From A Traveling Diary

FROM A TRAVELING DIARY
I
OSAKA-KYOTO RAILWAY.
April 15, 1895.

Feeling drowsy in a public conveyance, and not being able to lie
down, a Japanese woman will lift her long sleeve before her face
ere she begins to nod. In this second-class railway-carriage
there are now three women asleep in a row, all with faces
screened by the left sleeve, and all swaying together with the
rocking of the train, like lotos-flowers in a soft current. (This
use of the left sleeve is either fortuitous or instinctive;
probably instinctive, as the right hand serves best to cling to
strap or seat in case of shock.) The spectacle is at once pretty
and funny, but especially pretty, as exemplifying that grace with
which a refined Japanese woman does everything,--always in the
daintiest and least selfish way possible. It is pathetic, too,
for the attitude is also that of sorrow, and sometimes of weary
prayer. All because of the trained sense of duty to show only
one's happiest face to the world.

Which fact reminds me of an experience.

A male servant long in my house seemed to me the happiest of
mortals. He laughed invariably when spoken to, looked always
delighted while at work, appeared to know nothing of the small
troubles of life. But one day I peeped at him when he thought
himself quite alone, and his relaxed face startled me. It was not
the face I had known. Hard lines of pain and anger appeared in
it, making it seem twenty years older. I coughed gently to
announce my presence. At once the face smoothed, softened,
lighted up as by a miracle of rejuvenation. Miracle, indeed, of
perpetual unselfish self-control.

II

Kyoto, April 16.

The wooden shutters before my little room in the hotel are pushed
away; and the morning sun immediately paints upon my shoji,
across squares of gold light, the perfect sharp shadow of a
little peach-tree. No mortal artist--not even a Japanese--could
surpass that silhouette! Limned in dark blue against the yellow
glow, the marvelous image even shows stronger or fainter tones
according to the varying distance of the unseen branches outside.
it sets me thinking about the possible influence on Japanese art
of the use of paper for house-lighting purposes.

By night a Japanese house with only its shoji closed looks like a
great paper-sided lantern,--a magic-lantern making moving shadows
within, instead of without itself. By day the shadows on the
shoji are from outside only; but they may be very wonderful at
the first rising of the sun, if his beams are leveled, as in this
instance, across a space of quaint garden.

There is certainly nothing absurd in that old Greek story which
finds the origin of art in the first untaught attempt to trace
upon some wall the outline of a lover's shadow. Very possibly all
sense of art, as well as all sense of the supernatural, had its
simple beginnings in the study of shadows. But shadows on shoji
are so remarkable as to suggest explanation of certain Japanese
faculties of drawing by no means primitive, but developed beyond
all parallel, and otherwise difficult to account for. Of course,
the quality of Japanese paper, which takes shadows better than
any frosted glass, must be considered, and also the character of
the shadows themselves. Western vegetation, for example, could
scarcely furnish silhouettes so gracious as those of Japanese
garden-trees, all trained by centuries of caressing care to look
as lovely as Nature allows.

I wish the paper of my shoji could have been, like a photographic
plate, sensitive to that first delicious impression cast by a level
sun. I am already regretting distortions: the beautiful silhouette has
begun to lengthen.

III

Kyoto, April 16.

Of all peculiarly beautiful things in Japan, the most beautiful
are the approaches to high places of worship or of rest,--the
Ways that go to Nowhere and the Steps that lead to Nothing.

Certainly, their special charm is the charm of the adventitious,
--the effect of man's handiwork in union with Nature's finest
moods of light and form and color,--a charm which vanishes on
rainy days; but it is none the less wonderful because fitful.

Perhaps the ascent begins with a sloping paved avenue, half a
mile long, lined with giant trees. Stone monsters guard the way
at regular intervals. Then you come to some great flight of steps
ascending through green gloom to a terrace umbraged by older and
vaster trees; and other steps from thence lead to other terraces,
all in shadow. And you climb and climb and climb, till at last,
beyond a gray torii, the goal appears: a small, void, colorless
wooden shrine,--a Shinto miya. The shock of emptiness thus
received, in the high silence and the shadows, after all the
sublimity of the long approach, is very ghostliness itself.

