Two Japanese Painters

I.

YATANI JIRO.

LOOKING into a lotus pond, — gay of a summer eve with tea-house lanterns, — and where Hon Street turns down to the castle of Kameyama, there used to be a fragment of a huge stone wall. Of old, when the historic castle was young in the heyday of samurai chivalry, there stood at that very spot the outer gate of the castle.

In the shadow of the gate stood a modest shop. In its many colored interior, seated upon a bit of cotton cushion about as roomy as a hand, Yatani’s father, and his grandsire before his father, had painted away their life-long days upon cheap umbrellas. It brought rice, not much to be sure, but quite enough to keep their bodies upon the earth, and from the curse of idleness and luxury ; also, it brought peace to their families, and the ghosts of their ancestors were pleased with it. Naturally, in the course of ripening years, Yatani was also expected to walk in the worthy steps of his father. And his father, with the traditional patience and devotion of the Nihonese artisan to his work, did the best he could for the son. But none bought the umbrellas which Yatani painted.

“Where can you find these things, —the things that you paint upon your umbrella ? What are these things, anyway ? What do you intend them to be ? Oh, the extreme of patience ! ” his father would say to his son.

The effects of all the wise admonitions, however, were, as a wise proverb would have it, as “the spring wind on the horse’s ear!” And, instead of painting upon sun umbrellas ladies and beasts, gods and fools, knights and things, with the democratic brush which is no respecter of persons, and in colors screaming at each other, he went on melting his dreams into colors, and putting at naught all the sane and good advices of his sire, and did not cease, for a moment, laying on bold lines upon cheap umbrellas, — the bold lines which frightened his customers away.

Something worse than woman — for ambition is the strongest and the last love of a man — was at the bottom of his bad ways. He wanted fame, and modestly enough and incidentally to bring the whole artistic world at his feet. It seemed to take days — long days. And the amazingly long patience of his father was not quite long enough.

One fine morning Yatani’s father was rubbing his eyes at the mountain which lay between Kameyama and Kioto. He saw no trace of his son there, but spring mists were building purple shelves on its emerald shoulders.

Certain loose-minded streets, crooked as the conscience of a sinner, in a little Bohemia of Kioto artists, for a few years used to grin pathetic sympathy at Yatani as he wandered through them, aimless as Luck and careless as Fate. He watched many a grand procession of Daimyo, and afterward he painted it. But no order from a prince came for his pictures. Temples, flowers, birds, pagodas, spring scenes, cherry blossoms, there they were, — all sketched out with bad ink, the precious wealth of his fancies, upon the sheets of paper which he cheated out of his fellow Bohemians.

When a good meal failed his stomach, then the dreamer fed upon something more spiritual, a cake of mist which came to him glorified with the perfume of the immortal names of masters.

He woke with a start one night. The straws all about him were wet with dewdrops, and within them the moon sparkled like the white souls of stars. He looked up at the eave of the straw roof of a deserted hut and saw the moon peeping curiously at his open-aired privacy. That was what woke him then, the curious moon. He had been tired for some time of straw beds. Moreover, he knew that the good wives of farmers were also tired of feeding him from day to day.

“Suppose I should become a guest of a prince,” he told the dewy night. “Many a beggar-artist has been entertained in a palace, — and a palace may be as good as this straw bed, at least for a change! ”

Desperation is such a bold thing.

The Prince of Kaga, who, at that time was representing his master, the Shogun, at the court of the “Capital of Flowers, ” was famous for his hospitality to the artist, — to the man of genius. And those were the goodly days when the men of genius wandered with the winds over the land despising silk and gold for their attire.

At the palace gate of the Prince of Kaga: —

“ The august wish of the honorable presence ? ”

“The humble one is an artist, —a painter,” Yatani told the guard at the gate. “Will the honorable presence condescend to acquaint his august prince that the humble one craves to wait upon his pleasure ? ”

Water for his feet was brought, and Yatani threw away his straw sandals with a bitter humor. For the first time the significance of what he was doing came upon him with the full force. He was playing a game which might cost him his life. To trifle with the artjudgment of a prince was not considered, in those days, the safest tiling in the world. Ah, well! what mattered life to him, — the life, naked of fame and robbed of immortality?

“Condescend to pass into the Hall of Karasu, — this way, honorable presence, ” and a retainer ushered him.

Dressed in a cotton kimono — and you could see the rigorous hand of refined taste upon every inch of it — the famous patron of art received the beggar-artist with the simplicity of a comrade.

“That screen, ” said the prince, “has been waiting for the coining of a master for nearly four seasons. And whatever Master pleases to bestow upon it, I am sure it will be but too impatient and grateful to receive it from him.”

