Thomas William Cutler

“ The Japanese are not an utilitarian race; the whole of their productions in the past speak of a leisurely and loving devotion to the work in hand, considerations of the time and labour to be expended upon it holding no power over the artistic mind. Thus we find some marvellous reproductions of bird or insect life chiselled in the most unyielding material, iron, ivory, or hard-grained wood, with a fidelity truly surprising. Perhaps the most extreme examples of conventionalism are to be met with in the decoration of flat surfaces, and on the badges of the nobles, which form the native heraldry. ”

“ The power of the artist’s effects, the wonderful facility of his execution, the beauty of the colouring and delicacy of drawing, all combine to give what may pass for a marvellous transcript of nature, but taken separately and examined critically, the objects depicted, be they bird, flower, leaf, or insect, will be found incorrect in form, proportion, and construction, if judged by a European standard. Yet in these very failings are found their highest merits as decorative artists. Decorative art does not admit of absolute fidelity to nature ”

“ The old kakemonos are direct copies from the Chinese, and go back to the introduction of art into Japan, and down to the present time the Japanese have chiefly occupied themselves in imitating and reproducing them with almost mathematical precision. The merit of their art, if we may call it such, lies in their method, which, by repeated copying, gives them such accuracy, such perfect touch, and such mastery over the brush. They are feeble in conception, inimitable in execution; masters in the matter of taste, when the human figure is out of the question. ”

“ The European artist, who will study the decorative art of Japan carefully and reverently, will not be in any haste to disturb, still less to uproot, the thought and feeling from which it has sprung; it is perhaps the ripest and richest fruit of a tree cultivated for many ages with the utmost solicitude and skill, under conditions of society peculiarly favourable to its growth.
The works of Chinese artists were in the first instance the models which the Japanese took for their guidance. ”

“ It is perhaps in the drawing of birds in every variety of position that their wonderful power of presenting with a few touches of the brush the most vigorous and life-like transcript is most fully shown. A very superficial examination of Japanese art productions is sufficient to make us acquainted with the graceful form of the crane, which is depicted grouped in every possible attitude, flying with graceful sweep mid conventional cloud, or poised above the favourite pine or bamboo. ”

“ Architecture as understood in Europe cannot be said to exist in Japan; it is but artistic carpentry, decoration, and gardening. The Japanese know the science of building, but not the art. The framing of their buildings is very clever carpentry, designed to meet the sudden shocks to which their buildings are always liable, the timbers being cleverly dovetailed and keyed together, so that if they are shaken out of an upright position they can be pushed back again, and wedged up into their original perpendicular state. ”

“ A bird perched on a branch of a tree, a few flowers grouped together with exquisite relation of colours, and such like subjects are those which they love to display. The Japanese painter commends himself to us by the delicacy of his execution and the harmonious blending of his colours. He knows the exact science by tradition, he has learnt the law of contrasts and that of complementaries, but of the poetry, the emotion of colour, he is generally ignorant. He applies mechanically the rules he has had handed down to him without ever attempting to emancipate himself from the mechanical process. ”

“ It is easy to imagine the picturesque effect produced by a number of temples and buildings, seen through the trees in different positions, roof towering above roof, with the background of noble foliage, the temples individually rich in lacquer, carving, gilding, and coloured tiles, intermixed with ends of timbers and posts plated with chased and gilt bronze. Surrounded by a garden, they become the meeting place and holiday grounds of the people. ”

“ A Japanese artist proceeding to decorate a given space would not mark out the centre and place his ornament there, nor would he divide it into equal parts, but he would most probably throw his design a little out of the centre, and cleverly balance the composition by a butterfly, a leaf, or even a spot of colour. ”

“ A few masterly strokes and he has produced a branch laden with cherry blossoms, a plume of feathery bamboo, a bird darting through the air, or balancing on a slender spray, which, if not botanically or ornithologically correct, have in them life and action and suggestiveness of nature, and which are, in view of the remarkably slight means employed, unmatchable by our best artists, and unsurpassed as decorative works. ”

“ In their modelling for bronze castings the Japanese show wonderful mastery, representing figure scenes, landscape, foliage, flowers, birds, fish, animals, insects, kylins, dragons, and other mythological monsters. These subjects are often depicted in panels, on flower and other vases of very graceful outline. The flowers, leaves, and foliage are wrought out with great delicacy and grace, and the reptiles, fish, and insects are specially noteworthy for their admirable truth to nature; while their dragons and monsters are full of boldness and power. ”

“ The commencement of the nineteenth century gave to Japan a new school, the educated artisan-artist created by the genius of Hokusai, and the right to boast of a truly national art, which, although adapted from the old models, and still tainted with many antiquated errors, abounds in novelty and character and shows unlimited capabilities of development. ”

“ Keen admirers of nature as the Japanese are, and fully alive to all the wealth of flower, foliage, and scenery in which their country is so exceptionally rich, it must not be supposed that their art is entirely the outcome of their own observation. ”