Of similar Buddhist experiences whole multitudes wait for those
who care to seek them. I might suggest, for example, a visit to
the grounds of Higashi Otani, which are in the city of Kyoto. A
grand avenue leads to the court of a temple, and from the court a
flight of steps fully fifty feet wide--massy, mossed, and
magnificently balustraded--leads to a walled terrace. The scene
makes one think of the approach to some Italian pleasure-garden
of Decameron days. But, reaching the terrace, you find only a
gate, opening--into a cemetery! Did the Buddhist
landscape-gardener wish to tell us that all pomp and power and
beauty lead only to such silence at last?

IV
KYOTO, April 10-20.

I have passed the greater part of three days in the national
Exhibition,--time barely sufficient to discern the general
character and significance of the display. It is essentially
industrial, but nearly all delightful, notwithstanding, because of the
wondrous application of art to all varieties of
production. Foreign merchants and keener observers than I find in
it other and sinister meaning,--the most formidable menace to
Occidental trade and industry ever made by the Orient. "Compared
with England," wrote a correspondent of the London Times, "it is
farthings for pennies throughout.... The story of the Japanese
invasion of Lancashire is older than that of the invasion of
Korea and China. It has been a conquest of peace,--a painless
process of depletion which is virtually achieved.... The Kyoto
display is proof of a further immense development of industrial
enterprise.... A country where laborers' hire is three shillings
a week, with all other domestic charges in proportion,
must--other things being equal--kill competitors whose expenses are
quadruple the Japanese scale." Certainly the industrial jiujutsu promises unexpected results.

The price of admission to the Exhibition is a significant matter
also. Only five sen! Yet even at this figure an immense sum is
likely to be realized,--so great is the swarm of visitors.
Multitudes of peasants are pouring daily into the
city,--pedestrians mostly, just as for a pilgrimage. And a
pilgrimage for myriads the journey really is, because of the
inauguration festival of the greatest of Shinshu temples.

The art department proper I thought much inferior to that of the
Tokyo Exhibition of 1890. Fine things there were, but few.
Evidence, perhaps, of the eagerness with which the nation is
turning all its energies and talents in directions where money is
to be made; for in those larger departments where art is combined
with industry,--such as ceramics, enamels, inlaid work,
embroideries,--no finer and costlier work could ever have been shown.
Indeed, the high value of certain articles on display suggested a reply to a Japanese friend who observed,
thoughtfully, "If China adopts Western industrial methods, she
will be able to underbid us in all the markets of the world."

"Perhaps in cheap production," I made answer. "But there is no
reason why Japan should depend wholly upon cheapness of
production. I think she may rely more securely upon her
superiority in art and good taste. The art-genius of a people may
have a special value against which all competition by cheap labor
is vain. Among Western nations, France offers an example. Her
wealth is not due to her ability to underbid her neighbors. Her
goods are the dearest in the world: she deals in things of luxury
and beauty. But they sell in all civilized countries because they
are the best of their kind. Why should not Japan become the
France of the Further East?"

The weakest part of the art display is that devoted to
oil-painting,--oil-painting in the European manner. No reason exists why
the Japanese should not be able to paint wonderfully in oil by
following their own particular methods of artistic expression. But their
attempts to follow Western methods have even risen to mediocrity only
in studies requiring very realistic treatment. Ideal work in oil, according to Western canons of art, is still out of their reach. Perhaps they may yet discover for themselves a new gateway to the beautiful, even through oil-painting, by adaptation of the method to the particular needs of the race-genius; but there is yet no sign of such a tendency.

A canvas representing a perfectly naked woman looking at herself
in a very large mirror created a disagreeable impression. The Japanese press had been requesting the removal of the piece, and uttering comments not flattering to Western art ideas.
Nevertheless the canvas was by a Japanese painter. It was a daub;
but it had been boldly priced at three thousand dollars.

I stood near the painting for a while to observe its effect upon the people,--peasants by a huge majority. They would stare at it, laugh scornfully, utter some contemptuous phrase, and turn away to examine the kakemono, which were really far more worthy of notice though offered at prices ranging only from ten to fifty yen. The comments were chiefly leveled at "foreign" ideas of good taste