underlies not only the history of art as a whole, but also
the appearance and growth of individual artists and their schools.
The East has had its own form of that period called Symbolic,
or better still, perhaps, Formalistic, when matter, or the law of
material form, dominates the spiritual in art. The Egyptian and Assyrian sought
by immense stones to express grandeur, as the Indian worker by his innumerable
repetitions to utter forth infinity in his creations. Similarly, the Chinese
mind of the Shu and Hang dynasties pursued sublime effects in their long walls,
and in the intricately subtle lines which they produced in bronze. The first
period of Japanese art, from its birth to the beginning of the Nara era,
however imbued with the purest ideal of the first Northern development of
Buddhism, still falls into this group, by making form and formalistic beauty
the foundation of artistic excellence.
Next comes the so-called Classic period when beauty
is sought as the union of spirit and matter. To this impulse, Greek Pantheistic
philosophy in all its phases devotes itself, and the works of the Parthenon,
with the immortal stones of Phidias and Praxiteles, are its purest expression.
This phase is manifested in the East also as the second school of Northern Buddhism.
Here we have an objective idealism, which reaches its
height, under the influence of the India of the Guptas, during the Tâng dynasty
and the Nara period, and is destined to be hardened into the concrete cosmology
of the Esoteric pantheon. The kinship between Japanese work of this period and
that of the Greco-Romans is due to the fundamental resemblance of its mental
environment to that of the classic nations of the West.
But individualism, the underlying fire of modern life and
speculation, was only waiting to leap through the classic crust
and flame up once for all into the freedom of the spirit.
Spirit must conquer Matter, and though the differing idiosyncrasies of the
Occidental and the Oriental mind lead to differing expression, the modern idea
of the whole world runs inevitably to Romanticism. The Latin and Teutonic
races, from their hereditary instincts and political positions, went forth to
seek the Romantistic ideal objectively and materialistically; whereas the later
Chinese mind, as represented by the Neo-Confucians, and the Japanese since the
days of Ashikaga, steeped as it were in the spiritual essence of Indian, and
imbued with the harmonistic communism of Confucian thought, approached the
problem from a subjective and idealistic standpoint.
The Neo-Confucian influence of China, which ripened later
under the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960-1280), was an amalgamation of Taoist,
Buddhist, and Confucian thought, acting chiefly, however,
through the Taoist mind, as shown in Chimpaku, that Taoist
philosopher at the close of the Tâng dynasty, who made a single diagram to
represent the universe according to all these systems at once. We come now upon
the new interpretations of the two principles of the Cosmos, the male and
female, with stress laid for the first time upon the latter, as the
alone-active. This corresponds to the Indian notion of the Sakti, and was
developed by Neo-Confucian thinkers as their theory of Ri and Ki, the all
pervading Law, and the working Spirit. Thus all Asiatic philosophy, from
Sankaracharya downwards, turns on the moving power of the universe.
Another tendency of the Taoist mind is the flight from man
to nature. This is a consequence of the fact that we seek expression in
opposites. This innate love of nature imposes a limitation on the Ashikaga art,
which devotes itself too exclusively to landscapes, birds, and
flowers. Thus Neo - Confucianism in China consists of the Confucian justification of all, plus the new spirit of individualism,
and it culminates in the revival of the polity of Shu with a deepened modern
significance.
It is a proof of the reality of the individualism of the
epoch that the movement is succeeded by the rise of great political parties in
the empire, thus weakening China against her next Tartar invasion, which
resulted in the Mongol dynasty of Gen (A.D. 1280-1368).
Japanese art ever since the days of the Ashikaga masters,
though subjected to slight degeneration in the Toyotomi and Tokugawa periods,
has held steadily to the Oriental Romantistic ideal - that is to say, the
expression of the Spirit as the highest effort in art. This spirituality, with
us, was not the ascetic purism of the early Christian fathers, nor yet the
allegorical idealisation of the pseudo-renaissance. It was neither a mannerism,
of our own will which in India is called Gnan, or
"insight."
