On the Laws of Japanese Painting Part 6

The orchid is variously painted rising from the ground, issuing from the banks of a brook, or clinging with its roots to a rocky cliff. In allusion to the lonely places where it grows it is called _I shiri no kusa_ or the plant which the wild boar knows. The orchid is credited with medicinal properties, and the flower steeped in wine makes a potion which secures perpetual health. The charm of friendship is likened unto the orchid's perfume and the flowers are worn by the ladies of the court to ward off maladies.

The leaves of the bamboo are green at all seasons. The stems are straight and point upwards. The plant is beautiful under all conditions-struggling beneath the winter snow or fanned by the spring breeze, swaying with the storm or bending under showers-its grace challenges admiration. Typifying constancy and upright conduct, it was claimed over a thousand years ago by Shumo Shiku to be a paragon.

Nothing is more difficult to paint correctly than this plant. _Plate LIII_ shows the bamboo with its essentially component parts and forms indicated as follows: The upright stalk is in five subdivisions (1 to 5), each differing in length but all suggesting the Chinese character for one (ICHI) painted upright. These are separated from each other by strokes reproducing the Chinese characters for positively (22), for heart (23), for second (24), for one (25), and for eight (26). The stem (6 to 10) is composed of rats' tails. The manner of painting and combining the leaves of the bamboo is called _take no ha no k.u.mitata_ and is minutely described and ill.u.s.trated in Ransai's great work, _Gwa Fu._ The essentials are: The five-leaf arrangement (GO YO) (11 to 15) with the ornament (16), called _kazari._ The three-leaf arrangement (17 to 19) called KO JI, from its resemblance to the Chinese character KO (32). The two-leaf arrangement (20 and 21) called JIN JI, from its resemblance to the character JIN (33), a man. In further development of the plant the following imitative arrangements of the leaves are used: The fish tail (GYO BI) (27), the goldfish triple tail (KINGYO BI) (28), the swallow tail (EN BI) (29), the Chinese character for bamboo (CHIKU JI) (30), and the seven-leaf arrangement (SHICHI YO) (31). It will be observed how the odd or positive numbers (YO) are favored. The foregoing method is used by the Okyo painters.

The Kano artists have another system for combining and elaborating the leaf growth, but it does not differ radically from that here given. The leaf of the bamboo reproduces the shape of a carp's body (34). It also resembles the tail feathers of the phoenix. An oil is made from the bamboo and is said to be good for people with quick tempers. Many artists adopt the name of bamboo for their nom de plume; witness, Chiku Jo, Chiku Do, Chiku Sho, Chiku Den and the like.

It is said that the full moon casts the shadow of the bamboo in a way no other light approaches. The learned Okubu Shibutsu first observed this and the discovery led to his becoming the greatest of all bamboo painters.

Nightly he used to trace with _sumi_ such bamboo shadows on his paper window. Sho Hin, a lady artist of Tokyo, enjoys a well-earned reputation for painting bamboo. She was a pupil of Tai Zan, a Kyoto representative of the Chinese school. The Kano painters much favored the subject of the seven sages in the bamboo grove. Bamboo gra.s.s (Sa.s.sA) is much painted by all the schools. It is very decorative. There is a male and a female bamboo; from the latter _(medake)_ arrows are made. The uses to which man puts the bamboo are surprisingly numerous, thus fortifying its claims to be regarded a paragon.

The plum is the first tree of the year to bloom. It has a dejicate perfume. Though the trunk of the tree grows old it renews its youth and beauty every spring with vigorous fresh branches crowded with buds and blossoms. In old age the tree takes on the shape of a sleeping dragon.

With no other flower or tree are a.s.sociated more beautiful and pathetic folk-lore and historical facts. For these and other reasons Rennasei a.s.signed to the plum its place as a paragon centuries and centuries ago.

The tree branches with their interlacings reproduce the spirit of the Chinese character for woman, called JO JI (_Plate L_, No. 1). The blossom (2) is painted on the principle of IN YO, the upper portion of the petal line being the positive or YO and the lower being the negative or IN side.

