The Spirit of Japanese Art/Busho Hara
BUSHO HARA[1]
Often I tried to write about Busho Hara the artist (I use the term in the most eclectic Japanese conception, because his art served more frequently to make his personality distinguished through its failure rather than through its success); that my attempt turned to nothing was perhaps because my mind, solitary and sad like that of Hara, did not like to betray the secret of the recluse whose silence was his salutation. Besides, my heart and soul and all were too much filled with this Busho Hara from the fact of his recent unexpected death—(by the way, he was in his forty-seventh year, that interesting age for an artist, as it would be the beginning of a new page, good or bad); and I am, in one word, perfectly confused on the subject. When I wish to think of his art alone, and even to measure it, if possible, through the most dangerous, always foolish way of comparison with others, I find always, in spite of myself, that my mind, even before it has fairly started on his art, is already carried away by the dear, sweet, precious memory of his rare personality. "Above all, he was rarest as friend," my mind always whispers to me every two minutes from the confusion of my thought, this and that, and again that and this, on him. To say that I think of him too much and for too many things would be well-nigh the same as to say that I am unfitted to tell about him intelligibly. I confess that I had a little difference with him on the subject of his own art here and there, while I was absorbed in his conversation or criticism (I always believed and said—did he dislike me when I said that?—he was a better and greater critic than artist), now by the cozy fire of a winter evening, then with the trees and grasses languid with summer's heat; he was the first and last man to whom I went when I felt particularly ambitious and particularly tired, and I dare say that he was pleased to see me. My own delight to have him as my friend was in truth doubled, when I thought that his personality and art, remarkable as they are honest, true, and sympathetic, were almost unknown at home except in a little narrow community; as I said before, he was a recluse. In England, many readers of Mr. Markino's book, A Japanese Artist in London, will remember Hara's name, as it is frequently repeated in the book; and a certain well-known English critic had an occasion once or twice to mention his name and kindly comment on his work in the Graphic. That was in 1906, when he was about to leave London after a few years' stay there. "Shall I go to England again for a change or to take a few pictures of mine?" he often exclaimed. England was his dream, as she is mine. How unfalteringly our talk ran; every time the subject was England and her art.
"Now is it settled, let us suppose," Hara would say in the course of talk, slightly twisting his sensitive mouth, holding up straight back his well-poised head (what a philosopher's eyes he had, gentle and clear), "that we shall go to England some time soon in the future. Yes, we shall go there even if we are not begged by Japan to leave the country. The most serious question is, however, where we shall sleep and dine. I have had enough experience of a common English boarding-house; I am haunted even to-day by the ghosts of Yorkshire pudding and cold ham. And suppose that a daughter or a son of that boarding-house might sing aloud a popular song every Saturday evening; I should like to know if there is anything more sad than that. Still, suppose that one next to you at table will ask you every evening how your work might sell; certainly that will be the moment when you think you will leave England at once for good. But it is England's greatness that she has art appreciators as well as buyers. Oh, where is the true art appreciator in Japan, even while we admit that we have the buyers? I will take a few pictures with me when I go to England next, and show them to the right sort of people; really, truly, only London of all the cities of the world has the right sort of people in any line of profession. Besides, I should like to examine the English art again and let the people there listen to my opinion; I was not enough prepared for such a work when I went there last."
But I believe that his own self-education in art, which he most determinedly started at the National Gallery, where he was forcibly attracted by Rembrandt and Velasquez, must have been happily developed, when the same Graphic critic spoke of his "sensitive and searching eyes," and (printing Hara's intelligent rendering of Rembrandt's "Jewish Merchant" on the page) said that it proved the painter was at the root of the matter, and declared that the critic had rarely seen better or more intelligent copy, and again to prove that Hara was not merely a copyist or imitator, he also reproduced on the same page his original work called "The Old Seamstress." And I am doubly pleased to find that the same English critic mentioned him somewhere as a "keen and acute critic, but generous withal"; I was so glad to have Hara as my friend for the rare striking power of his critical enlightenment (Oh, where is another sane artist like himself?), even when he failed to make a strong impression on me with his art. It was his immediate question on his return home how to apply the technique of oil painting he learned in London to Japanese subjects; if he failed in his art, as he always believed and I often thought he did, it was from the reason, I dare think, that he had indeed too clear a view of self-appraisal or self-criticism under whose menace he always took the attitude of an outsider towards his own work. How often I wished he were wholly without that critical power, always hard to please, altogether too fastidious! His artistic ambition and aim were so absolute and most highly puritanic; as a result, he was ever so restless and sad with his art, and often even despised himself. He had a great enemy, that was no other but his own self; he was more often conquered by it than conquering it. I have never seen in my life a more sad artist with the brush, facing a canvas, than this Busho Hara. Besides, his poor health, which had been failing in the last few years, only worked to make his critical displeasure sharper and more peculiar; and he utterly lost the passion and foolishness of his younger days. How often we promised, when we parted after a long chat, which usually began with Yoshio Markino, dear friend of his and mine in London, and as a rule ended with reminiscences of our English life, that we would hereafter return to our younger age, if possible to our boys' days, and even commit the innocent youthful sins and be happy; but when we met together again, we were the same unhappy mortals, Hara with a brush, I with a pen. He always looked comforted by my words when I told him my own tragedy and difficulties to write poetry; both of us exclaimed at once with the same breath and longed for life's perfect freedom. How he wished to cut away from himself and bid a final farewell to many portrait commissions, and become a lone pilgrim on Nature's great highway with only his brush and oil; that was his dream.
