The Spirit of Japanese Art/Gaho Hashimoto
GAHO HASHIMOTO
The art of Gaho (Hashimoto's nom-de-plume, signifying the "Kingdom Refined") is not to discard form and detail, as is often the case with the artists of the "Japanese school," while they soar into the grey-tinted vision of tone and atmosphere. His conventionalism—remember that he started his artist's life as a student of the Kano school, whose absurd classicism, arresting the germ of development, invited its own ruin—was not an enemy for him by any means. With the magic of his own alchemy he turned it into a transcendental beauty, bearing the dignity of artistic authority. I am sure he must have been glad to have the conventionalism for his magic to work on afterward; and when he left it, it seems to me, he looked back to it with a reminiscence of sad longing. Conventionalism is not bad when it does not dazzle. To make it suggestive is an achievement. To speak of Gaho's individuality in his pictures does no justice to him. His thought and conception are the highest, and at the least different from many another artist in the West. It is not his aim at all to express the light and colour of his individuality. I believe that he even despised it. He had the volumes of the Oriental philosophy in himself; and his idea, I believe, was much influenced by the Zen sect Buddhism, whose finality in teaching is to forget your ego. Gaho often talked on Kokoromochi in picture, to use his favourite expression, which, I am sure, means more than "spirit." "Now what is it?" he was frequently asked. "Is it in its nature subjective or objective? Or is it something like a combination of the two?" He was never explanatory in speech in his life. He thought, as a Zen priest, that silence was the best answer. Let me explain his Kokoromochi in picture by my understanding.
It is life or vital breath of the objective character, which is painted by one who has no stain of eye or subjectivity. To lose your subjectivity against the canvas, or, I will say, here in Japan, the silk, is the first and last thing. And the perfect assimilation with the object which you are going to paint would be the way of emancipation. You have to understand that you are called out by a divine voice only to be a medium, but nothing else. I am afraid that the phrase, "Let Nature herself speak," has been over-used. However, it is peculiarly true in Gaho's case. I think Gaho thought that to flash the rays of his individuality in his picture was nothing but a blasphemy against Nature. In that respect he is the humblest artist, and at the same time his humility is his own pride. Indeed, it is only through humility you are admitted to step into the inner shrine of Nature. Art for Gaho was not the matter of a piece of silk and Chinese ink, but a sacred thing. And to be an artist is a life's greatest triumph, and I am sure that Gaho was that.
I have been for some long time suspecting the nature of development of artistic appreciation of the Western mind, when only Hokusai's and Hiroshige's pictures, let me say, of red and green in tone of conception, called its special attention, and I even thought that our Japanese art, with the silence of blue and grey, would be perfectly beyond its power of reach. When Nature soars higher, she turns at once to the depth of dreams, whose voice is silence. To express the grey stillness of atmosphere and tone is the highest art, at least, to the Japanese mind. Not only in the picture, but in the "tea house" or incense ceremony, or in the garden, the appreciation of silence is the highest esthetics. It gives you a strong but never abrupt thrill of the delight which is nobly touched by the hands of sadness, and lets you lose yourself in it, and slowly grasp something you may be glad to call ideal. And the same sensation you can entertain from Gaho's art, which you might think to be reminiscent of a certain artistic paradise or Horai, the blest—one of his favourite subjects—enwrapped in silent air. You may call it idealism if you will, but it was nothing for him but the realisation. While you think it was his fancy, he saw it with his own naked eyes. It is true that he had been delivered from idealism. And I should say that dream, too, is not less real than you and I.