This is repeated five times for the five petals of the blossom (3). The stamens (4) and pistils are reproductions of the Chinese character SHO, meaning small. For the calyx (5) the Chinese character for clove (CHO) is invoked.

The great scholar and n.o.bleman, Sugewara Michizane, particularly loved the plum tree. Banished from his home, as he was leaving his grounds he addressed that silent sentinel of his garden in the following verse, which has earned immortality:

Do thou, dear plum tree, send out thy perfume when the east wind blows; And, though thy master be no longer here, Forget not to blossom always when the springtime comes.

In j.a.pan the plum, though not eaten raw, when salted has wonderful strength sustaining properties, and in wartime supplies as _ume boshi_ a valuable concentrated food.

The chrysanthemum has been cultivated in China for four thousand years and its fame was sung by the poet and scholar, To En Mei, who prized it above all else under heaven and a.s.signed it the rank of paragon.

When all Nature is preparing for the long sleep of winter and the red, brown and golden forest leaves are dropping, spiritless, to the ground, the chrysanthemum comes forth from the earth in fresh and radiant colors.

It gladdens the heart in the sad season of autumn. Its cl.u.s.tered petals, all united and never scattering, typify the family, the state, and the Empire. For the last six hundred years the sixteen-petaled chrysanthemum has been the emblem of Imperial sovereignty in j.a.pan. With artists it has always been a favorite flower subject. There are innumerable ways of painting it.

_Plate LI_ shows the chrysanthemum flower and leaves painted in the Okyo manner. There is an established order in which the leaves must be executed. Viewed from the front (Nos. 1 and 2) the order of the brush stroke is as indicated on the plate; viewed from the side the brush is applied in the order indicated in Nos. 4 and 5. The flower (6 and 7) is built up from the bud (5), petals being added according to the effect sought. The flower half opened is shown in No. 6, and wholly opened in No. 7. The calyx somewhat reproduces the Chinese written character CHO.

The Kano painters have a different way of painting the chrysanthemum leaves and flowers, but the foregoing ill.u.s.trates the general principles obtaining in all the schools. Korin painted the KIKU in a manner quite different from that of any other artist. The word KIKU is Chinese, the j.a.panese word for the flower being _kawara yomogi._ The Nagoya artists have always been particularly skilful in painting the chrysanthemum in an exceptionally engaging way. The little marguerite-like blossom is called _mame-giku,_ and is a universal favorite among all artists.

The impression produced on one who for the first time hears enumerated these various laws may possibly be that all such methods for securing artistic effects are arbitrary, mechanical and unnatural. But in practice, the artist who invokes their aid finds they produce invariably pleasing and satisfactory results. It must not be supposed that such laws are exclusive of all other methods of painting in the j.a.panese style. On the contrary the artist is at liberty to use any other method he may select provided the result is artistically correct. Many painters have invented methods of their own which are not included in the foregoing enumeration of these laws of lines, dots and ledges, which, it must always be borne in mind, are only to a.s.sist the artist who may be in doubt or difficulty as to how he shall best express the effect he aims at. It is such second nature for him to employ them that he does so as unconsciously as one in writing will invoke the rules of grammar. It is related that a great statesman, being asked if it were necessary for a diplomat to know Latin and Greek, replied that it was quite sufficient for him to have forgotten them. And so with these laws. A knowledge of them is a necessary part of the education of every j.a.panese artist, for they lie at the very foundation of the art of oriental painting. Chinese writing abounds with similar principles; it is a law applicable to one kind of such writing, called REI SHO, that in each character there shall be one stroke which begins with the head of a silkworm and terminates with a goose's tail. This also may sound odd and seem forced, yet this law gives a special and wonderful _cachet_ to the character so written.

