Jinrikisha Days in Japan/Chapter 29
CHAPTER XXIX
GOLDEN DAYS
Nammikawa, the first cloisonné artist of the world, has his home, his workshop, and his little garden in a quiet corner of the Awata district. Most visitors never pass beyond his ante-room, as Nammikawa holds his privacy dear, and that small alcove with the black table gives little hint of what lies beyond. The more fortunate visitor follows the master through a dark recess to a large room with two sides open to the garden, and a tiny balcony overhanging a lakelet. He claps his hands, and big golden carp rise to the surface and gobble the mochi thrown them. In that little paradise, barely sixty feet square, are hills, groves, thickets, islands, promontories, and bays, a bamboo-shaded well, and a shrine, while above the farthest screen of foliage rise the green slopes of Maruyama.
A Japanese friend, who described Nammikawa as “the most Japanese and most interesting man in Kioto,” took us to drink tea with him in this charming garden, and, on the hottest afternoon of a hot Kioto summer, we noted neither time nor temperature until the creeping shadows warned us to depart. Old Japan seemed to re-live in the atmosphere of that garden, and a cha no yu was no more finished than the simple tea-ceremony the master performed there. By the old etiquette a Japanese gentleman never intrusted to any servant the making of tea for a guest, nor allowed the fine art of that simple, every-day process to be exercised unseen. The tea-tray, brought and set before the master, bore a tiny jewel-like tea-pot of old Awata, and the tiny cloisonné cups with plain enamelled linings were as richly colored as the circle of a tulip’s petals, and smaller far. With them was a small pear-shaped dish, not unlike our gravy-boats, a beautiful bronze midzu tsugi, or hot-water pot, and a lacquer box holding a metal tea-caddy filled with the finest leaves from Uji tea-gardens. Taking a scoop of yellowed ivory, carved in the shape of a giant tea-leaf, our host filled the little tea-pot with loosely-heaped leaves, and having decanted the hot water into the little pear-shaped pitcher to cool a little, poured it upon the tea-leaves. Immediately he drew off the palest amber fluid, half filling each cup, and presented them to us, resting on leaf-shaped stands or saucers of damascened metal. The tea was only lukewarm when we received it, but as delicate and exquisitely flavored as if distilled of violets, as rich and smooth as a syrup, the three sips of it constituting a most powerful stimulant. In the discussion of tea-making that followed, our Japanese mentor explained to us that to the epicurean tea-drinkers of his country, boiling water was an abomination, as it scorched the leaves, drove out the fine fragrance in the first cloud of steam, and extracted the bitterness instead of the sweetness of the young leaves. “It may be well enough to pour boiling water on the coarse black tea of China’s wild shrub,” said this delightful Japanese, “but the delicate leaf of our cultivated tea-plant does not need it.”
With the tea our host offered us large flat wafers of rice and fancy confections in the shape of most elaborate asters and chrysanthemums, too artistic to be eaten without compunction. The cups were refilled with the second and stronger decoction, which set every nerve tingling, and then only were we permitted to see the treasures of Nammikawa’s creation. From box and silken bag within bag were produced vases, whose lines, color, lustre, and brilliant intricacy of design made them beautiful beyond praise. They were wrought over with finest traceries of gold, silver, and copper wires, on grounds of dull Naples yellow, soft yellowish-green, a darker green, or a rich deep-red, wonderful to behold, the polished surface as even and flawless as that of a fine onyx.
One by one some smaller pieces were brought in, in little boxes of smooth white pine, beautifully made and joined. Nammikawa opened first the cotton wadding, then the inevitable wrapping of yellow cloth, and lastly the silken covers, and handled with a tender reverence these exquisite creations of his genius, every one of which, when placed on its low teak-wood stand, showed faultless. For two years his whole force was at work on the two sixteen-inch vases which went to the Paris Exposition, and four years were given to the Emperor’s order for a pair for his new palace. These bore the imperial emblems, and dragons writhed between chrysanthemums and through conventional flower-circles and arabesques, and the groundwork displayed the splendid red, green, russet, mottled gold, and glistening avanturine enamels, whose secret Nammikawa holds. For it is not only in his fine designs, but in the perfect composition and fusing of his enamels and the gem-like polish that this great artist excels all rivals.
