Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings

by Edward Sylvester Morse

Quaint and odd-shaped flower-stands are made in the form of buckets. The following figure ([fig. 297]) represents one [pg 308] sketched at the National Exposition at Tokio in 1877. Its construction was very ingenious; three staves of the low bucket were continued upward to form portions of three small buckets above, and each of these, in turn, contributed a stave to the single bucket that crowned the whole. Another form, made by the same contributor thought not so symmetrical, was quite as odd.

Fig. 297.—Curious combination of buckets for flowers.

Curious little braided-straw affairs are made to hold flowers, or rather the bamboo segments in which the flowers are kept. These are made in the form of insects, fishes, mushrooms, and other natural objects. These are mentioned, not that they have a special merit, but to illustrate the devices used| by the common people in decorating their homes. Racks of wood richly lacquered are also used, from which hanging flower-holders are suspended. These objects are rarely seen now, and I have never chanced to see one in use.

In the chapter on Interiors various forms of vases are shown in the tokonoma.

My interest in Japanese homes was first aroused by wishing to know precisely what use the Japanese made of a class of objects with which I had been familiar in the Art Museums and private collections at home; furthermore, a study of their houses led me to search for those evidences of household decoration which might possibly parallel the hanging baskets, corner [pg 309] brackets, and especially ornaments made of birch bark, fungi, moss, shell-work, and the like, with which our humbler homes are often garnished. It was delightful to find that the Japanese were susceptible to the charms embodied in these bits of Nature, and that they too used them in similar decorative ways. At the outset, search for an object aside from the bare rooms seemed fruitless enough. At first sight these rooms appeared absolutely barren; in passing from one room to another one got the idea that the house was to be let. Picture to yourself a room with no fire-place and accompanying mantel,—that shelf of shelves for the support of pretty objects; no windows with their convenient interspaces for the suspension of pictures or brackets; no table, rarely even cabinets, to hold bright-colored bindings and curious bric-a-brac; no side-boards upon which to array the rich pottery or glistening porcelain; no chairs, desks, or bedsteads, and consequently no opportunity for the display of elaborate carvings or rich cloth coverings. Indeed, one might well wonder in what way this people displayed their pretty objects for household decorations.

After studying the Japanese home for a while, however, one comes to realize that display as such is out of the question with them, and to recognize that a severe Quaker-like simplicity is really one of the great charms of a Japanese room. Absolute cleanliness and refinement, with very few objects in sight upon which the eye may rest contentedly, are the main features in household adornment which the Japanese strive after, and which they attain with a simplicity and effectiveness that we can never hope to reach. Our rooms seem to them like a curiosity shop, and “stuffy” to the last degree. Such a maze of vases, pictures, plaques, bronzes, with shelves, brackets, cabinets, and tables loaded down with bric-a-brac, is quite enough to drive a Japanese frantic. We parade in the most unreasoning manner every object of this nature in our possession; and with the [pg 310] periodical recurrence of birthday and Christmas holidays, and the consequent influx of new things, the less pretty ones already on parade are banished to the chambers above to make room for the new ones; and as these in turn get crowded out they rise to the garret, there to be providentially broken up by the children, or to be preserved for future antiquarians to contemplate, and to ponder over the condition of art in this age. Our walls are hung with large fish-plates which were intended to hold food; heavy bronzes, which in a Japanese room are made to rest solidly on the floor, and to hold great woody branches of the plum or cherry with their wealth of blossoms, are with us often placed on high shelves or perched in some perilous position over the door. The ignorant display is more rarely seen of thrusting a piece of statuary into the window, so that the neighbor across the way may see it; when a silhouette, cut out of stiff pasteboard, would in this position answer all the purposes so far as the inmates are concerned. How often we destroy an artist's best efforts by exposing his picture against some glaring fresco or distracting wall-paper! And still not content with the accumulated misery of such a room, we allow the upholsterer and furnisher to provide us with a gorgeously framed mirror, from which we may have flashed back at us the contents of the room reversed, or, more dreadful still, a reverberation of these horrors through opposite reflecting surfaces,—a futile effort of Nature to sicken us of the whole thing by endless repetition.[24]

That we in America are not exceptional in these matters of questionable furnishing, one may learn by listening to an English authority on this subject,—one who has done more than any other writer in calling attention not only to violations of true taste in household adornment, but who points out in a most rational way the correct paths to follow, not only to avoid that [pg 311] which is offensive and pretentious, but to arrive at better methods and truer principles in matters of taste. We refer to Charles L. Eastlake and his timely work entitled “Hints on Household Taste.” In his animadversions on the commonplace taste shown in the furnishing of English houses, he says “it pervades and vitiates the judgment by which we are accustomed to select and approve the objects of every-day use which we see around us. It crosses our path in the Brussels carpet of our drawing-room; it is about our bed in the shape of gaudy chintz; it compels us to rest on chairs, and to sit at tables which are designed in accordance with the worst principles of construction, and invested with shapes confessedly unpicturesque. It sends us metal-work from Birmingham, which is as vulgar in form as it is flimsy in execution. It decorates the finest modern porcelain with the most objectionable character of ornament. It lines our walls with silly representations of vegetable life, or with a mass of uninteresting diaper. It bids us, in short, furnish our houses after the same fashion as we dress ourselves,—and that is with no more sense of real beauty than if art were a dead letter.” Let us contrast our tastes in these matters with those of the Japanese, and perhaps profit by the lesson.

In the previous chapters sufficient details have been given for one to grasp the structural features of a Japanese room. Let us now observe that the general tone and color of a Japanese apartment are subdued. Its atmosphere is restful; and only after one has sat on the mats for some time do the unostentatious fittings of the apartment attract one's notice. The papers of the fusuma of neutral tints; the plastered surfaces, when they occur equally tinted in similar tones, warm browns and stone-colors predominating; the cedar-board ceiling, with the rich color of that wood; the wood-work everywhere modestly conspicuous, and always presenting the natural colors [pg 312] undefiled by the painter's miseries,—these all combine to render the room quiet and refined to the last degree. The floor in bright contrast is covered with its cool straw matting,—a uniform bright surface set off by the rectangular black borders of the mats. It is such an infinite comfort to find throughout the length and breadth of that Empire the floors covered with the unobtrusive straw matting. Monotonous some would think: yes, it has the monotony of fresh air and of pure water. Such a room requires but little adornment in the shape of extraneous objects; indeed, there are but few places where such objects can be placed. But observe, that while in our rooms one is at liberty to cover his wall with pictures without the slightest regard to light or effect, the Japanese room has a recess clean and free from the floor to the hooded partition that spans it above, and this recess is placed at right angles to the source of light; furthermor it is exalted as the place of highest honor in the room—and here, and here alone, hangs the picture. Not a varnished affair, to see which one has to perambulate the apartment with head awry to get a vantage point of vision, but a picture which may be seen in its proper light from any point of the room. In the tokonoma there is usually but one picture exposed,—though, as we have seen, this recess may be wide enough to accommodate a set of two or three.