The Ashikaga ideal owes its origin to the Zen sect of
Buddhism, which became predominant during the Kamakura period. Zen, from
the word Dhyan, meaning meditation in supreme repose, was introduced
into China through Bodhi Dharma, an Indian prince who reached that country as a
monk in A.D. 520. But it had first to assimilate Laoist ideas, before it could
be naturalised on Celestial soil, and in this form it made its advent, towards
the end of the Tâng dynasty. The doctrines of Baso and Rinzai are clearly demarcated
from those of the early exponents of this school. Zenism, therefore, was a
development, and the inheritance which it left to be handed down by the
Kamakura and Ashikaga monks was the Southern, differing greatly from the
Northern Zen, which latter adhered still to the form that had been taught by
the early patriarchs of the sect. For by this time the idea
not only the phantom moon, but also themselves. The
elaborate sûtras of the so-called eighty-four thousand gates of knowledge were
like the meaningless chatter of the apish scholars. Freedom, once attained,
left all men to revel and glory in the beauties of the whole universe. They
were then one with nature, whose pulse they felt beating simultaneously within
themselves, whose breath they felt themselves inhaling and exhaling in union
with the great world-spirit. Life was microcosmic and macrocosmic at once. Life
and death alike but Phases of the one existence universal.
They loved also to portray the progress of a Zen student as
a cowherd in search of a lost charge. For man through ignorance is bereft of
his soul, and, like the cowherd, once roused for the search, he trudges on in
the almost imperceptible footprints, till he discovers first the tail and then
the body of that which he seeks.
[paragraph continues] Next ensues the struggle for mastery - a fierce combat and terrible
warfare between the mundane senses and the inner light. The herdsman conquers,
and, seated on the back of the now docile animal, goes serenely on his way,
playing a simple melody on the flute - thus he forgets himself and the beast.
To him day is sweet, with its green willows and crimson flowers. These vanish
again, and he delights to move about in the pure moonlight, where at once he is
and yet is not. Thus, to Zen thinking, victories over the inner self are more
true than the austere penances of the mediæval hermit, who tormented his flesh
instead of disciplining his mind. The body is a crystal vessel, through which
the rainbow of the Great Existence is to shine. The mind is like a great lake,
clear to its bottom, reflecting the clouds that hover over it, sometimes
ruffled by winds which make it foam and rage, but only to settle down into the
original calm, never losing its purity,
or its own nature. The world is full of a pathos of
existence which is yet merely incidental, and one must battle and war with
serenity and imperturbability, as if going to a bridal feast. Life and art, as
influenced by these teachings, wrought changes in Japanese habits which have
now become a second nature. Our etiquette begins with learning how to offer a
fan, and ends with the rites for committing suicide. The very tea-ceremony is
made expressive of Zen ideas.
The Ashikaga aristocracy, exquisites in their own way,
worked, like their Fujiwara ancestors, from the notion of luxury to that of
refinement. They loved to live in thatched cottages, as simple in appearance as
those of the meanest peasant, yet whose proportions were designed by the
highest genius of Shojo or Soami, whose pillars were of the costliest
incense-wood from the farthest Indian islands; even whose iron kettles were
marvels of workmanship, designed by Sesshu. Beauty,
said they, or the life of things, is always deeper as
hidden within than as outwardly expressed, even as the life of the universe
beats always underneath incidental appearances. Not to display, but to suggest,
is the secret of infinity. Perfection, like all maturity, fails to impress,
because of its limitation of growth.
Thus it would be their joy to ornament an ink-box, for
instance, with simple lacquering on the outside, and in its hidden parts with
costly gold-work. The tea-room would be decorated with a single picture or a
simple flower-vase, to give it unity and concentration, and all the riches of
the daimyo's collections would be kept in his treasure-house, whence each was
brought out in turn to serve in the satisfaction of some æsthetic impulse. Even
to the present day the people wear their costliest stuffs for under-garments,
as the Samurai prided themselves on keeping wonderful sword-blades within
unpretentious scabbards.
intensity and purity. They were all Zen priests, or laymen
who lived almost like monks. The natural tendency of artistic form under this
influence was pure, solemn, and full of simplicity.
