Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/617

 JAPAN 589 articles that we can anywhere procure &quot;; and both in that work and in another entitled Unity in Variety, as deduced from the Vegetable Kingdom, he makes particular reference to Japanese decorative work. A series of articles on &quot;Art and Art Industries in Japan,&quot; which appeared in the Art Journal in 1875-76, were published, with con siderable additions, in a single volume in 1878. About the same time two works appeared on the same subject, J. J. Jarves s Glimpse at the Art of Japan (1876) and Messrs Audsley & Bowes s Kcramic Art of Japan (1875-80). A fourth work entitled Fugaku Hiyaku- Kci, or a Hundred Views of Fusiyama, by Hokusai, with intro ductory and explanatory prefaces from tlie Japanese, and descrip tions of the plates by J. V. Dickins of the Middle Temple, reproduces facsimile plates of the original collection of this celebrated native artist, and even to the paper and form of the thin volumes is a perfect counterpart of the original work as published in Japan. Lastly, there has appeared a valuable contribution to our materials for an intelligent judgment, in Thomas Cutler s Grammar of Japan ese Ornament and Design (1881). The plates, exceeding sixty in number, are preceded by a carefully written introductory essay, giving a discriminative survey of the chief art-industries and the principles of Japanese ornamentation. Art in Japan, it has been well observed, &quot; is not, as in Europe, the grafting of one style upon another, and the accumulated know ledge of all the various schools from the remotest antiquity.&quot; It has been a growth unaffected by any extraneous influences, self-con tained and strictly national, and hence the astonishment and delight created when the art of Japan was first revealed to the outside world. It is in comparing the decorative art of Japan with that of China that we see how far the former has distanced its early Chinese masters, and how thoroughly it has produced a school peculiarly its own. Commenting on its application to ceramic ware, lacquer, bronzes, textile fabrics, &c., Mr Cutler has well remarked, &quot;if we study the decorative art of the Japanese, we find the essential j elements of beauty in design, fitness for the purpose which the object [ is intended to fulfil, good workmanship, and constructive soundness, which give a value to the commonest article, and some touch of orna- j ment by a skilful hand, together creating a true work of art.&quot; ive The school of art due to the native genius of the Japanese as iol of a race is essentially decorative, and, in its application, to a great degree purely industrial. Pictorial art as understood in Europe can hardly be said to have any existence in Japan. Most of their decorative designs consist of natural objects treated in a conven tional way. This conventionalism is, however, so perfect and free in its allurements that nature seems to suggest both the motive and the treatment. Though neither botanically nor ornithologi- cally correct, their flowers and their birds show a truth to nature, and a habit of minute observation in the artist, which cannot be too much admired. Every blade of grass, each leaf and feather, has been the object of loving and patient study. It has been rashly assumed by some of the writers on Japanese art that the Japanese do not study from nature. All their work is an emphatic protest against so erroneous a supposition. It is impossible to examine even the inferior kind of work without seeing evidences of minute and faithful study. It can in fact be shown conclusively that the Japanese have derived all their fundamental ideas of symmetry, so different from ours, from a close study of nature and her processes in the attainment of endless variety.
 * ial It is a special feature in their art that, while often closely and min-

ures. utely imitating natural objects, such as birds, flowers, and fishes, the especial objects of their predilection and study, they frequently com bine the facts of external nature with a conventional mode of treat ment better suited to their purpose. During the long apprenticeship the Japanese serve to acquire the power of writing with the brush the thousand complicated characters borrowed from the Chinese, they unconsciously cultivate the habit of minute observation and the power of accurate imitation, and with these a delicacy of touch and freedom of hand which only long practice could give. A hair s breadth deviation of a line, or the slight inclination of a dot or an angle, is fatal to good caligraphy, both among the Chinese and the Japanese. When they come to use the pencil therefore in drawing, they are possessed of the finest instruments J in accuracy of eye and free command of the brush. Whether a | Japanese art worker sets himself to copy what ho sees before him or to give play to his fancy in combining what he has seen with some ideal in his mind, the result equally shows a perfect facility of execution and easy grace in all the lines. In their methods of ornamentation the Japanese treat every object flatly, as do their Chinese masters to this day, and this to a certain extent has tended to check any progress in pictorial art, though they have obtained other and very admirable decorative effects. Without being, as Mr Cutler, in common with some other writers, assumes, ignorant of chiaroscuro, or the play of light and shadow, it is true that they usually, though not invariably, paint in flat tones as on a vase, and so dispense with both. It is not a picture so much as a decoration that they produce, but it is a decoration full of beauty in its harmonized tints and graceful freedom of design. The delicacy