The Spirit of Japanese Art/The Nervous Debility of Present Japanese Art
THE NERVOUS DEBILITY OF PRESENT JAPANESE ART
When I say that I received almost no impression from the annual Government Exhibition of Japanese Art in the last five or six years, I have a sort of same feeling with the tired month of May when the season, in fact, having no strength left from the last glory of bloom (what a glorious old Japanese art!), still vainly attempts to look ambitious. Although it may sound unsympathetic, I must declare that the present Japanese art, speaking of it as a whole, with no reference to separate works or individual artists, suffers from nervous debility. Now, is it not the exact condition of the Japanese life at present? Here it is the art following after the life of modern Japan, vain, shallow, imitative, and thoughtless, which makes us pessimistic; the best possible course such an art can follow in the time of its nervous debility might be that of imitation.
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When the present Japanese art tells something, I thank God, it is from its sad failure; indeed, the present Japanese art is a lost art, since it explains nothing, alas, unlike the old art of idealistic exaltation, but the general condition of life. It is cast down from its high pedestal.
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I do not know exactly what simplicity means, when the word is used in connection with our old art; however, it is true we see a peculiar unity in it, which was cherished under the influence of India and China, and always helped to a classification and analysis of the means through which the artists worked. And the poverty of subjects was a strength for them; they valued workmanship, or the right use of material rather than the material itself; instead of style and design, the intellect and atmosphere. They thought the means to be the only path to Heaven. But it was before the Western art had invaded Japan; that art told them of the end of art, and laughed at the indecision of esthetic judgment and uncertainty of realism of Japanese art. It said: "It is true that you have some scent, but it is already faded; you have refinement, but it is not quite true to nature and too far away." Indeed, it is almost sad one sees the artists troubled by the Western influence which they accepted, in spite of themselves; I can see in the exhibitions that many of them have long ago lost their faith by spiritual calamity, and it is seldom to see them able to readjust their own minds under such a mingled tempest of Oriental and Occidental. Is it not, after all, merely a waste of energy? And how true it is with all the other phenomena of the present life, their Oriental retreat and Occidental rush.
*****
The present Japanese art has sadly strayed from subjectivity, the only one citadel where the old Japanese art rose and fell; I wonder if it is not paying a too tremendous price only to gain a little objectivity of the West.