However much we may have been puzzled by this, there was no doubt that we had before us one of the most delicate creations of art. Could it be possible that all this was the result of man’s labour, using what many of us find so clumsy an instrument as a needle? I have thought long how to give an idea of the skill, the patience, the taste displayed in this piece of tapestry; but who can tell a blind man what a rainbow is like? Besides, I do not yet myself thoroughly appreciate what it all means, for, though I have owned the tapestry for some time, I never look at it without finding something I have not seen before. It seems such an inadequate thing to say, that it was about eight feet long and three wide, and that the figures were worked upon a grey background surrounded by a border of black. If you could only have seen it as it first flashed upon me that evening, a glorious mingling of the bright Japanese colours of red, black, and white, as yet totally undimmed by the nearly two centuries that it had lain, a holy thing, in the Daitokuji Temple at Kioto! There seemed to be some historical scene portrayed, evidently a naval battle, for there were castles and boats and water, and in the distance the sacred mountain of Fujiyama, worked in a rich gold. Over all, with outspread wings, were flying storks, and in the sea were strange fish and monsters. And there were royal crests, sailors, warriors, birds of many kinds, the colours as finely blended in this piece of needlework as in an artist’s painting. Later I have had the opportunity to examine it more in detail, and to discover that the castles on the shore are undergoing a siege, the date of the events being that of the ascendency of Hideyoshi. We are sure of this because Hideyoshi himself is there in red armour, and though his face is not more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, the features are easily distinguishable. I have the names of the other officers and castles, with a full description of the event written in choice Japanese by the priest of whom the purchase was made.
For he would sell, after all. As we stood admiring this monument of skill and patience, little thinking that it might be ours, the young man kept up his story about the refusal of the priest to sell, and also his pathetic allusions to the mysterious tea-house. Suddenly, however, he cleared up everything by turning to us despairingly with the words,—
“Please buy!”
Then we at last learned that the priest “wanted” to sell, and that he was driven to this strait by the necessity of raising money for a tea-house adjoining the temple. And we gladly bought. It was with reluctance that the priest gave us this Japanese treasure in return for our American dollars, for behind the act there is a pathetic story that touches the very heartstrings of the faithful followers of Buddha. It might not be inaptly styled “The rise and fall of the Kakemono.”
In those good old times when the Mikado was only a picturesque ornament of the community, subject himself to the dictates of some powerful shogun or warrior like our friend Hideyoshi; before the barbarous West with its parliaments and trousers and sense of art-perspective had begun to intrude, a great being ruled in the hearts of the Japanese and filled them with longing and hope and love. He was not a native, it is true; but the fact that he came from India did not seem to make him any less national, and he was as much at home in this sunny island as in his own snowy Himalayas. To tell the truth, the poor Japanese peasant was not the happiest of mortals in those days; for we have many stories of the little regard in which he was held by those above him, and the insignificant part he played in the social system. It is not altogether strange, therefore, that this wanderer from the south should have met with a hearty welcome; for his lessons were those of kindness and hope. More than this, he taught the down-trodden serf that life was not a mere matter of unrewarded toil and undeserved suffering, but that it had a gleam of greatness even for him, and that besides there was something beyond. This bearer of glad tidings dwelt in the temples on the hills, and his name was Buddha. It is true that the ungodly Japanese had little stone images of him of which they thought a great deal, and so his religion was an idolatrous one; but for all that they might have done a great deal worse.
For many centuries, therefore, they loved great Buddha, and loved him with all their souls. Every one, from the haughty shogun to the little white-faced geisha, found in his spirit a something which he could find nowhere else, and which resulted in a stronger and purer life. There was one, however, who remained proudly aloof from all this, and regarded Buddha with a somewhat doubting eye. This was no less a personage than the Mikado himself, who, after all, could not be greatly blamed for the way he looked upon the new-comer. For Buddha was not only a foreigner but a revolutionary character, and expelled a former visionary something very dear to the Mikado’s vanity. This was the creed of Shintoism. Now I hope you will not embarrass me by asking what Shintoism is, for I assure you, that though I have given the matter some attention I have not yet a clearly defined idea as to what it all means. It does, however, teach us something indefinite about listening to the dictates of our hearts, and something definite about following the decrees of the Mikado. It treats this dignitary even more kindly than this, for it goes on to say that he is not a man at all, but a great god moving here among us,—a sacred thing to be worshipped. It supports this claim by a very long and highly respectable pedigree, proving him to be descended in the direct line, without twist or turn, from one Amaterasu, who was a sun-goddess before Buddha came. For Buddha did not trouble himself about the Mikado’s genealogical tree, and so the good man had little use for him. During many centuries he treasured up his ill-feeling; but things worked slowly in Japan in those days, and it was a long time before disobliging history gave the Mikado a chance to get even with this iconoclast of the south.
To tell the truth, through all these years the Mikado was not the important personage his ancestry would lead you to suppose. His main occupation was posing gracefully as the head of the state, and for ages this descendant of the sun-goddess was kept in golden chains, a practical prisoner in his own castle. But he still kept his hold on the people, who, by some peculiar inconsistency very noticeable in their religious faiths, firmly believed that story about Amaterasu. This, however, did not in the least affect their warm love for Buddha, of which they gave evidence in many ways. They built many temples, which were approached by a series of handsome torii, or stone gateways, and which were regularly attended by priests. But by far the best thing they did was to make these embroidered pictures, one of which I have described at length. Those were emphatically the days of the kakemonos, and they are the most telling expressions of the deep-rooted affection with which the Japanese regarded their divine teacher. The works are deeply religious in the most profound sense of the word, and fill the same place in Japanese art that the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo do in Christian painting.