of touch is everywhere seen, whether bird or leaf or flower or all combined be chosen as the subject. The Japanese artist especially excels in conveying an idea of motion in the swift flight of birds and gliding movements of fishes, one of the most difficult triumphs of art. It has been said that the golden age of Japanese art is over and gone, and that the conditions no longer exist, and can never be renewed, under which it has developed its most characteristic excellences. A feudal state, in which the artist and the workman were generally one and the same person, or at least in the same feudal relation to a chief who was bound to support them working or idle, and took pride in counting among his subjects or serfs those who could most excel in producing objects of great beauty and artistic value, is a condition as little likely to return in Japan as the former isolation and freedom from all foreign influences of the people. Under these altered circumstances it is to be feared that Japanese art has culminated, and shown the best of which it is capable. But if the hour of decadence has arrived, and a deterioration of taste inevitably set in, by an intermixture of foreign and debasing influences overlaying original thought and motifs, and leading to imitations of European vulgarities, we have the more reason to be grateful to those who, like Messrs Bowes & Audsley and Mr Cutler, have undertaken to preserve by costly and faithful examples works produced in the most brilliant period in the life of a singularly gifted people. One of the characteristic features of all Japanese art is individuality of character in the treatment, by which the absence of all uniformity and monotony or sameness is secured. Repetition without any variation is abhorrent to every Japanese. He will not tolerate the stagnation and tedium of a dull uniformity by mechanical reproduction. His temperament will not let him endure the labour of always producing the same pattern. Hence the repetition of two articles the exact copy of each other, and, generally, the diametrical division of any space into equal parts, are instinctively avoided, as nature avoids the production of any two plants, or even any two leaves of the same tree, which in all points shall be exactly alike. The application of this principle in the same free spirit is the secret of much of the originality and the excellence of the art of Japan. Its artists and artisans alike aim at symmetry, not by an equal division of parts as we do, but rather by a certain balance of corresponding parts, each different from the other, and not numerically even, with an effect of variety and freedom from formality. They seek it in fact, as nature attains the same end. If we take for instance the skins of animals that are striped or spotted, we have the best possible illustration of nature s methods in this direction. Examining the tiger or the leopard, in all the beauty of their symmetrical adornment, we do not see in any one example an exact repetition of the same lines or spots on each side of the mesial line of the spine. They seem to be alike, and yet are all different. The line of division along the spine, it will be observed, is not perfectly continuous or defined, but in part sug gested ; and each radiating stripe on either side is full of variety in size, direction, and to some extent in colour and depth of shade. Thus nature works, and so following in her footsteps works the Japanese artist. The same law prevailing in all nature s creation, in the plumage of birds, the painting of butterflies wings, the marking of shells, and in all the infinite variety and beauty of the floral kingdom, the lesson is constantly renewed to the observant eye. Among flowers the whole family of orchids, with all their fan tastic extravagance and mimic imitations of birds and insects, is especially prolific in examples of symmetrical effects without any repetition of similar parts or divisions into even numbers. We may take any ono of this class almost at random for a perfect illustration. The Oncidium Icucochilum is by no means the most eccentric or baroque member of the family of orchids. But in its uneven number of similar parts, and the variety in form and colour by which a symmetrical whole is produced, there is nothing left to be desired. The sepals are nearly alike, but not quite, either in size, shape, or colour-marking. These are balanced, not by three, but by two petals, which match each other, but are broader and more ovate in shape than the sepals, and, instead of being barred and spotted like the sepals, they are broadly painted to about half their length with a deep chestnut colour ; and, while the lip rising from the centre is pure white and wholly different in form, texture, and colour, the crest rising from the base with tubercles is yellowish, with patches of reddish-brown. This assemblage of parts, so diverse in form, number, and colour, nevertheless forms a single flower of exceeding beauty and symmetry, affording the strongest contrasts and the greatest variety imagin able, such as delight the Japanese artist s mind. The orchids may be taken as offering fair types of his ideal in all art work. And thus, close student of nature s processes, methods, and effects as the Japanese art workman is, he ever seeks to produce humble replicas from his only art master. Thus may we understand bow he proceeds in all his decorative work, avoiding studiously the exact repetition of any lines and spaces, and all diametrical divisions, cr, if these be forced upon him by the shape of the object, exercising the utmost ingenuity to disguise the fact, and train away the eye from observing the weak point, as nature does iu like circumstances.