In another garden, concealed by a bamboo hedge, is the tiny laboratory, and the one work-room where less than twenty people, all told, execute the master’s
IN NAMMIKAWA'S WORK-ROOM
Fifty or sixty small pieces, chiefly vases, caskets, and urns, three and four inches high, and ranging in price from thirty to ninety yen each, are a whole year's output, and larger pieces are executed by special order at the same time with these. Nammikawa does not like to sell to the trade, and has been known to refuse the requests of curio merchants, making his customers pay more if he suspects that they are buying to sell again. It is his delight to hand the precious article to its new owner, enjoining him to keep it wrapped in silk and wadding, and always to rub it carefully to remove any moisture before putting it away. He cautions visitors, when they attempt to handle the precious pieces in his show-room, not to touch the enamelled surface with the hand, the metal base and collar being left free on each piece for that purpose. Nor must two pieces of cloisonné ever be knocked together, as the enamel is almost more brittle than porcelain. Curiously enough, this great artist uses no mark nor sign-manual. “If my work will not declare itself to be mine, then the marking will do no good,” he says; and, indeed, his cloisonné is so unlike the crude and commonplace enamels exported from Japan by ship-loads for the foreign market, that it does not need the certification of his name.
Nammikaw'a has the face of a saint, or poet—gentle, refined, and intellectual—and his beautiful manner and perfect courtesy are an inheritance of the old Japan. His earlier days were not saintly, although they may have been poetical. He was a personal attendant of Prince Kuné no Miya, a brother of Prince Komatsu, and cousin of the Emperor, and was brought up in the old court life with its atmosphere of art and leisure. The elegant young courtier was noted for his gayety and improvidence. He remained in Kioto when the court moved northward, and all at once ceased his dissipations, even putting aside his pipe, to devote himself to experiments in the manufacture of cloisonné, for which he had always had a passion. In his laboratory there is a square placque, a bluish bird on a white ground diapered with coarse wires, which was his first piece. One can hardly believe that only fifteen years intervene between this coarse, almost Chinese, specimen of his work, and the vases for the Emperor's palace. From the start he threw himself into his profession with his whole soul and spirit. Incessant experiments in the solitude of his laboratory and work room at night, and the zeal and patience of a Palissy at the furnace, conquered his province. He is still constantly studying and experimenting, and always fires his pieces himself, keeping long vigils by the little kiln in the garden.
Hurry and money-making he despises. Gazing dreamily out into his garden, Nammikawa declared that he had no ambition to have a large godown, a great workshop, and a hundred workmen; that he always refused to take any large commissions or commercial orders, or to promise a piece at any given time. Neither good art nor good work can be commanded by money, he thought, nor did he want his men to work faster, and therefore less carefully, because greater prices are offered him for haste. It was his pleasure, he said, to take years for the execution of a single piece that might stand flawless before all connoisseurs, and receive its just reward of praise or medals. The latter are dearer to him than any sum of money, and in his own garden he finds happiness with them.
There is a Nammikawa of Tokio who is not to be confounded with this Kioto artist. The Tokio enameller has an entirely different style, a simple design thrown in a broad style upon an unbroken groundwork, easily distinguishing his work from any other; but Nammikawa of Tokio deals directly with the trade, even contracting with foreign curio dealers for seasons of work, and makes replicas of his exquisite pieces by the score for them. Imitators of his style have arisen, and already many cheap pieces, copying his best models, can be purchased in foreign cities.
The idling most delightful of all in Kioto is going over and over again to the same places, doing the same thing repeatedly, and arriving at that happy and eminently Japanese frame of mind where haste enters not; time is forgotten, days slip by uncounted, and limits cease to be. The spring days, when the rain falls in gauziest mist—the rain that is so good for young rice—or summer days, when the sun scorches the earth and burns one’s very eyeballs, seem to bring the most unbroken leisure and longest hours in any agreeable refuge.
Sitting on Yaami’s veranda, with the great plain of the city wreathed in mists or quivering in heat, I have recognized my indebtedness to Griffis, Dresser, Mitford, Morse, and Rein, those authorities on all things Japanese, not to mention Murray and his ponderous guide-book, whose weight and polysyllabic pages strike terror to the soul of the new-comer. Griffis I read, until Tairo and Minamoto, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, grew as familiar as William the Conqueror and the Declaration of Independence; Dresser’s text and illustrations were a constant delight and illumination, explaining the incomprehensible and pointing to hidden things; and Morse’s Japanese Homes laid bare their mysteries, and made every fence, roof, rail, ceiling, and wall take on new features and expression. Rein’s is the encyclopædia, and he the recorder, from whose statements there is no appeal, and to him we turned for everything. It is only on the sacred soil that the student gets the true value and meaning of these books; while nothing so nearly expresses and explains the charm of the country as that prose idyl, Percival Lowell’s Soul of the Far East, nor so perfectly fits one’s moods on these long, leisure days, and Mifford’s Tales of Old Japan are of ceaseless delight.
