Nearly every artist in Japan has his own favourite stick of Indian ink, which he values as his very life. It is essential that this ink should be of the very finest quality, for they drink so much of it. In order to execute those fine lines ending in a broad sweep that is so characteristic of Japanese pictures, an artist must first fill his brush with Indian ink and then apply it to his lips until the tip becomes pointed. The ink is of course swallowed; but if it is of a good quality, to drink pints of it would not do a man the slightest harm. A practical proof of this can be found in the fact that Kiyosai, who is an old man, has been drinking Indian ink steadily with every picture he has painted all through his lifetime. He possesses a small piece of Indian ink which is hundreds of years old, and which all the money in the world could not buy. It is far too precious for broad washes, and is only used here and there for bright touches.
I noticed the tender way in which Kiyosai handled this one precious piece of Indian ink, and that led to a very interesting conversation on blacks, after which I realised that the variations and gradations to be procured with black alone were enormous. Kiyosai told me that when he was very young he was puzzled by the exceedingly rich quality of black in one of his master’s pictures. It was a deep, velvety, luminous black, and young Kiyosai struggled for weeks and weeks to match it, but in vain. He came to the conclusion that there must be some work going on at the back of the picture, and at last one night he became so desperate that, stealing into his master’s room while he lay asleep, he soaked off the picture which had been pasted on to a board, and looked at the back of it. One glance was enough, and little Kiyosai, with a throb of pleasure, hastily pasted the picture together again and stole away to experiment all that night on silk and on paper, “painting black both on the front and on the back.”
I inquired of Kiyosai if he had ever painted in oils, and he assured me that he had not; but a few days later Captain Brinkley showed me a little picture painted in lacquer by Kiyosai which, in my opinion, rivalled for brilliancy any oil picture that has ever been painted, or has still to be painted. The surface was as brilliant as glass; yet the picture had a depth which no ordinary oil pigment could hope to reach, while its deep luminous shadows would put to shame the finest of Van Eyck’s pictures.
An English friend of mine resident in Japan once told me a story of Kiyosai which struck me as being typical of that great master. A friend of his had prepared four magnificent sliding panels covered with the finest silk, and had given them to the painter with the request that he would execute some of his masterpieces on them for him. For eight or nine years Kiyosai had kept those panels, and they still remained bare; but great masters are always erratic, and the would-be purchaser never gave up hope. One day, however, he burst in upon my friend with the terrible intelligence that Kiyosai was dead drunk and had ruined his panels. “He’s smashing away at them on the floor, and he is simply crawling over them,” he said in a towering rage. My friend agreed to go round with him to Kiyosai’s house to try if possible to stop the outrage. When they arrived they found the master in a high state of fever, and looking more like a wild animal than a human being, with his tusk-like teeth and his poor pitted face, sweeping and hacking about all over the silken panels. As they entered, Kiyosai left the room, leaving behind him the panels scattered irregularly over the floor, but each one smothered with work. “Look here,” said my friend very generously: “it was I that introduced Kiyosai to you, and it was I that suggested his painting these doors; therefore it is only fair that I should relieve you of them and find you a new set, which I will willingly do.” But the owner of the panels, shrewdly guessing that my friend had not made this magnanimous offer without some good reason, changed his mind and said that he could on no account receive so costly a gift. He kept them, and wisely too, for these four panels are now universally considered as some of Kiyosai’s greatest masterpieces.
REFLECTIONS
Strange to say, Kiyosai, when painting his finest work, is nearly always drunk, and his weakness is often taken a mean advantage of by the people around him. I remember once attending a party given by a Legation person who had invited a dozen or so of Japan’s finest artists—among them the great Kiyosai, the master—to paint pictures on the floor for the edification of the assembled guests—a rather vulgar proceeding. Kiyosai resented this indignity with all the force of his passionate nature, but out of kindness allowed himself to be over-persuaded by his host. They made him drink and keep on drinking to build up his enthusiasm; but, boiling over with rage and indignation, he kept on putting off his time until the whole twelve artists had finished the sketches, although, fearing that the effect of the drink would wear off, the guests begged him to start at once. At last Kiyosai’s time came. The silk lay prepared on the floor, with the ink and brushes ready for him to begin. Mad with rage and hating his unsympathetic audience, Kiyosai stood, or rather knelt, before his silk, fiercely grasping the brush, holding it downwards with all his fingers round it and thumb turned outwards. He looked like a god as he knelt there, gripping his brush and staring at the silk—he was seeing his picture. He executed a flight of crows, a masterpiece—Kiyosai knew it was a masterpiece—and, proudly drawing himself up to his full height, quivering in every limb, he threw down his brush, skidded the silk along the floor towards the spectators, and, saying “That is Kiyosai,” left the house in disgust. The dignity of the little man cowed his spectators. Every one unconsciously felt the magnetism of the man, and realised that a master had been among them.