The strong, high-toned drawing and colouring, and the
delicate curves of Fujiwara and Kamakura, were now discarded for simple
ink-sketches and a few bold lines - just as they discarded their graceful
robes, assuming huge stiff trousers in their place - for the new idea was to
divest art of foreign elements, and to make expression as simple and direct as
possible. Ink-painting, an innovation begun at the close of the Kamakura period, now supersedes colour in importance.
A painting, which is a universe in itself, must conform to
the laws that govern all existence. Composition is like the creation of the
world, holding in itself the constructive laws that give it life. Thus a great
work by Sesshu or Sesson is not a
depictment of nature, but an essay on nature; to them there
is neither high nor low, neither noble nor refined. A picture of the goddess
Kwannon, or of Sakya, will be no more important a subject than a painting of a
single flower or a spray of bamboo. Each stroke has its moment of life and
death; all together assist to interpret an idea, which is fife within life.
The two most prominent artists of this period are,
undoubtedly, these masters, though the way was paved for them by Shitibun,
noted for his landscapes and juicy ink touches.
Jasoku is another, whose vigour of stroke and compact
composition are almost unequalled.
Sesshu owes his position to that directness and
self-control so typical of the Zen mind. Face to face with his paintings, we
learn the security and calm which no other artist ever gives.
To Sesson, on the other hand, belong
the freedom, ease, and playfulness which constituted
another essential trait of the Zen ideal. It is as if to him the whole of
experience were but a pastime, and his strong soul could take delight in all
the exuberance of virile nature.
Hosts of others follow in the wake of these - Noami,
Gaiami, Soami, Sotan, Keishoki, Masanobu, Motonobu, and a galaxy of illustrious
names fill this period, which is unparalleled by any other. For the Ashikaga
Shoguns were great patrons of art, and the life of the age was conducive to
culture and refinement.
But it is impossible to pass from the consideration of the
Ashikaga era without some reference to its development of music, for nothing is
so indicative of the spirituality of an art-impulse, and it is during the
Ashikaga period that our national music emerges in its maturity.
Before this, except for the simple old songs of the people,
we had only that Bugaku music of the latter part of the
[paragraph continues] Six Dynasties, which, while derived from India and China, is yet so closely akin to the Greek. And this is natural, since all alike must have
been but off-shoots from the common stem of early Asiatic song and melody. This
Bugaku music has never been forgotten. We can still hear it played in Japan in the old costumes, to the old steps, thanks to its preservation by a hereditary
caste. It has now grown, perhaps, a little mechanical and expressionless, but
the Hymn to Apollo could still be played in its own mode by the Bugaku
musicians.
True to the needs of a military age, the Kamakura period
produced the Bards, who sang epic ballads of the glory of the heroes. The
masquerades of the Fujiwara epoch also found dramatic development later, in
representations of Hell, given in recitative to a simple accompaniment. These
two elements gradually fused and became permeated by the historic spirit, so
giving birth, towards the opening of the Ashikaga
period, to those No-dances, which are likely, from their
consecration to great national themes of struggle and event, to remain always
one of the strongest elements in Japanese music and drama.
The stage on which the No-dance is performed is made of
hard, unpainted wood, with a single pine tree somewhat conventionally portrayed
on the background. Thus is suggested a grand monotony. The main parts are three
in number, the small chorus and orchestra being seated on the stage at one side.
Masks are worn by the chief players - who might almost better be termed tellers
- and assist in the general idealisation. The poem deals with historical
subjects, always interpreting them through Buddhist ideas. The standard of
excellence is an infinite suggestiveness, naturalism the one thing to be
condemned.
Under these conditions, relieved only by slight comic
interludes, an audience will sit spell-bound through a whole day.