Some acquaintance with these principles and methods invoked by artists adds much to our keen enjoyment of their work, just as an a.n.a.lysis of the chords in a musical composition increases our pleasure in the harmonies they produce. Ruskin has discovered in the very earliest art the frequent use of simple forms suggested by the slightly curved and springing profile of the leaf bud which, he declares, is of enormous importance even in mountain ranges, when not vital but falling force is suggested. "This abstract conclusion the great thirteenth century artists were the first to arrive at" (Ruskin's Mod. Painters, Vol. III), and even in the architecture of the best cathedrals that author detects the observance of the law determining in an ivy leaf the arrangement of its parts about a center.

In j.a.panese art simple forms supplied by nature are often used for suggesting other forms as, for instance, the stork's legs for the pine tree branches, the turtle's back for the pine bark lines, the fish tail for bamboo leaf.a.ge, the elephant's eye in the orchid plant, the shape of Fujiyama for the forehead of a beautiful woman, and various Chinese characters, originally pictorial, adumbrated in trees, flowers and other subjects. The universality of such underlying type forms recognized and applied by oriental artists is confirmatory of the principle that in both nature and art all is united by a common chain or _commune vinculum_ attesting the harmony between created things. A j.a.panese painting executed with the aid of such resources teems with vital force and suggestion, and to the eye of a connoisseur _(kuroto)_ becomes a breathing microcosm.

To give some idea of the order in which the component parts of an object are painted according to j.a.panese rules, which are always stringently insisted upon, flowers like the chrysanthemum and peony are begun at their central point and built up from within outwardly, the petals being added to increase the size as the flower opens. In a flower subject the blossoms are painted first; the buds come next; then the stem, stalks, leaves and their veinings, and lastly the dots called _chobo chobo._

The established order for the human figure is as follows: Nose and eyebrows, eyes, mouth, ears, sides of the face, chin, forehead, head, neck, hands, feet, and finally the appareled body. In j.a.panese art the nude figure is never painted.

In a tree the order is trunk, central and side limbs _(Plate XXI)_, branches and their subdivisions, leaves and their veinings, and dots.

In birds: The beak in three strokes (TEN, CHI, JIN), the eye, the head, the throat and breast, the back, the wings, the body, the tail, the legs, claws, nails and eyeball _(Plate XXII)_.

In landscape work the general rule is to paint what is nearest first and what is farthest last. Kubota's method was to do all this rapidly and, if possible, with one dip of the well-watered brush into the _sumi,_ so that as the _sumi_ becomes gradually diluted and exhausted the proper effect of foreground, middle distance and remote perspective is obtained.

In painting mountain ranges that recede one behind the other the same process is followed, and mountains as they disappear to the right or left of the picture should tend to rise. This principle is called BO UN or cloud longing.

It is useless here to enumerate the many faults which art students are warned against committing. Suffice it to say the number is enormous. Out of many of the Chinese formulas I will give only one, which is known as SHI BYO or the four faults, and is as follows:

JA, KAN, ZOKU, RAI. JA refers to attempted originality in a painting without the ability to give it character, departing from all law to produce something not reducible to any law or principle. KAN is producing only superficial, pleasing effect without any _power_ in the brush stroke-a characterless painting to charm only the ignorant. ZOKU refers to the fault of painting from a mercenary motive only,-thinking of money instead of art. RAI is the base imitation of or copying or cribbing from others.

[Chapter 5 Head-Band: Maple leaves are a.s.sociated with Ten Jin (Sugiwara Michizane), patron of learning. Children in invoking his aid in a little prayer count the points of the maple leaf, saying, "yoku te agar"-a.s.sist us to be clever. In j.a.panese the maple leaf is called kaide, meaning frog's hand.]

CHAPTER FIVE. CANONS OF THE AESTHETICS OF j.a.pANESE PAINTING

One of the most important principles in the art of j.a.panese painting-indeed, a fundamental and entirely distinctive characteristic-is that called living movement, SEI DO, or _kokoro mochi,_ it being, so to say, the transfusion into the work of the felt nature of the thing to be painted by the artist. Whatever the subject to be translated-whether river or tree, rock or mountain, bird or flower, fish or animal-the artist at the moment of painting it must feel its very nature, which, by the magic of his art, he transfers into his work to remain forever, affecting all who see it with the same sensations he experienced when executing it.