The screen was in a strange contrast to the severe simplicity of the attire of the prince. There was in the centre of it a rectangular piece of white silk, very narrow and very long, and a heavy brocade stretched away from it to the lacquer frame on which a pair of gold dragons were climbing.

Yatani, as you know, had painted often on his sheets of paper; for one small iron coin he could get two of them. To paint on a screen which would cost five hundred pieces of gold was a new experience for him therefore. His eyes staring, he froze in front of the screen. Evidently he mistook the white centre silk for the face of Death. The prince with his own hands arranged the dishes of ink and water.

There was silence — the silence such as you sometimes feel rather than hear falling between prayers. Yatani’s face grew white. And one watching him would have said that his bloodshot eyes were trying to discover a viewless picture already traced there upon the silk by a spirit brush. For the first time in his life he believed from the bottom of his heart, with all the sincerity of his soul, in the gods. As a matter of fact he was praying. Slowly and absentmindedly he dipped his brush into the black “sea” of the ink-stone.

To the best of his memory, he dreamed — for a certain space of time, he could not tell how long — that he was sitting face to face with a god. Because he could not reach him with his voice he painted his prayer in black and white upon the silk of the screen.

In after days he remembered, as in a. vision, the wild gestures of the dignified prince, sprouting all about him like a forest of spirited branches. And “Superb, Master! ’T is superb, Master!” from the prince reached Yatani’s ears like a shout from the other world.

If you like, you can see it this very day, in a certain room of the old palace of Kioto, that screen, that picture of Yatani’s.

A terrific hurricane is whipping mountain-huge clouds into a whirlpool. Through its nightly coils you catch a glimpse of a heaven-ascending dragon. And when you follow the lightning of his eyes you see through the break of the dense cloud a lone star beckoning the ever aspiring dragon — like the ideal of man, like the smile of a god — from the far away which becomes higher as he mounts.

That is the picture.

II.

A YEDO PAINTER.

Hokudo was descending from the Yedo Castle of the Shogun, from the feast that was held in his honor, in the above-cloud company. Also it was the celebration of the completion of a new palace room, and Hokudo’s was the chief brush that gave unto the new room the life that is not of the flower nor of the mortal man.

Coming down the palace steps, escorted by the proud princes and the lords of many castles and provinces, at the top ladder of his fame, he had a look about him of a man whose joys were a cobweb. The spring of the festive saké was cold within his veins. His eyes were far away.

“The honorable work of the Master is altogether above praise; the honorable success, domo, is quite beyond our humble congratulations, ” these and similar words his companions of noble rank were saying to him.

“The humble one has no face-and-eye to accept so high a praise from so high a source,” his cold, courteous voice was saying.

He did not quite understand either what his noble companions were saying, or what came out of his own mouth.

I have said that the world had rendered unto him far more than it rendered unto Cæsar, and what this joke, or, if you will a dream, of a life could afford was his. Moreover, he had something of what the gods alone could give, — for was he not blessed with the genius which, in the minds of so many, came very piously close to meriting a shrine? That was not all; it was also his, that happiness which seems to play will-o’-the-wisp with the artist, which is considered to be the greatest of human pleasures, which the wise and the pious cannot always be sure of (witness Socrates and Wesley), and which, more than anything else mortal, according to the testimony of the good, gives man a foretaste of heaven, — I mean, a happy home. He was deeply in love with his wife; as for her, she adored her husband.

And he was unhappy.

“Upon my word, you are the hardest mortal to please, ” said a very intimate friend of his once, in a confidential and truth-telling moment ; “and I am sure that is the opinion of the gods as well.”

“Not too fast, my friend, ” the painter begged his judge; “I do not think that I am so very hard to please, since I ask for only one thing. There are many — and you among others — who ask of the gods for more than a thousand things.”

“And what is that one thing? ”

“Since I have not gained it as yet, it is unreasonable for you to ask me about it.”

“Of course, —I might have known this; in fact, I know that everything that you, yourself, could think of, the gods have given unto you.”

And the painter smiled sadly at his friend.

“And then, look at my white hair! ” the painter went on. “I am getting old. You must remember that you are helping me to celebrate my fiftieth birthday, this night.”

In the shadow of the Atago Mountains there huddled a little community, which, although much looked down upon by men, still was happy with more than an ordinary share of fresh mountain air, of the big smiling slice of blue sky.

Between this hunters’ village and the Kameyama Castle there were many pines, ricefields, thatched roofs, mountain streams, and the clover - scented savanna of the length of twenty-five miles. And Kameyama was the native town of the famous court painter of the day. The town people — and especially the simple men and women and children of the field — were very much bewildered in their attempt at forming a definite idea as to the real greatness of the painter, and in their embarrassment they concluded that the prophet should not be without honor in his own town, and in their magnificent and altogether sublime hero-worshiping enthusiasm they decided in seeing a very little difference between the painter and an every-day god.

