Although he was, as I said above, most popular in the prime of his life (by the way he died in his fifty-fourth year in June of 1892), he had many years of poverty and discouragement when he complained of the fact that he was born rather too late; his hardship, not only spiritual, but material, soon followed after the happy period of student life with Kuniyoshi, when his artistic ambition forced on him independence. It was the time most inartistic, if there was ever such a time in any country, when the new Meiji Government had hardly settled itself on the sad ruins of the Tokugawa feudalism, under which all prosperity and peace, even art and humanity, were buried, and the people in general even thought the safety of their lives was beyond reach, now with the so-called Civil War of Meiji Tenth, and then with that or this. How could the artists get the people’s support under such a condition of the times; indeed, Yoshitoshi fought bitterly for his bare existence then. It was the time when he was extremely hard-up that his home-students, Toshikage and Toshiharu, bravely served him in the capacity of cook or for any other work; we cannot blame him that he tried, with such pictures as the series called “Accident of the Lord Ii,” to amuse and impress the people’s minds, which grew, in spite of themselves, to love battle and blood. And the best result he received from such work, happy to THE FAINT ECHO OF OKYO say for his art, was the realisation of failure. But he was quite proud, I understand, when he published it, and even expected a great sale. And when he could not sell it at all, it is said, he determined that he would run away alone from Tokyo for good, leaving his students behind. Although there is no record of its sale to-day, I am sure that it did not sell well, or, in another way of saying, it sold well enough to save him from the shame of running away. Doubtless the people demanded pictures of such a nature, perhaps to illustrate the time’s happening, as it was the time before the existence of any graphic or illustrated paper, and to fill that demand Yoshitoshi brought out a hundred pictures of battles and historical heroes, more or less in bloody scenes, which are mostly forgotten. It was in 1885 that he fairly well found his own art (good or bad) with the historical picture, “Kiyomori’s Illness”; the chief character, the Lord Kiyomori, suffered from fever and dream, as we have it in legend, as a destiny brought from his endless brutality and covetousness; the fact that Yoshitoshi’s mind was much engaged in the study of the Shijoha school at that time will be seen, particularly in this picture, of which the background is filled with the faint echo of great Okyo in the drawing of the Emma, or Judge of Hades, the green demon, and other things of awful demonstration. “Inaka Genji,” a picture to commemorate the occasion of Ransen’s changing his name to Tanehiko, and “Ukaino Kansaku,” a picture of the spirit of a dead fisherman being saved by the holy prayer of the priest Nichiren, are the work of about the same time. When Yoshitoshi began to publish his series of one hundred pieces under the name of “Tsuki Hyakushi,” or “One Hundred Views of the Moon,” his popularity almost reached high-water mark; I can recollect with the greatest pleasure how delighted I was to be given a few of these moon pictures as a souvenir from Tokyo when I was attending a country grammar school, and I can assure you that my artistic taste and love, which already began to grow, expressed a ready response to value. Among the pictures, I was strongly attracted by one thing, which was the picture of a crying lady alone in a boat, with a biwa instrument upon her knees; from admiration I pasted the picture on a screen, which remained as it was during these twenty years, unspoiled, spotless, and perfect, and I had the happy occasion to see it with renewed eyes lately when I returned to my country home. I felt exactly the same impression, as good as at the first sight of twenty years ago. Although the series carry the title of moon, nearly all of the pictures have no moon at all; it was the artistic merit of the artist to suggest that they were all views of the moonlight. We can point out many shortcomings in his work as a pure Ukiyoye artist; but, after all, I think that nobody will deny his rare and versatile talent. If only he had been born at the better and proper time! And if we must blame his degeneration, I think it is quite safe to say that the general public has to share equally in the criticism. He was an interesting personality, full of stories and anecdotes, which the English people would be glad to hear about when they are well acquainted with his work; but I will keep them for some other occasion, because I wish at present to introduce him simply through his work. Let it suffice to say that he was humane and lovable, having a great faith in his own class of people—that is, the plain street-dwellers; when I say he was, too, the artist or artizan of Tokyo or Yedo, like Utamaro, Hokusai, and Kuniyoshi, I mean that he was gallant and chivalrous, always a friend of the lowly, and a hater of sham.