Let me repeat again that he was sad with his brush only to make his art still sadder; when he was most happy, it was the time when he left his own studio to forget his unwilling brush and send his love imaginations under the new foliage of spring trees and make them ride on the freedom of the summer air. How he planned for future work while contemplating great Nature; he was a dreamer in the true sense. And dream was to him more real as he thought it almost practicable. I do not mix any sarcasm in my words when I say that he was a greater artist when he did not paint; he rose to his full dignity only when out of his studio; and it was most unfortunate that I found him always ill when he was out of it. But I will say that I never saw one like himself so well composed, even satisfied, on a sick bed; that might have been from the reason that his being absorbed in Nature, his thought and contemplation on her, did not give an opportunity for bodily illness to use its despotism. He gave me in truth even such an impression that he was glad to be ill so he could lay himself right before the thought of great Nature. Once in the spring of 1911 I called on him at the hospital, when he successfully underwent a surgeon's knife (he was suffering from typhlitia); although he was quite weak then, he was most ambitious and happy to talk on the beauty of Nature; and he said: "I almost wonder why I did not become ill and lay me down on this particular bed of this hospital before, and (pointing to the blue sky through the window with his pale-skinned slender hand that was unmistakably an artist's) see how the eastern sky changes from dusk to milky grey, again from that grey to rosy light. How often I wished you, particularly you, might be here with me all awakening in this room, perhaps at half-past three o'clock; that is the time exactly when the colours of the sky will begin to evolve. Thank God all the other people are sleeping then. At such a moment I feel as if all Nature belonged to me alone in the whole world, and I alone held her secrets and her beauty; I am thankful for my illness, as it has made me thus restful in mind and allowed me to carefully observe Nature, and build my many future plans. I can promise you that I will whistle my adieu to the commissioned work, all of it, when I grow stronger again, and become a real artist, the real artist even to satisfy you. Oh, how I could paint the mysterious changes of the sky which I have been studying for the last week!"
Again I saw him in his sick-bed at his little home one afternoon; we grew, as a matter of course, quite enthusiastic and passionate as our talk was on art and artists; it was the foundation of his theory, when he expanded on it, not to put any difference between the arts of the East and the West; he seemed to agree with me on that day when I compared even recklessly Turner with our Sesshu. Although he entered into his art through the technique, I observed that he was speedily turning to a spiritualist; I often thought that he was a true Japanese artist even of the Japanese school, while he adopted the Western method. (It was the Graphic critic who said that he was "perhaps the ablest Japanese painter in our method who has visited our shores.") He and I saw that time the famous large screen by Goshun belonging to the Imperial Household called "Shosho no Yau," or "The Night Rain at Shosho"; as our minds were still absorbed in its soft mellow atmosphere and grey flashes of sweeping rain, we often repeated our great admiration for that Goshun. "It's not merely an art, but Nature herself," he exclaimed. The afternoon of the summer day was slowly falling; the yellow sunbeams, like an elf or fairy, were playing almost fantastically with the garden leaves; Hara was looking on them absent-mindedly, and when he awoke from his dream, he said: "Suppose you cut off a few of those leaves, even one leaf, with that particular sunlight on them; they are indeed a great art. Who can paint them as exactly they are? To prove it is areal art, when the artist is great and true, a large canvas and big subject are not necessary at all; one single leaf would be enough for his subject. I recall my first impression of Turner's work; I thought then that even one inch square of any picture of his in the National Gallery would be sufficient to prove his great art. I always vindicated his mastery of technique to the others who had the reverse opinion; what made Turner was never his technique. To talk about technique. I believe that even I have a better technique than is shown in most of the pictures drawn by Rossetti; but there is only one Rossetti in the world." On my way home after leaving him, I could not help wondering if he were not turning to a pessimist: I was afraid that he was in his heart of hearts denying his own ability and art.