The painter, on the other hand, whenever he came back to his home and clan — and he remembered it once every year as regularly as the calendar— insisted that he was the same one, a little bigger now and a little older, of course, nevertheless the same whom, in the now fabled days of their boyhood, Takano had licked within a rather ticklish distance of death for no other unreason than that the painter (a very timid youth in those days, looking much more like a girl than a man-eating monster, firetongued and ever laughing at death, which was the supreme ideal of the boys of those golden days) gave, unasked, and secretly like the gift of a thief, a pat or two upon Takano’s dog, half dead, cut, torn, trampled, kicked, and painted all over with its own blood and the mud of the street. Very free and sociable as the painter was, the streets of Kameyama used to miss him suddenly. Where could he go on those mysterious disappearances? None could tell. Not even the imagination of the Kameyama people to whom the sun of the south is so kind and gives much of its poetry.

To the hunters’ village under the shadow of the Atago Mountains there came, once upon a snowy day, a singular visitor. The simple hunters of beasts did not know who he was, who he could be. To them, he had much of the looks of a sen-nin, — one of that marvelous race of philosophers who lived upon meditation and mountain dews.

“A rather deep snow, Mr. Hunter.” The singular visitor stopped at the door of one of the huts and talked with its master. When the hunter asked him in, he entered without the slightest embarrassment, in an excellent humor, thoroughly at home and at ease, and sat at the fireplace dug in the ground floor of the hut.

“I see the God of Luck smiled upon you, Mr. Hunter; he has sent many good-looking sons to you; and how is the game of the year ? I hear that the deer are making their shadows more and more scarce in these mountains every year.”

And their conversations took many a wandering trip into many parts of the mountainous country, into many private corners of a hunter’s lonely life, buried deep in the winter snow. Then suddenly the eyes around the hunter’s fireplace became all very large, and those of the children made a brave effort to leap out of their sleep-heavy sockets. The reason of it all was that the strange visitor, in an off-hand way. as a sort of side issue, pulled out of the bosom pocket of his thick winter clothing a roll. When he unrolled it, it was a picture of a wild boar.

“Look at it closely. Have you seen a dead boar, like this? ” so saying he handed it to the head of the family. The hunter examined it, and in a short time he lost the look of one gazing at a bit of a beautiful picture. In his eyes — and the visitor was scrutinizing very carefully indeed — entered the light which you see in those of a huntsman who is looking at a game in a great distance. The hunter evidently was no longer thinking of the picture; he was thinking of the boar itself.

“Yes,” he said, after a good long look, “yes, it is dead, this boar! ”

The visitor rolled the picture back into his breast pocket. A few more words were exchanged, meaningless and very meaninglessly spoken about meaningless commonplaces. And the strange visitor passed on. At the door of another hut he was seen to stop. Inside the second hut, as in the first, one could see him pulling out the roll of the same picture, speaking in much the same manner, asking the identical question, “It is a dead boar, as you see? ” And the hunter of the second hut, like he of the first, agreed with the stranger. “Yes, yes, it is dead, —I am certain of it! ”

And the third hut and the fourth, tenth and twentieth, and — and all agreed that the boar was dead. Then like a mist, like a lie, the stranger vanished.

And the streets of Kameyama found once more the famous painter, smiling his sad smiles, unhappy, oh, so unreasonably, as ever!

And the hunters of Atago Mountain wondered at the annual visit of the stranger, always with the picture of a dead boar, asking the same question from year to year, asking the same people.

And romances were born by hundreds: “The Master goes into the deep mountain every year to receive the art-secret from the demi-gods Ten-gu,” said the prevailing opinion. It was not as easy for the townspeople of Kameyama as it is with us to connect the strange visitor in the hunters’ village and the artist in his mystic disappearances.

It was in the depth of the Atago Mountains; it was in the white depth of winter; also, it was in the silent dead of night. Under the tall arm of a very tall pine of the age unknown to men a tall flame was making its dazzling effort to be taller. Around it a group of hunters was laughing and poking the embers, trying to rekindle, in the ashes of past days, the sparks of the ancient memories and the tales told them by their sires. The camp-fire threw upon the snow, over the half-erased outlines of the squattering hunters (which looked like brush and wash study, soft as the tropical twilight), all sorts of golden patterns for the benefit of the studious stars doing their utmost to peep through the envious net of pine needles.

All of a sudden their ears stood watchful sentinels, just like those of the deer. Some one was treading upon the white silence of the winter night; a vague form rose from the sloping path.

“Iya! fair night to you, Masters-ofHunt.”