This is not an imaginary principle but a strictly enforced law of j.a.panese painting. The student is incessantly admonished to observe it. Should his subject be a tree, he is urged when painting it to feel the strength which shoots through the branches and sustains the limbs. Or if a flower, to try to feel the grace with which it expands or bows its blossoms.

Indeed, nothing is more constantly urged upon his attention than this great underlying principle, that it is impossible to express in art what one does not first feel. The Romans taught their actors that they must first weep if they would move others to tears. The Greeks certainly understood the principle, else how did they successfully invest with imperishable life their creations in marble?

In j.a.pan the highest compliment to an artist is to say he paints with his soul, his brush following the dictates of his spirit. j.a.panese painters frequently repeat the precept:

_Waga kokoro waga te wo yaku_ _Waga te waga kokoro ni ozuru._

Our spirit must make our hand its servitor; Our hand must respond to each behest of our spirit.

The j.a.panese artist is taught that even to the placing of a dot in the eyeball of a tiger he must first feel the savage, cruel, feline character of the beast, and only under such influence should he apply the brush. If he paint a storm, he must at the moment realize pa.s.sing over him the very tornado which tears up trees from their roots and houses from their foundations. Should he depict the seacoast with its cliffs and moving waters, at the moment of putting the wave-bound rocks into the picture he must feel that they are being placed there to resist the fiercest movement of the ocean, while to the waves in turn he must give an irresistible power to carry all before them; thus, by this sentiment, called living movement (SEI DO), reality is imparted to the inanimate object. This is one of the marvelous secrets of j.a.panese painting, handed down from the great Chinese painters and based on psychological principles-matter responsive to mind. Chikudo, the celebrated tiger painter _(Plate VI)_, studied and pondered so long over the savage expression in the eye of the tiger in order to reproduce its fierceness that, it is related, he became at one time mentally unbalanced, but his paintings of tigers are inimitable. They exemplify SEI DO.

From what has been said it will be appreciated why, in a j.a.panese painting, so much value is attached to the strength with which the brush strokes are executed _(fude no chicara),_ to the varying lights and shades of the _sumi_ (BOKU SHOKU), to their play and sheen _(tsuya),_ and to the manifestation of the artist's power according to the principle of living movement (SEI DO). In a European painting such considerations have no place.

An oil painting can be rubbed out and done over time and again until the artist is satisfied. A _sumi e_ or ink painting must be executed once and for all time and without hesitation, and no corrections are permissible or possible. Any brush stroke on paper or silk painted over a second time results in a smudge; the life has left it. All corrections show when the ink dries.

j.a.panese artists are not bound down to the literal presentation of things seen. They have a canon, called _esoragoto,_ which means literally an invented picture, or a picture into which certain invention fictions are painted.

Every painting to be effective must be _esoragoto;_ that is, there must enter therein certain artistic liberties. It should aim not so much to reproduce the exact thing as its sentiment, called _kokoro mochi,_ which is the moving spirit of the scene. It must not be a facsimile.

When we look at a painting which pleases us what is the cause or source of our satisfaction? Why does such painting give us oftentimes more satisfaction than the scene itself which it recalls? It is largely because of _esoragoto_ or the admixture of invention (the artistic unreality) with the unartistic reality; the poetic handling or treatment of what in the original may in some respects be commonplace.

A correctly executed j.a.panese painting in _sumi_ called _sumi e,_ is essentially a false picture so far as color goes, where anything in it not black is represented. Hence, _sumi_ paintings of landscapes, flowers and trees, are untrue as to color, and the art lies in making things thus represented seem the opposite of what they appear and cause the sentiment of color to be felt through a medium which contains no color. This is _esoragoto._

It is related that Okubo Shibutsu, famous for painting bamboo, was requested to execute a _kakemono_ representing a bamboo forest.

