world, and for the first time the Japanese public learned what stores of information may be found in the columns of a really enterprising journal. Very soon the Asahi had a keen competitor in the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun (Osaka Daily News) and these papers ultimately crushed all rivals in Osaka. In 1888 Maruyama established another Asahi in Tōkyō, and thither he was quickly followed by his Osaka rival, which in Tōkyō took the name of Mainichi Dempō (Daily Telegraph). These two newspapers now stand alone as purveyors of copious telegraphic news, and in the next rank, not greatly lower, comes the Jiji Shimpō.
With the opening of the diet in 1890, politics again obtruded themselves into newspaper columns, but as practical living issues now occupied attention, readers were no longer wearied by the abstract homilies of former days. Moreover, freedom of the press was at length secured. Already (1887) the government had voluntarily made a great step in advance by divesting itself of the right to imprison or fine editors by executive order. But it reserved the power of suppressing or suspending a newspaper, and against that reservation a majority of the lower house voted, session after session, only to see the bill rejected by the peers, who shared the government’s opinion that to grant a larger measure of liberty would certainly encourage licence. Not until 1897 was this opposition fully overcome. A new law, passed by both houses and confirmed by the emperor, took from the executive all power over journals, except in cases of lèse majesté, and nothing now remains of the former arbitrary system except that any periodical having a political complexion is required to deposit security varying from 175 to 1000 yen. The result has falsified all sinister forebodings. A much more moderate tone pervades the writings of the press since restrictions were entirely removed, and although there are now 1775 journals and periodicals published throughout the empire, with a total annual circulation of some 700 million copies, intemperance of language, such as in former times would have provoked official interference, is practically unknown to-day. Moreover, the best Japanese editors have caught with remarkable aptitude the spirit of modern journalism. But a few years ago they used to compile laborious essays, in which the inspiration was drawn from Occidental textbooks, and the alien character of the source was hidden under a veneer of Chinese aphorisms. To-day they write terse, succinct, closely-reasoned articles, seldom diffuse, often witty; and generally free from extravagance of thought or diction. Incidentally they are hastening the assimilation of the written and the spoken languages (genbun itchi) which may possibly prelude a still greater reform, abolition of the ideographic script. Yet, with few exceptions, the profession of journalism is not remunerative. Very low rates of subscription, and almost prohibitory charges for advertising, are chiefly to blame.[1] The vicissitudes of the enterprise may be gathered from the fact that, whereas 2767 journals and periodicals were started between 1889 and 1894 (inclusive), no less than 2465 ceased publishing. The largest circulation recorded in 1908 was about 150,000 copies daily, and the honour of attaining that exceptional figure belonged to the Osaka Asahi Shimbun. (F. By.)
IV.—Japanese Art
Painting and Engraving.—In Japanese art the impressionist element is predominant. Pictures, as the term is understood in Europe, can scarcely be said to have existed at any time in Japan. The artist did not depict emotion: he depicted the subjects that produce Pictorial Art.emotion. Therefore he took his motives from nature rather than from history; or, if he borrowed from the latter, what he selected was a scene, not the pains or the passions of its actors. Moreover, he never exhausted his subject, but was always careful to leave a wide margin for the imagination of the spectator. This latter consideration sometimes impelled him to represent things which, to European eyes, seem trivial or insignificant, but which really convey hints of deep significance. In short, Japanese pictures are like Japanese poetry: they do not supply thought but only awaken it. Often their methods show conventionalism, but it is conventionalism so perfect and free in its allurements that nature seems to suggest both the motive and the treatment. Thus though neither botanically nor ornithologically 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 writers that the Japanese do not study from nature. All their work is an emphatic protest against this supposition. 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. A special feature of their art is that, while often closely and minutely imitating natural objects, such as birds, flowers and fishes, the especial objects of their predilection and study, they frequently combine the facts of external nature with a conventional mode of treatment better suited to their purpose. During the long apprenticeship that educated Japanese serve to acquire the power of writing with the brush the complicated characters borrowed from Chinese, they unconsciously cultivate the habit of minute observation and the power of accurate imitation, and with these the delicacy of touch and freedom of hand which only long practice can give. A hair’s-breadth deviation in a line is fatal to good calligraphy, both among the Chinese and the Japanese. When they come to use the pencil in drawing, they already possess accuracy of eye and free command of the brush. Whether a Japanese art-worker sets himself to copy what he sees before him or to give play to his fancy in combining what he has seen with some ideal in his mind, the result shows perfect facility of execution and easy grace in all the lines.
The beauties of the human form never appealed to the Japanese artist. Associating the nude solely with the performance of menial tasks, he deemed it worse than a solecism to transfer such subjects to his canvas, and thus a wide field of motive was closed to him. On the other hand, the draped figure received admirable treatment from his brush, and the naturalistic school of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries reached a high level of skill in depicting men, women and children in motion. Nor has there ever been a Japanese Landseer. Sosen’s monkeys and badgers constitute the one possible exception, but the horses, oxen, deer, tigers, dogs, bears, foxes and even cats of the best Japanese artists were ill drawn and badly modelled. In the field of landscape the Japanese painter fully reached the eminence on which his great Chinese masters stood. He did not obey the laws of linear perspective as they are formulated in the Occident, nor did he show cast shadows, but his aerial perspective and his foreshortening left nothing to be desired. It has been suggested that he deliberately eschewed chiaroscuro because his pictures, destined invariably to hang in an alcove, were required to be equally effective from every aspect and had also to form part of a decorative scheme. But the more credible explanation is that he merely followed Chinese example in this matter, as he did also in linear perspective, accepting without question the curious canon that lines converge as they approach the spectator.
It is in the realm of decorative art that the world has chiefly benefited by contact with Japan. Her influence is second only to that of Greece. Most Japanese decorative designs consist of natural objects, treated sometimes in a more or less conventional manner, but always distinguished Decorative Art.by delicacy of touch, graceful freedom of conception and delightfully harmonized tints. Perhaps the admiration which the Japanese artist has won in this field is due not more to his wealth of fancy and skilful adaptation of natural forms, than to his individuality of character in treating his subjects. There is complete absence of uniformity and monotony. 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 exactly like each other, and, generally, the 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 decorative art of Japan. Her 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
- ↑ The highest rate of subscription to a daily journal is twelve shillings per annum, and the usual charge for advertisement is from 7d. to one shilling per line of 22 ideographs (about nine words).