It was a clear voice. One of the hunters made room for him. When the fire fell upon the face of the newcomer the hunters recognized their old acquaintance. He spoke to the hunters, as of yore, of their affairs; told them a few entertaining tales of far-away Yedo of the Shogun; and sure enough, just as the hunters were expecting to see, the visitor looked for the roll of picture in his breast pocket.

The hunters did not know that the painter had just finished the picture that very evening by the last fading light upon the snow. And how could they? They did not know that the visitor was a painter at all.

“A picture of a dead boar, as usual ! ” — that was what the painter said. And the picture started on its silent tour around the fire. He was the third who spoke:—

“ But — ei, but this is no dead boar! ”

One who had an exacting eye upon the painter would have said that, just then, the painter strangled a sudden thrill within him.

The first and the second hunters who had looked at the picture raised themselves upon their hands and tilted themselves toward the third, who was holding the picture.

“That’s — that’s what I was thinking ; I could see very well that the boar is not dead, ” said the first. And the second, “No, sir, that thing is n’t dead.”

And the gray silence upon the snow absorbed the variously worded opinions of the hunters around the fire. A sleeping boar — that was the consensus of the opinions around the fire. The painter rolled the canvas, and burying it carefully in his breast pocket he lifted his face toward the fire. It played upon it curiously, wondering much. Upon it was a light, — it was the reflection of the smile that was blossoming, just then, in the painter’s soul, — but how could the fire be expected to know anything about it?

The painter tried, as was his polite custom, to finish off his interview with the hunters with many friendly sentences about the matters which had much interest for them but very little for himself. His lips, however, were empty because his heart was so full.

Beyond cavil, it was in the direction of the studio of her husband, that singular noise. The good lady who had shared the life of struggle and of fame with the painter was opening her ears very wide, full of unquiet curiosity. Her imagination was paralyzed; what on earth could it be ? It was not an ugly sound, far from it; in it was something of the laughters of young frolic.

It came again. And the reason that it gave her a little start was because — oh, of course, she, thoroughly ashamed of so outrageous a thought, made haste to erase it with a smile — she thought that she recognized the voice of her illustrious husband in the sound. The greatest painter of his age, at the prime of his artistic powers, he, shouting in the sacred calm of his studio, like a boy of five with his first stolen persimmon! What, indeed, could she be thinking about ?

“Oh, ho, ho, ho! ” she laughed. At the time she was arranging flowers in the tokonoma. And her fingers were returning to a pair of scissors. However, she was a woman She rose, and smiling, half in the spirit of investigation, half for the joy of taking her husband in a mirthful surprise, and wholly for the fun of the thing, — yes, for fun, — she made her gentle way toward the shoji of the studio.

On her way, upon the polished oaken veranda, she stopped all of a sudden, tottered a little; all. her skepticism was shattered; there could be no more doubt about the matter; it was her husband, — her dignified, cultured husband ; it was the greatest of all the court painters, who was actually cutting up like a pup with a kitten. What could be the matter with him? Feeling very sure, this time, that she was doing something wrong, strangling her breaths in the throat, she stole her way to the shoji of the studio. And another burst of childish merriment broke upon her nervous ears. She fell in a heap, like a feather,on the veranda outside the shoji. She heard the voice within say: —

“Now, then, old chap, — happy, happy old man! Buddha and Rakwan ! was there, could there, ever be a man happier than I am now? I, the envy of the gods ! and at last — Bosatsu and Buddha! — it was the tedious road, and ye gods! how I did toil and eat my bitter heart in silence, in sadness, despair! Ah, well! but look at this — at last — after — after — let me see, — thirty, well nearly forty years in round numbers! And at last! Ei! Ei! — look at this! So at last I. have succeeded in painting the difference, — the nice distinction between sleep and death! Victory, and oh the glory! Ei! Ei! Not a hunter — no, not one — saw a dead boar in this picture! Ha, ha, ha, ha! ”

Overwhelmed with anxiety, forgetting altogether the mirth which made her first steps light with the lightness of that of a mischievous child, and perfectly blind to the humor of the famous painter, shouting and laughing like an Indian, she forced the shoji, her hand all in a cold tremor. The shoji glided open without saying anything.

“Any one can paint the boundary line between life and death, but the sleeping life! What a triumph! You rogue, — the happiest of mortals, you, the envy of the gods, you little rogue! a-ha, ha, ha, ha! ”

The good lady saw her husband wild with a picture. “ His masterpiece, doubtless; I had never seen him in such a condition in all my life ! ” she thought, with a black fear creeping into her heart. “And — and — Buddha forbid that it should rob him of his mind, that masterpiece ! ”

Adachi Kinnosuke.