Consenting, he painted with all his known skill a picture in which the entire bamboo grove was in red. The patron upon its receipt marveled at the extraordinary skill with which the painting had been executed, and, repairing to the artist's residence, he said: "Master, I have come to thank you for the picture; but, excuse me, you have painted the bamboo red." "Well," cried the master, "in what color would you desire it?" "In black, of course," replied the patron. "And who," answered the artist, "ever saw a black-leaved bamboo?" This story well ill.u.s.trates _esoragoto._ The j.a.panese are so accustomed to a.s.sociate true color with what the _sumi_ stands for that not only is fiction in this respect permissible but actually missed when not employed. In a landscape painting effects are frequently introduced which are not to be found in the scene sketched. The false or fict.i.tious is added to heighten the effect. This is _esoragoto-_ the privileged departure, the false made to seem true. In a landscape a tree is often found to occupy an unfortunate place or there is no tree where its presence would heighten the effect.

Here the artist will either suppress or add it, according to the necessities of treatment. Not every landscape is improved by trees or plantations; nor, indeed, is every view containing trees a type scene for landscape treatment. Hence, certain liberties are conceded the artist provided only the effect is pleasing and satisfactory and that no probabilities seem violated. This is _esoragoto._ Horace understood this and lays it down as a fundamental principle in art: "_Quid libet audendi_". The artist will oftentimes see from a point of view impossible in nature, but if the result is pleasing the liberty is accorded. Sesshu, one of the greatest landscape painters of j.a.pan, on returning to his own country after having studied some years in China, made a painting of his native village with its temple and temple groves, winding river and paG.o.da or five-roofed tower. His attention being subsequently called to the fact that in this village there was no tower or paG.o.da, he exclaimed that there ought to be one to make the landscape perfect, and thereupon he had the tower constructed at his own expense. He had painted in the paG.o.da unconsciously. This was _esoragoto._

There are no people in the world who have a higher idea of the dignity of art than the j.a.panese and it is a principle with them that every painting worthy of the name should reflect that dignity, should testify to its own worth and thus justly impress with sentiments of admiration those to whom it may be shown. This intrinsic loftiness, elevation or worth is known in their art by the term KI IN. Without this quality the painting, artistically considered and critically judged, must be p.r.o.nounced a failure. Such picture may be perfect; in proportion and design, correct in brush force and faultless in color scheme; it may have complied with the principles of IN YO, and TEN, CHI, JIN or heaven, earth and man; it may have scrupulously observed all the rules of lines, dots and ledges and yet if KI IN be wanting the painting has failed as a work of true art.

What is this subtle something called KI IN?

In our varied experiences of life we all have met with n.o.ble men and women whose beautiful and elevating characters have impressed us the moment we have been brought into relation with them. The same quality which thus affects us in persons is what the j.a.panese understand by KI IN in a painting. It is that indefinable something which in every great work suggests elevation of sentiment, n.o.bility of soul. From the earliest times the great art writers of China and j.a.pan have declared that this quality, this manifestation of the spirit, can neither be imparted nor acquired. It must be innate. It is, so to say, a divine seed implanted in the soul by the Creator, there to unfold, expand and blossom, testifying its hidden residence with greater or lesser charm according to the life spent, great principles adhered to and ideals realized. Such is what the j.a.panese understand by KI IN. It is, I think, akin to what the Romans meant by _divinus afflatus-_that divine and vital breath, that emanation of the soul, which vivifies and enn.o.bles the work and renders it immortal. And it is a striking commentary upon artist life in j.a.pan that many of the great artists of the Tosa and Kano schools, in the middle years of their active lives, retired from the world, shaved their heads, and, taking the t.i.tular rank of HOGEN, HOIN or HOKYO, became Buddhist priests and entered monasteries, there to pa.s.s their remaining days, dividing their time between meditation and inspired work that they might leave in dying not only spotless names but imperishable monuments raised to the honor and glory of j.a.panese art.