THE HATER OF SHAM
He was born in 1839, to use the Japanese name of the era, the Tenth of Tempo, at Shiba of Yedo, present Tokyo. When a little boy, he was adopted by the family of Tsukioka; his own name was Yonejiro. Like other Japanese artists, he had quite many gago or noms de plume; to give a few of them, Ikkasai, Sokatei, Shiyei, and others. Although he did not change his dwelling-place as Hokusai did, he moved often from one house to another; it was at Miyanaga Cho of Hongo where he married Taiko. He bought a house at Suga Cho, Asakusa, in 1885; but his sensitive mind was disturbed when he was told by a fortune-teller that the direction of his house was unlucky, and was again obliged to move to Hama Cho of Nihonbashi, when he was taken ill with brain disease. As I said before, he died in June of 1892. The students he left behind include many artists already dead; to give the best known, Keishu Takeuchi; Keichu Yamada and Toshihide Migita are the names of artists still active to-day.
VIII
BUSHO HARA[A]
[A] See the [Appendix]
Often I tried to write about Busho Hara the artist (I use the term in the most eclectic Japanese conception, because his art served more frequently to make his personality distinguished through its failure rather than through its success); that my attempt turned to nothing was perhaps because my mind, solitary and sad like that of Hara, did not like to betray the secret of the recluse whose silence was his salutation. Besides, my heart and soul and all were too much filled with this Busho Hara from the fact of his recent unexpected death—(by the way, he was in his forty-seventh year, that interesting age for an artist, as it would be the beginning of a new page, good or bad); and I am, in one word, perfectly confused on the subject. When I wish to think of his art alone, and even to measure it, if possible, through the most dangerous, always foolish way of comparison with others, I find always, in spite of myself, that my mind, even before it has fairly started on his art, is already carried away by the dear, sweet, precious memory of his rare personality. “Above all, he was rarest as friend,” my mind always whispers to me every two minutes from the confusion of my thought, this and that, and again that and this, on him. To say that I think of him too much and for too many things would be well-nigh the same as to say that I am unfitted to tell about him intelligibly. I confess that I had a little difference with him on the subject of his own art here and there, while I was absorbed in his conversation or criticism (I always believed and said—did he dislike me when I said that?—he was a better and greater critic than artist), now by the cozy fire of a winter evening, then with the trees and grasses languid with summer’s heat; he was the first and last man to whom I went when I felt particularly ambitious and particularly tired, and I dare say that he was pleased to see me. My own delight to have him as my friend was in truth doubled, when I thought that his personality and art, remarkable as they are honest, true, and sympathetic, were almost unknown at home except in a little narrow community; as I said before, he was a recluse. In England, many readers of Mr. Markino’s book, A Japanese Artist in London, will remember Hara’s name, as it is frequently repeated in the book; and a certain well-known English critic had an occasion once or twice to mention his name and kindly comment on his work in the Graphic. That was in 1906, when he was about to leave London after a few years’ stay there. “Shall I go to England again for a change or to take a few pictures of mine?” he often exclaimed. England was his dream, as she is mine. How unfalteringly our talk ran; every time the subject was England and her art.
HIS DREAM OF ENGLAND
“Now is it settled, let us suppose,” Hara would say in the course of talk, slightly twisting his sensitive mouth, holding up straight back his well-poised head (what a philosopher’s eyes he had, gentle and clear), “that we shall go to England some time soon in the future. Yes, we shall go there even if we are not begged by Japan to leave the country. The most serious question is, however, where we shall sleep and dine. I have had enough experience of a common English boarding-house; I am haunted even to-day by the ghosts of Yorkshire pudding and cold ham. And suppose that a daughter or a son of that boarding-house might sing aloud a popular song every Saturday evening; I should like to know if there is anything more sad than that. Still, suppose that one next to you at table will ask you every evening how your work might sell; certainly that will be the moment when you think you will leave England at once for good. But it is England’s greatness that she has art appreciators as well as buyers. Oh, where is the true art appreciator in Japan, even while we admit that we have the buyers? I will take a few pictures with me when I go to England next, and show them to the right sort of people; really, truly, only London of all the cities of the world has the right sort of people in any line of profession. Besides, I should like to examine the English art again and let the people there listen to my opinion; I was not enough prepared for such a work when I went there last.”