The Miraculous in Japanese Art
Among other legends is the story of Hidari Jingorō, the famous sculptor, whose masterpiece came to life when finished, which reminds us not a little of the story of Pygmalion. There are other legendary stories connected with the coming to life of Japanese works of art. On a certain occasion a number of peasants were much annoyed by the destruction of their gardens caused by some wild animal. Eventually they discovered that the intruder was a great black horse, and on giving chase it suddenly disappeared into a temple. When they entered the building they found Kanasoka's painting of a black steed steaming with its recent exertion! The great artist at once painted in a rope tethering the animal to a post, and from that day to this the peasants' gardens have remained unmolested.
When the great artist Sesshiu was a little boy the story goes that he was, by way of punishment, securely bound in a Buddhist temple. Using his copious tears for ink and his toe for a brush, the little fellow sketched some rats upon the floor. Immediately they came to life and gnawed through the rope that bound their youthful creator.
Hokusai
There is something more than mere legend in these stories, if we may believe the words of the famous artist Hokusai, whose "Hundred Views of Fuji" are regarded as the finest examples of Japanese landscape-painting. He wrote in his Preface to this work: "At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvellous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive." Needless to say, Hokusai did not reach the age of a hundred and ten. In his last hours he wrote the following lines, which were afterwards inscribed upon his tomb:
"My soul, turned Will-o'-the-wisp,
Can come and go at ease over the summer fields."
With that strong poetic feeling so characteristic of the Japanese, Eternity meant for Hokusai an infinite time in which to carry on his beloved work—to perfect, to make alive all the wonderful strokes of his brush. As in ancient Egypt, so in Old Japan, the future life could only mean real happiness with periodic visits to this world again, and there is a subtle and almost pathetic paradox in this conception, suggesting, as it were, the continual loading of Eternity with fresh earthly memories. In both countries we find the spirit hankering after old human haunts. In Egypt the soul returned through the medium of its preserved body, and in Japan the Festival of the Dead, described elsewhere, afforded a joyous exit from the world of Emma-Ō, a three days' visit in the middle of July to Japan, a land more beautiful, more dear, it would seem, than any Japanese conception of a future world. But Hokusai appears to suggest that his visits would not be made merely in the summer season—rather a frequent coming and going at all times of the year.
A Japanese poet has written:
"It is an awesome thing
To meet a-wandering,
In the dark night,
The dark and rainy night,
A phantom greenish-grey,
Ghost of some wight,
Poor mortal wight!
Wandering
Lonesomely
Through
The black
Night."
Translated by Clara A. Walsh.