He never jars you. His art is a grey ghost of melody born from the bosom of depth and distance, like a far-off mountain. And it gives you a thrill of large space that binds you with eternity, and you will understand that what you call reality is nothing but a shiver of impulse of great Nature. His art, indeed, is the highest art of Japan, which, I believe, will be also the highest art of the West. It quite often stirs me with a Western suggestion, which, however, springs from the soil of his own bosom. I know that there is a meeting-point of the East and West, and that, after all, they are the same thing. He found the secret of art, which will remind any highly developed mind of both the East and West of some memory, and let it feel something like an emotion and fly into a higher realm of beauty. (Gaho's beauty is the beauty of silence.) It goes without saying that his art is simple, and his vision not complex. However, it is not only an Oriental philosophy to say that the greatest simplicity is the greatest complexity, and I will say that Gaho holds both extremes. The elements of his art embrace something older than art, larger than life, something which inspires you with the sense of profundity. They give us strange and positive pulses of age and nature, and the sudden rapture of dream, for which we will gladly die. They give us the feeling of peace and silence, and suggest something which we wish to grasp. The delight we gain from Gaho is purely spiritual. His pictures are living as a ghost which vanishes and again appears.
His conception of Buddhism was not sad, although this religion is generally said to be a pessimism, but joyous and sympathetic. I am sure that to associate Buddhism with something of grief and tears is not a proper understanding at all. (See Gaho's pictures of the Buddha and Rakans, the Buddha disciples. They do not inspire any awfulness.) Tenderness and joy, with a touch of sorrow, which is poetry, are the road toward the Nirvana. For Gaho, silence meant the highest state of peacefulness. The sad joy, which is the highest joy, is an evolution which never breaks the euphony of life, while tears and grief are rebellious. His art inspires in us a great reverence, which is religious, and it is always justified. And it reveals a light of faith under which he was born as an artist, and he was glad to fulfil his appointed work. Then his aspiration is never an accident, but the force which he cherished and has made grow.
Gaho's life of seventy-five years, which had closed in the month of January, 1907, can be divided into three periods. The first is that in which he was engaged in the pursuit of the ancient method by copying the models after the fashion of the Kano school; the second was that in which he slowly broke loose from the trammels of the Kano school, and ventured out to make a thorough exploration of the conspicuous features of various other schools; and the final was that in which he revaled himself nobly, with all the essence of art which he had earned from his tireless journey of previous days. In one word, he was the sum total of the best Japanese art. It is said that his long life was but one long day of study and work. He shut himself in his silent studio from early morning till evening, from evening till midnight, sitting before a piece of spread silk, with a Chinese brush in hand, as if before a Buddhistic altar where the holy candles burn. Now his research went deep in the Chinese schools of the ages of Sung, Yuen, and Ming, and then his thoughts lingered by the glimmer of the Higashiyama school's reminiscences. He confessed that he received no small influence from the Korin school, and I have more than one reason to believe that his knowledge of the Western art also was considerable. His catholicity of taste severely discriminated them, and his philosophy or conception of art stood magnificently above them, and never allowed them to disturb it under any circumstances. His great personality made him able to sing the song of triumph over his boundless artistic knowledge which had no power to oppress him. You might call his art a work of inspiration if you wish; but I am sure that he hated the word inspiration. It was through the religious exaltation of his mind that he could combine himself with Nature, and he and the subject which he was going to paint were perfectly one when the picture was done. His artist's magic is in his handling of lines. He believed that Japanese painting was fundamentally one of lines. What a charm, what a variety he had with them! See the difference between the lines he used for the pictures of a tiger or a dragon in clouds, the Oriental symbol of power and exaltation, and a bird or other delicate subject. The lines themselves are the pictures. However, that does not mean to undervalue his equal pre-eminence in his art of colour.
Gaho—or Gaho Hashimoto—was born in the fifth year of Tempo (1832) at Kobikicho, in Yedo, now Tokyo. From his seventh year he was taught how to draw and paint; at thirteen he became for the first time a pupil of Shosen Kano. It is said that Gaho was from an artistic family; we can trace back to Yeiki Hashimoto, who lived some time in the Meiwa (1764), and from whom the family line has continued unbroken down to the present. Yeiki was originally a native of Kyoto; and there he happened to be known to Suwonokami Matsudaira, the Shogun's minister, who took him into his service; and on the lordship's return to Yedo Mr. Hashimoto accompanied his master. And he happened to settle at Kobikicho, where the Kano family lived, and soon gained Kano's friendship. Since that time the family line was continued by Ikyo, Itei, and Yoho. Gaho was Yoho's son. The year after he became a student of the Kano school he lost his father and also his mother. It is said to be extraordinary that he was called upon to act, after only four years of pupilage, as an assistant to his master-Shosen in painting personal figures on the cedar door of the Shogun palace. At twenty years of age he was made head pupil. When he married he was twenty-six years old, and he began to lead his independent life, which turned tragic immediately. While the problem of getting his subsistence was not easy, his wife, whom he married with hope, became insane.
