Forget not to blossom always when the springtime comes.
In Japan the plum, though not eaten raw, when salted has wonderful strength sustaining properties, and in wartime supplies as ume boshi a valuable concentrated food.
The chrysanthemum has been cultivated in China for four thousand years and its fame was sung by the poet and scholar, To En Mei, who prized it above all else under heaven and assigned it the rank of paragon.
When all Nature is preparing for the long sleep of winter and the red, brown and golden forest leaves are dropping, spiritless, to the ground, the [pg 72] chrysanthemum comes forth from the earth in fresh and radiant colors. It gladdens the heart in the sad season of autumn. Its clustered petals, all united and never scattering, typify the family, the state, and the Empire. For the last six hundred years the sixteen-petaled chrysanthemum has been the emblem of Imperial sovereignty in Japan. With artists it has always been a favorite flower subject. There are innumerable ways of painting it.
[Plate LI] shows the chrysanthemum flower and leaves painted in the Okyo manner. There is an established order in which the leaves must be executed. Viewed from the front (Nos. 1 and 2) the order of the brush stroke is as indicated on the plate; viewed from the side the brush is applied in the order indicated in Nos. 4 and 5. The flower (6 and 7) is built up from the bud (5), petals being added according to the effect sought. The flower half opened is shown in No. 6, and wholly opened in No. 7. The calyx somewhat reproduces the Chinese written character cho. The Kano painters have a different way of painting the chrysanthemum leaves and flowers, but the foregoing illustrates the general principles obtaining in all the schools. Korin painted the kiku in a manner quite different from that of any other artist. The word kiku is Chinese, the Japanese word for the flower being kawara yomogi. The Nagoya artists have always been particularly skilful in painting the chrysanthemum in an exceptionally engaging way. The little marguerite-like blossom is called mame-giku, and is a universal favorite among all artists.
The impression produced on one who for the first time hears enumerated these various laws may possibly be that all such methods for securing artistic effects are arbitrary, mechanical and unnatural. But in practice, the artist who invokes their aid finds they produce invariably pleasing and satisfactory results. It must not be supposed that such laws are exclusive of all other methods of painting in the Japanese style. On the contrary the artist is at liberty to use any other method he may select provided the result is artistically correct. Many painters have invented methods of their own which are not included in the foregoing enumeration of these laws of lines, dots and ledges, which, it must always be borne in mind, are only to assist the artist who may be in doubt or difficulty as to how he shall best express the effect he aims at. It is such second nature for him to employ them that he does so as unconsciously as one in writing will invoke the rules of grammar. It is related that a great statesman, being asked if it were necessary for a diplomat to know Latin and Greek, replied that it was quite sufficient for him to have forgotten them. And so with these laws. A knowledge of them is a necessary part of the education of every Japanese artist, for they lie at the very foundation of the art of oriental painting. Chinese writing abounds with similar principles; it is a law applicable to one kind of such writing, called rei sho, that in each character there shall be one stroke which begins with the head of a silkworm and terminates with a goose's tail. This also may [pg 74] sound odd and seem forced, yet this law gives a special and wonderful cachet to the character so written.
Some acquaintance with these principles and methods invoked by artists adds much to our keen enjoyment of their work, just as an analysis of the chords in a musical composition increases our pleasure in the harmonies they produce. Ruskin has discovered in the very earliest art the frequent use of simple forms suggested by the slightly curved and springing profile of the leaf bud which, he declares, is of enormous importance even in mountain ranges, when not vital but falling force is suggested. “This abstract conclusion the great thirteenth century artists were the first to arrive at” (Ruskin's Mod. Painters, Vol. III), and even in the architecture of the best cathedrals that author detects the observance of the law determining in an ivy leaf the arrangement of its parts about a center.
In Japanese art simple forms supplied by nature are often used for suggesting other forms as, for instance, the stork's legs for the pine tree branches, the turtle's back for the pine bark lines, the fish tail for bamboo leafage, the elephant's eye in the orchid plant, the shape of Fujiyama for the forehead of a beautiful woman, and various Chinese characters, originally pictorial, adumbrated in trees, flowers and other subjects. The universality of such underlying type forms recognized and applied by oriental artists is confirmatory of the principle that in both nature and art all is united by a common [pg 75] chain or commune vinculum attesting the harmony between created things. A Japanese painting executed with the aid of such resources teems with vital force and suggestion, and to the eye of a connoisseur (kuroto) becomes a breathing microcosm.
To give some idea of the order in which the component parts of an object are painted according to Japanese rules, which are always stringently insisted upon, flowers like the chrysanthemum and peony are begun at their central point and built up from within outwardly, the petals being added to increase the size as the flower opens. In a flower subject the blossoms are painted first; the buds come next; then the stem, stalks, leaves and their veinings, and lastly the dots called chobo chobo.
The established order for the human figure is as follows: Nose and eyebrows, eyes, mouth, ears, sides of the face, chin, forehead, head, neck, hands, feet, and finally the appareled body. In Japanese art the nude figure is never painted.