them merely a staple of foreign trade, not an effort of Japanese art. ”

“ It is difficult to give any that can be called satisfactory. As to Sesshiu, some Japanese connoisseurs claim that he developed a peculiar style of his own, untrammelled by classical traditions. We can only say that to Occidental eyes this independence is not apparent. He adhered to Chinese motives and Chinese methods as faithfully as did Shiubun and his disciples, and to us no dictum appears truer than that Sesshiu was “the open door through which all contemporary and subsequent artists looked into the seventh heaven of Chinese genius.” ”

“ To persons that have seen men and women bathing together at thermal springs in Japan, or the wives and daughters of a rustic hamlet taking an al-fresco tub, or almost naked coolies toiling between the shafts of a jinrikisha, it may seem scarcely credible that exposure of any part of the person was always considered a gross solecism by refined Japanese. ”

“ It may, indeed, be fairly claimed for the Japanese that in some branches of painting their modifications deserve to be regarded as efforts of original genius, and that, speaking generally, their work is superior to that of the Chinese in tenderness, grace, and, above all, humour. ”

“ Our object here being to trace the development of Japanese art itself, not the history of Japanese artists, we leave unnoticed the names of several great disciples upon whom the mantle of the four renaissance masters fell, and pass at once to the closing years of the sixteenth century when a new departure was made by two leaders of the Kano School, Eitoku and Sanraku. ”

“ The Japanese have never been notably skilful caricaturists. Even in modern times their attempts to produce comic publications after the fashion of Punch or Puck are not successful owing to their persistent inability to preserve a likeness while distorting it. In the Toba-ye, as humorous pictures were called after their originator—the Priest of the Toba Monastery (Toba Sōjō) otherwise Minamoto no Kakuyu—particular emotions were emphasized by exaggerating the part of the body affected by them, so that accuracy of drawing, in the Occidental sense of the term, became a secondary consideration. ”

“ Each painter had his type which he idealized more or less, his idealism not being confined to the face but extending to the physique and even to the anatomy of his figures.
Ravens on Pine Tree (Giokuden) .
If the details of the drawing violate accepted canons, complaint is silenced by the sense of life that pervades the whole; by the perfect naturalness of every attitude, every movement, every gesture; by the eloquence with which the character of the objects speaks to us from the picture. In short, accuracy is sacrificed to the individuality that everything in nature possesses ”

“ We have spoken of the modern hybrid school as a revival rather than a new creation. Such a form of speech will perhaps be challenged, for more than one writer of high authority has denied that any marked traces of Western art are visible in Japanese pictures painted before the opening of the country forty years ago. It is admitted that in the field of copper-plate engraving some aid was received from the Dutch at the close of the eighteenth century, and that a few of the later artists of the Popular School obeyed the laws of linear perspective ”

“ Not merely did painting, architecture, and sculpture make their entry in the train of the Indian creed, but close study shows that the development of the various sects may be traced by the latter’s influence on the artistic features of their respective epochs. To Buddhism also are due the Grecian affinities distinctly traceable in Japanese art, for the conquests of Alexander brought Grecian civilization to northern India, whence Buddhism set out for China, Korea, and Japan. ”

“ The tendency of modern research is to throw doubt upon the foreign provenance of several important works hitherto attributed to Chinese or Korean artists. Men that could conceive and construct the colossal bronze figure of Lochâna Buddha at Nara, and the numerous images preserved in the temples there, can not have experienced much necessity to employ Chinese or Korean hands. The glyptic art, the lacquerer’s art, the inlayer’s art, unquestionably attained a high stage of development in this epoch ”

“ Were the circumstances ever so favourable, however, the writer of these notes believes that more than one generation must come and go before Japanese taste can be even partially reconciled to pictures of the nude. At all events there has been nothing of the kind as yet in the country’s art. It is an easily understood corollary that anatomical studies never occupied the artist’s attention. That defect in his education often forces itself painfully upon observation, especially in his delineation of hands and feet. ”

“ But the point to which attention may be directed is not the merits or defects of such styles for pictorial purposes so much as the fact of their accurate differentiation and faithful employment by Japanese experts. We are thus carried into a field practically unexplored by European and American artists who associate with the best line drawing no qualities other than strength, delicacy, and directness. ”

“ If the most profound students take the latter half of the sixth century as the opening era, it is not because they believe the preceding cycles to have been entirely barren, but because the spread of Buddhism at that time supplied the first elevating impulse, as well as the first means of preserving and transmitting the art products of the time. There is no apparent possibility of determining, however, whether the scanty specimens transmitted from the sixth century and the first half of the seventh were the work of Japanese, Chinese, or Korean hands. ”

“ What are the special charms which have won for the paintings, wood-cuts and chromo-xylographs of the ukiyo-ye masters such applause in Europe and America? How is it that a branch of pictorial art which Japanese connoisseurs have always regarded with a certain measure of contempt, evokes the unstinted admiration of Occidental critics? Some answer the question by reference to the motives of the pictures. Here, they say, we have accurate representations of the people’s occupations and pastimes; of domestic life with all its graces and conventions ”

“ Turning to the general characteristics of the art, the first point to be noted is that strength, directness, decision, and delicacy of stroke ranked above all other qualities. Outlines were frequently traced, the fact that they do not exist in nature being deliberately ignored. Doubtless for the same reason, accuracy of drawing was often sacrificed to conventionalised beauties of curve and contour, and nature’s effects were translated into the language of decorative mannerisms. Linear perspective was either absent altogether, or present in a form that violated European canons. ”

“ Not until the end of the seventh century does solid ground present itself, and we then find Japan in such close contact with China that a full tide of civilization flowed from the latter to the shores of her neighbour—civilization which, so far as its artistic side is concerned, was permeated with Indo-Grecian influences. ”

“ Some of the earliest masters are known to us chiefly, if not entirely, by the pictures that they painted for Buddhist temples or Buddhist priests, and these pictures would deservedly rank high in any country. They show loftiness of conception, massiveness of treatment, and vigour of method that rival the achievements of the Italian mediæval celebrities. Yet they can not be cited as witnesses against the general theory we have enunciated, for they are without either linear perspective or cast shadows.
Japanese pictorial art is permeated with Chinese affinities. ”

“ The greatest painters whose names have become famous in connection with Buddhist pictures only are Kanaoka, Hirotaka, and Meicho (commonly called Cho Densu) . But the reader must always remember that Japan’s best artists in all ages contributed their quota to the pictorial treasures of the temples, and that not until after the twelfth century did the secular picture rise to a place of at least equal importance with the sacred. ”