One day last September, when my soul felt the usual sadness with the first touch of autumn, I received a note from Hara saying that his stomach had been lately troubled, and he wished I would call on him as he wanted to be brightened by my presence. I could not go then to see him on account of one thing and another; and when I was told by one of his friends and mine that Hara's illness was said to be cancer, even in its acute form, and that he was eagerly expecting my call, I hurried at once to his house. He was very pale and thin. As I was begged by Mrs. Hara at the door not to let him talk too much, as it was the doctor's command, I even acted as if I hated conversation on that day; it was Hara (bless his sympathetic gentle soul) who, on the contrary, wished to make me happy and interested by his talk. He talked as usual on various arts and artists; when he slowly entered into his own domestic affairs, he said: "I have decided to sell all my works of the last ten years, good or bad, among my rich friends, and raise a sufficient fund to provide for my old mother and wife; to have no child is at least a comfort at this moment. I think I call myself fortunate since such a scheme appears to be quite practicable; but if I could have even one picture which I could proudly leave for posterity—that might be too great an ambition for an artist of my class. Will you laugh at me when I say how I wish to live five years more, if not five years, two years at least, if not two years, even one year ? It might be better, after all, for me to die with hope than to live and fail." With a sudden thought he changed the subject; he thought, doubtless, he had no right to make me unnecessarily sad, and resumed the talk on Hokusai and Utamaro where he had left off a little while before. "I wish that you will see Utamaro's picture in my friend's possession; it is, needless to say, the picture of a courtesan. How that lovely woman sits! (Here Hara changed his attitude and imitated the woman in the picture.) Oh, these charming bare feet! That is where Utamaro put his best art; I cannot forget the feeling that I felt with the most attractive naked heels of the picture."
I gave him many instances of doctors' mistakes to encourage him, before I left his house. I called on him two weeks or ten days later; but I was not admitted to his presence, as the doctor had already forbade any outside communication. At my third call I was told that he was growing still worse; it was on October 29 that I made my fourth call, and I found at once that the house had been somewhat upset. Alas, my friend Busho Hara had gone already to his eternal rest! I rushed up to the upstairs room where the cold body of the artist was lying; he could not see or hear his friend. I cried. I was told by one of Havra's friends, who saw his last moment, how sorry he was that he did not see me when his final end approached, and that he had begged him to tell me that he was wrong in what he told me before about art. Now, what did he mean by that? I already suspected, as I said before, that he was growing to deny his own art; now I should like to understand by that final special message to me that he wished to wholly deny all the human art of the world against great Nature before his death. When he grew weaker and weaker, I think that he found it more easy to dream of Nature; whether conscious or unconscious, he must have been in the most happy state, at least for his last days, as he was going to join himself with her. I never saw such a dead face so calm, so sorrowless, like Hara's; it reminded me of a certain Greek mask which I saw somewhere; indeed, he had a Greek soul in the true meaning.
We six or seven friends of his kept a tsuya, or wake, before his coffin, as is the custom, on the night of the 29th; the night rapidly advanced when the reminiscences of this passed great artist were told to keep us from falling asleep. One man was speaking of the story of Hara's friendship with Danjuro Ichikawa, the great tragedian of the old kabuki school of the modern Japanese stage. Once he played the réle of Benkei in "Adaka ga Seki," which he wished Hara to draw; it was a most unusual treat on the actor's part to give the artist one whole box at the Kabuki Theatre during fifteen days only for that purpose, where he appeared every day not to draw, but to look at the acting. But Hara very quickly sketched him one day at the moment when he thought that the actor was prolonging his acting at a certain place to make him easy to sketch; in fact, Danjuro made his acting in some parts stand still for fifteen minutes. Strangely enough, the other actors who were playing with him did not know that, while Hara rightly read the actor's intention and thought. Danjuro said afterwards that Mr. Hara understood him through the power of his being a great artist. Did he draw the picture and finish it? That is the next question. He did not, as was often the case with Hara; he wrote the actor bluntly he was sorry that this spirit was gone, making it impossible to advance. The one who told the story exclaimed: "I never saw an artist like Hara so slow to paint, or who found it so difficult to paint."
Among us there was a well-known frame manufacturer, Yataya by name, who, it is said, was Hara's very first friend in Tokyo, where he came thirty years before from his native Okayama; he spoke next on his dear friend: "He made his call on me at my store in Ginza almost every night; he never came up into the room, but sat always at the shop front. And there he gazed most thoughtfully on the passing crowd of the street with his fixed eyes; he made himself quite an unattractive figure especially for the shop front. 'Who is that sinister-looking fellow?' I was often asked. I am sure that he must have been there studying the people; his interest in anything was extremely intent. He was a great student."
While I am now writing upon Hara, I feel I see that he is sitting at a certain shop front, perhaps of Hades. Is he not studying the action of the dead souls clamorous as in their living days?
- ↑ See the Appendix