“ The same method of decoration and ornament is employed for all purposes and in all materials. Thus the ornament used on lacquer will be found on ceramics, bronzes, stuffs, and enamels; no special ornament is employed for any special material, the drawing books have served alike for all.
Of grand harmonies the Japanese have scarce an idea, but when it is a question of flowers, of birds, of fish, they display all the wondrous cunning of their pencil, all the resources of their palette, to render the representation satisfying to the beholder. ”

“ All objects and landscapes are painted flatly, and without relief, and although by certain tender effects of colour, much poetical feeling is occasionally introduced into a scene, as clouds round mountains, or mists and rain-storm over sea or forest, the mode of treatment is in every instance purely decorative. ”

“ In sculpture, the Japanese rarely attempted to master the difficulties of drawing the human form. They have undoubtedly been largely influenced by their several religious creeds and systems of philosophy, and it is questionable whether their peculiar rendering of the figure be the result of accident or the want of power; it could scarcely be the latter, for it would appear probable that the artist who could draw the foreshortening of a bamboo spray, and the feathers and claw of a bird in various attitudes, could have accurately delineated a human foot or hand. ”

“ But the Hokusai School became an established fact, in spite of the contemptuous neglect of those who should have been its patrons; and its outcome, the artisan-artist, has given to the world at large not only the wealth of strange ideas and manual skill, so long imprisoned by the pride of seclusion, but has added to it no small portion of the sum of originality to which it can lay claim. ”

“ That much of the Japanese decorative work is deliberately conventional cannot of course be doubted, and much of this has unquestionable merit; but it is an interesting question whether in their most successful work the artist is not decorative rather by accident than by intent,—whether, in fact, he has not striven to produce a faithful and life-like copy of nature, and fallen just so far short of reaching a pictorial standard as to produce a decorative effect. ”

“ The Japanese artist learns to draw as he has learned to write. He does not sit down opposite a model or natural object and endeavour to represent it as it appears to him; as he learns to form the innumerable and complicated characters of his language by constant repetition, so does he acquire the power of drawing certain designs and conventional forms, by long continued copying of accepted models, which have been handed down from generation to generation. ”

“ Manipulation, generally good, constituting, in fact, the most important element in the eyes of the native connoisseur, by whom painting was looked upon as a kind of calligraphy. Colouring, invariably good, the Japanese being masters in the skilful distribution of harmonies and contrasts; the tints are seldom gaudy, whilst gold is lavishly used. Many of the greatest artists prefer to use black ink without intermixture of colour, drawings in silhouette, chiefly representing the bamboo or orchid, frequently with marvellous skill, being constantly met with. ”

“ Plate C shows a graduated series of studies of the bamboo, in which are depicted with marvellous fidelity the varying stages of its growth, from the early budding stem to the perfect branch with full and flowing leaves, drooping in the silent air, or gently swayed by the breeze. The bamboo may almost be ranked as the national tree of Japan, and plays an important part in the social economy of the country ”

“ Japanese art may now be said to have culminated, and to have shown all that it is capable of producing, and it is with pain we perceive that the hour of decadence has arrived, for all modern Japanese work shows the inability of the artist to preserve its original delicacy, or to blend it harmoniously with foreign elements. No student can fail to recognize the signs of impotence and the depreciation of taste. It may not be too late to awaken the Japanese to a sense of the wrong they are doing to their national art, in which they might, if they so chose, continue supreme ”

“ Individual talent in draughtsmanship—looking to originality of design—can scarcely exist. The excellencies of artists are therefore confined to the combination of conventional forms and the delicacy or power of execution and colour, in which alone their fancy can have free play. These elegant stems, those feathery petals, apparently thrown together without restraint, are thus executed after a number of models prepared long beforehand, and which every painter possesses. ”

“ The specially national and unmixed character of Japanese art is due to the isolated position which, until within the last few years, she has maintained since the earliest ages. With the exception of China and Corea, she has had no intercourse with any nation which could in any way affect her art productions. We have seen that China was her art master, and that on her teachings she has founded her own school. It is not, as in Europe, the grafting of one style upon another, and the accumulated knowledge and practice of all the various schools of art from the remotest antiquity ”

“ It stands alone for perfection of manufacture, high finish and artistic worth, and its entire originality. Although in most things artistic, Japan is but a reflection of China, in this branch of art there is no comparison between the productions of the two countries. What is known as Chinese, Persian, and Indian lacquer is mere painted wood, compared to the highly finished and beautifully decorated ware produced by the Japanese. When one considers the variety of its applications; to wood, metal, ivory, porcelain, tortoiseshell, mother-o’pearl, and even egg-shell; its adaptation to every form ”

“ As you pass along the streets of a Japanese town, you may see the schoolboy’s copy-book hung out to dry, and the schoolboy himself you can always detect in his homeward march from school by his smudged fingers and face, which have received more than their share of the writer’s ink. At the lowest estimate, a schoolboy is required to learn one thousand different characters. In the government elementary schools about three thousand characters are taught. A man laying any claim to scholarship knows eight or ten thousand characters ”