An Artist's Letters from Japan

by John La Farge

Like all true art, the architecture of Japan has found in the necessities imposed upon it the motives for realizing beauty, and has adorned the means by which it has conquered the difficulties to be surmounted. Hence no foundations, which would compromise the super-imposed building by making it participate in the shock given to its base. Hence solid pedestals, if I may so call them, or great bases, upon which are placed only, not built in, the posts which support the edifice, leaving a space between this base and the horizontal beams or floors of the building. The building is thus rendered elastic, and resumes its place after the trembling of the earthquake, and the waters of bad weather can escape without flooding any foundations.

The great, heavy, curved roof, far overhanging, weighs down this structure, and keeps it straight. An apparently unreasonable quantity of adjusted timber and beams supports the ceiling and the roof. Complicated, tremendous corbelings, brackets grooved and dovetailed, fill the cornices as with a network; but all these play an important practical part, and keep the whole construction elastic, as their many small divisions spread the shock.

Still more, in such a building as the charming pagoda at Iyéyasŭ's shrine, which is full one hundred feet high, slight-looking and lithe, the great beam or mast which makes its center does not support from the base, but is cut off at the foundation; and hence it acts as a sort of pendulum, its great weight below retarding the movement above when the earthquake comes.

I have heard the whisper of a legend saying that the architect who devised this, to correct the errors of a rival and partner, was poisoned in due time, in jealous return. For those were happy times when backbiting among artists took the more manly form of poisoning.

Now besides all this, which gives only the reason for the make of certain parts which together form the unity of a single building, there are other principles before us. The relation of man to nature, so peculiarly made out in the Japanese beliefs, is made significant, symbolized, or typified through the manner in which these buildings are disposed. A temple is not a single unity, as with us, its own beginning and end. A temple is an arrangement of shrines and buildings meaningly placed, often, as here, in mountains—a word synonymous with temples; each shrine a statement of some divine attribute, and all these buildings spread with infinite art over large spaces, open, or inclosed by trees and rocks. The buildings are but parts of a whole. They are enveloped by nature, the principle and the adornment of the subtle or mysterious meaning which links them all together.

Besides all this is the religious symbolism underlying or accompanying all, as once with us, of which I know too little to speak, but which can be felt and occasionally detected because of many repetitions. But this would carry me beyond my limits; and, indeed, we find it very difficult to obtain any more information from our instructors, whether they do not know securely, or whether they reserve it for better minds and worthier apprehensions. Nor do I object to this Oriental secrecy or mystery, as it adds the charm of the veil, which is often needed.

And I should wish that soon some one might undertake to make out in full the harmony of proportions which has presided over these buildings. It is evident that a delicate and probably minute system of relations, under the appearance of fantasy, produces here the sense of unity that alone makes one secure of permanent enjoyment. My information on the subject is fragmentary: I know that the elegant columns are in a set relation to the openings of the temple; that the shape of these same columns is in another relation to their exquisite details; that the rafters play an important part, determining the first departure. I have seen carpenter's drawings, with manners of setting out work and measurements, and I feel that there is only a study to carry out.

Nor is my wish mere curiosity, or the interest of the antiquarian. What we need to-day is belief and confidence in similar methods, without which there is nothing for ourselves but a haphazard success; no connection with the eternal and inevitable past, and none with a future, which may change our materials, but will never change our human need for harmony and order.

You have heard of the little gardens, and of their exquisite details, in which the Japanese makes an epitome of nature, arranged as if for one of his microscopic jewels of metals, ivory, or lacquer.

Here in our own garden there would seem no call for an artificial nature. The mountain slope on which we live must have always been beautiful of itself; but for all that, our garden—that is to say, the space about our landlord's house and our own—has been treated with extreme care. Our inclosure is framed towards the great temple groves, and the great mountains behind them, by a high wall of rock, over which, at a corner edged with moss, rolls a torrent, making a waterfall that breaks three times. The pool below, edged with iris that grow in the garden sand, is crossed by a bridge of three big flat stones, and empties secretly away. On each side of the fall, planted in the rock wall, stands a thick-set paulownia, with great steady leaves, and bending towards it a willow, whose branches drop far below itself and swing perpetually in the draught of the waterfall. Bunches of pink azalea grow in the hollows of the rocks, and their reflections redden the eddies of the pool. Steps which seem natural lead up the wall of rock; old pines grow against it, and our feet pass through their uppermost branches. On the top is planted a monumental stone, and from there a little path runs along, leading nowhere nowadays, as far as I can make out. I am right in calling this mass of rock, which is a spur of the mountain's slope, a wall; for I look down from its top to the next inclosure far below, now overgrown and wild. What is natural and what was made by man has become so blended together, or has always been so, that I can choose to look at it as my mood may be, and feel the repose of nature or enjoy the disposing choice of art.