Mrs. Hashimoto was obliged to withdraw to the Higuchi village in Saitama prefecture, where was an estate of her husband's master, to avoid danger in the city; but she grew worse, and ran mad. And it is said that such a sad turn was from the reason that she was often tormented by some country ruffians. She was soon taken back to the city again, where she was put under her husband's sole protection. Thus, when poor Gaho's mind was completely engrossed with his family trouble, the great restoration of Meiji (1866) was announced, and the feudalism which had prospered for some three hundred years fell to the ground. Whole Japan was thrown at once in the abyss of social tumult and change; under the speedily felt foreign invasion she lost herself entirely. What she did was to destroy old Japan; she thought it proper and even wise. It was the darkest age for art; when people did not know of the safety of their own existence, it goes without saying that they had no time to admire art and spend money for it. It is perfectly miraculous to think how the artists managed to live; there are, of course, many heart-rending stories about them.
Gaho's is sad enough, although it may not be saddest of all. He gave up his own painting temporarily, and tried to get a pittance by painting pictures on folding fans which were meant for exportation to China. And it is said that he was often scorned by his employer for his clumsy execution and, sadder still, he was told to leave his job. Is it Heaven's right to treat one who was destined to be a great artist like that? He now resorted to a manual work of linking metal rings for making a sort of net-work; this chainwork, when finished, it is said, was made into something to be worn as an undergarment. Then he turned to take up the handicraft of making "koma," or bridges (a kind of small wooden or bamboo pillow inserted between the body of a musical instrument and its strings), of the shamisen, a Japanese guitar; and he was paid, I am told, one sen for a single piece of that koma, and to make twenty it took him three days. Fancy his earning of twenty sen for his steady work of three days! To recollect it in his later days must have been for him the source of tears. And fancy again his immense wealth when he died, the wealth which, not his greed, but his single-minded devotion to art invited! In fact, there was no person so unconcerned of money as this Gaho. It was his greatness to believe amid the sudden falling of art that the Japanese art which had grown from the very soil a thousand years old could not die so easily, and that the people's mind would open to it in a better condition; it was his prophetic foresight to behold the morning light in the midnight star. He was patiently waiting for his time when he should rise with splendour; and he never left himself to be ruined among the sad whirl of society and the nation's unsympathetic commotion. He walked slowly but steadily toward the star upon which he set his lofty eyes. He stood aloof above the age. His life, not only in his art, was the song of triumph too.
To his relief, his insane wife died; and his appointment as a draughtsman at the Imperial Naval Academy meant for him a substantial help. He kept it up till the eighteenth year of Meiji, when the revival of Japanese art began to be chronicled, as Gaho expected, in the formation of art societies like the Kanga Kwai or Ryuchi Kwai. When he left the Naval Academy he was called to do service at the Investigation Bureau of Drawing and Painting in the Department of Education. His fellow-workers were the most lamented Hogai Kano, another great artist of modern Japan, and the late Mr. Okakura, that able art critic, in whose guidance Kano trusted. And those three men at the start are the true life-restorers of Japanese art. When the Tokyo School of Art was founded (22nd year of Meiji), Gaho was first made warden of the school, and then its director. And he was appointed professor when his investigation bureau happened to close up. However, he voluntarily resigned his professorship when Mr. Okakura, then the president of the school, was obliged to resign his office. Gaho took the principal's chair of the Nippon Bijitsu when Okakura established it afterwards; but this school soon became a story of the past. Gaho has left his successors perhaps in those artists like Kwanzan Shimomura, Taikwan Yokoyama, Kogetsu Saigo and others, who are doing some noteworthy work. And I believe that he died at the right time if he must.