In this Japanese atmosphere the traveller feels what he misses through his ignorance of the vernacular, and is even inspired with a desire to study the language; but a little skimming of the grammar usually brings down that vaulting ambition. It is easy to pick up words and phrases for ordinary use, as all servants understand some English, and every hotel and shop has its interpreter. Upper-class people, whom one meets socially, always speak English, French, or German. Scholars declare that the mastery of the language takes from twelve to thirty years, and the compiler of the standard lexicon modestly says for himself that forty years is not enough. With a few most illustrious exceptions, no foreigner, who has not learned Japanese almost before his own tongue, has ever been able to grasp its idioms so as to express himself with clearness and accuracy. The whole theory and structure of the language are so different from and so opposed to European speech—so intricate and so arbitrary, that the alien brain fails to grasp it. The lower, middle, and upper classes have each a different mode of expression, and the women of each class use a still simpler version. He who learns the court language cannot make himself understood by shop-keepers or servants. He who has acquired coolie-talk insults a gentleman by uttering its common words and inelegant expressions in his presence.
As if the differences between the polite and the common idioms and names for things did not make verbal complications enough, the imperial family and their satellites have a still finer phraseology with a special vocabulary for their exclusive use. Saké, or rice brandy, becomes kukon at court; a dumpling, which is a dango in the city, becomes an ishi-ishi when it enters the palace-gates; and a shirt, or juban, is transmuted to a heijo on an imperial back. Well-bred women say o hiya for cold water, and men always call it mizu. A dog not only gets the honorific prefix o, but if you call him, you say politely o ide, just as you would to a child; while the imperative koi! koi! (come, come,) is polite enough for the rest of the brute creation. Children say umamma for food, but if you do not say omamma instead, nesans will giggle over your baby talk.
Dialects and localisms contribute still further to confusion of tongues. A hibachi in Kioto is a shibachi in Yokohama, as a Hirado vase is a Shirado one. When you inquire a price, you say ikura for “how much” in Yokohama, and nambo in Kioto. All around Tokio the g has the sound of ng, or gamma nasal, and this nasal tone of the capital is another point of conformity with the modern French.
Everywhere in Japan an infinity of names belongs to the simplest things. Twenty- five synonyms for rice are given in Hepburn’s smaller dictionary, all as different as possible. Rice in every stage of growing, and in every condition after harvesting, has a distinct name, with no root common to all. Endless mistakes follow any inexactness of pronunciation. The numerals, ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, ku, ju, are easily memorized, and learning to count up to one hundred is child’s play compared to the struggle with French numerals. It is not necessary to say “four times twenty, ten, and seven,” before ninety-seven is reckoned; that is simply ku ju shichi, or nine tens and a seven. Twenty is ni ju, thirty is san ju, fifty is go ju, and so through the list. The ordinal numbers have dai prefixed or ban added, and “fourth” is then yo ban. That ichi ban means “number one,” and ni ban, “number two,” surprises people who had supposed that Mr. Ichi Ban and Mr. Ni Ban owned the great Japanese stores that used to exist in two American cities. After learning the plain cardinal and ordinal numbers, the neophyte must remember to add the syllable shiki when mentioning any number of animals, nin for people, ken for houses, so for ships, cho for jinrikishas, hai for glasses or cups of any liquid, hon for long and round objects, mai for broad and flat ones, tsu for letters or papers, satsu for books, wa for bundles or birds. Any infraction of these rules gives another meaning to the intended phrase, and the slightest variation in inflection changes it quite as much. If you want three kurumas, you say “kuruma san cho,” and five plates are saro go mai.” To say simply saiyo (yes), or iye (no), is inadmissible. The whole statement must be made with many flourishes, and frequent de gozarimasus adorn a gentleman’s conversation.
If a curio dealer asks whether you wish to see a koro, and you look for the word in the lexicon, you find that koro means, according to Dr. Hepburn’s dictionary, time, period of time, a cylindrical wooden roller used in moving heavy bodies, the elders, old people, tiger and wolf, i.e., savage and cruel, stubborn, bigoted, narrow-minded, a road, a journey, a censer for burning incense, and the second or third story of a house. So, too, kiku may mean a chrysanthemum, or a compass and square, a rule, an established custom, the moment or proper time; fear, timidity, and a score of other things. The chief compensations of the language are its simple and unvarying rules of pronunciation, every syllable being evenly accented, every vowel making a syllable, and, pronounced as continental vowels are, giving music to every word.
The written language is the study of another lifetime. Having the Chinese written language as its basis, the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans can all understand one another in this form common to all, though not in the spoken tongue. It is common to see Chinese and Japanese coolies writing characters in the air, in the dust, or in the palms of their hands, and seeming to make themselves intelligible in this classical sign language. The written language has the katagana, or square characters, and the hiragana, or “grass” characters, the latter simpler and more nearly corresponding to our script or running hand.
The efforts of scholars are now turned to Romaicising or transliterating the Japanese sounds and characters, and expressing them by the common alphabet of Latin and Anglo-Saxon people, basing it on phonetic spelling. Volapuk, the new universal language of all nations, offers great difficulties to the Japanese, for although Schleyer, its inventor, kindly left out the r, which the Chinese cannot pronounce, he left in the l, which is a corresponding stumbling-block for the Japanese, who is seldom a natural linguist.