BOOKS
DR. DRESSER'S " JAPAN."40
Tins book will, we believe, seem excellent to those engaged in studying its subject, and interesting to those who are not. Dr. Dresser had singular opportunities, and he used them well. The Japanese, always interested in manufactures, endeavoured to found a kind of South Kensington Museum in Tokio, and directed Mr. Sano, their Commissioner in Vienna, to collect specimens of all European manufactures. He did so, but the vessel containing his specimens sank in Japanese waters, and the whole collection was lost. Sir P. Owen, however, hearing that Dr. Dresser intended to pay a visit to Japan, asked him to take charge of a collection intended to replace the loss. He consented, and was accordingly received by the Japanese Govern- ment as a kind of national benefactor ; was admitted to an audience of the Mikado—a gentleman of immense pedigree, who, being Emperor of Japan, receives in a room badly fur- nished in the worst European style, and in a solemn manner says nothing, good or bad—and found himself a guest of the nation, with right of visiting places never before inspected, by European. Ho used these privileges in his own way, and his way was to study neither Japan, nor its polity, nor its people, except incidentally, but only its arts, and its arts chiefly as an artisan of ability who wanted to sell imitations of them would study them. That sounds depre- ciatory, but it is not so intended. Dr. Dresser is an unusually competent observer, lie was so keenly interested, particularly in architecture, that he observed everything, and he has so de- scribed his observations that to men who know nothing what- ever of his specialities, and are eager only to catch what he has to say about Japan, his book is, in many chapters, fasci- nating. Dr. Dresser does not look at everything, but where- ever he does look, he photographs for his reader the thing he sees, which thing is usually some perfectly novel contrivance, valuable or otherwise. For example, he goes to the theatre.
He does not say one word about the play, or the actors, or the impression they produced on him ; but the reader could build a Japanese theatre, which is a very unusual structure, from his description, and architects designing theatres obtain this invalu- able hint :—
" The stage is seen from the auditorium almost precisely as our own, but its back is formed of a plain curtain, and all the scenery consists of actual models of the objects required ; houses nearly as large as ordinary dwellings, and trees and other things in proportion, being placed on the stage. When the scenery has to be changed, it becomes apparent that the stage is a vast circle swung on a central pivot, and that as touch of it is behind the curtain as is in front. This arrangement has one advantage, for while the play is going on now scenery is being arranged on the distant half of the stage ; and to change the scone, all that is necessary is the pulling-up of the curtain and the twisting-round of the stage. There is this further peculiarity in a Japanese theatre, that the actors enter behind the audience, coming through black curtains with white figures, near the doors where the public enter."
That idea of the pivoted stage is entirely Japanese, and would, under certain circumstances, be invaluable to managers craving for new and surprising tours as force in the way of spectacle.
Every page almost of the book is filled. with bits of this kind, accounts not of the things done or made in Japan, but of the way iu which the Japanese, when left to themselves, do or make them. Dr. Dresser, for example, was admitted to the Mikado's collection at Nara, and saw manufactured articles many of them twelve hundred years old. He describes several, but his enthu-
siasm, is reserved for a clever little automaton, a rat which is made automatically to supply a lamp with fresh oil :- " Bot the most curious object in the collection is perhaps a tamper singular formation (Fig. 28). Here the oil is stored in the body of a rat, which sits upon the top of a polo. Half-way down the polo and resting on a projecting bracket is a saucer, in the centre of which is a pin that connects it with the bracket on which it rests : in this saucer, and leaning over its side, is a wick. When the saucer is filled with oil and the wick is lit, we have a lamp which exhibits no peculiar qualities till most of the oil has been consumed. non suddenly a * Japan r its Architecture, Art, and Art Manufacturer,. By Christopher Dressers Ph.D., P,L.S., &o, Loudon: Longacos, Green, and Do, 1882. stream, which suffices to replenish the now nearly exhausted saucer, issues from the mouth of the rat. The saucer being full, no more oil is discharged from the rat's mouth till it is again nearly empty, when the kind creature sitting ' up aloft' yields a further supply, and so on till its store of oil is exhausted. The manner in which this is achieved is simple, although the effect produced is curious, for it is only an application of the principle of the vent-peg or pipet, whereby fluid cannot run from a vessel unless air is admitted to take its place. The peg which rises in the centre of the saucer and attaches it to the support on which it rests terminates in a knob or cap ; but the peg is hollow, and is connected with the body of the rat by a tube which runs along the bracket, and then ascends through the stand to the upper portion of the rat's body. The pin which stands in the centre of the saucer, it should be noticed, is perforated immediately below its cap, or about half an inch above the bottom of the saucer. It is obvious, then, that when the oil sinks to a point at which this hole is exposed air will enter, and thus allow the oil to run out of the rat's month ; but when this hole is again covered by oil, no further air is admitted, and therefore no more oil can run from the rat's month."
The immense waste not only of ingenuity but of knowledge of mechanics in that grotesque toy is thoroughly .Tapauese.
What most interests Dr. Dresser, however, is architecture, and in order to gratify this taste he was permitted to ascend to Koyazan, a city on a mountain forbidden to Europeans, and filled almost entirely with templei, of which four hundred and forty still exist, and monuments to the illustrious dead, of which there are literally thousands, some ornamented like the Alhambra, at Granada. He cares, however, obviously more for methods than results, and devotes entire chapters to the ornamentation of buildings, and the ideas from which they sprang, the latter often sufficiently simple. Occasionally, however, the Japanese display the subtle and observant ingenuity which seems to separate them from the rest of mankiud. Like the Chinese, and, indeed, all nations, including the builders of the Tower of Bel, they like their religious buildings to be tall. Tall buildings, however, do not suit a country which is the very home of earth- quake, and even a Japanese might allow himself overtaxed in contending with these tremors of the world. He has, however, by patient observation ascertained that if the centre of gravity in a building remains unaffected by a shock it will not tumble down, and, that fact discovered, has actually pitted his brain against the earthquake, and beaten, it : — " A notable instance of the Japanese understanding of the condi- tions under which they exist occurs in the manner of giving security to pagodas. Pagodas are often of great height, yet many have existed for seven hundred years, and have withstood successfully the many vibrations of the ground, which must have inevitably achieved their overthrow lied they been erections of stone or brick. When I first ascended a pagoda, I was struck with the amount of timber employed in its construction ; and I could not help feeling that the material hero wasted was even absurdly excessive. But what offended my feeliugs most was the presence of an enormous log of wood, in the centre of the structure, which ascended from its base to its apex. At the top this mass of timber was nearly two feet in diameter, and lower down a log equally large was bolted to each of the four sides of this central mass. I was so surprised with this waste of timber, that I called the attention of my good friend Sakata to the matter ; and especially denounced the use of the centre block. To my astonishment, be told me that the structure must be strong to support the vast central mass. In my ignorance I replied that the centre part was not supported by the sides, but upon reaching the top I found this monstrous central mass suspended, like the clapper of a bell ; and when I had descended I could, by lying on the ground, see that there was an inch of space intervening between it and the earth which formed the floor of the pagoda. The pagoda is to a Buddhist temple what a spire is to a Christian church ; and by its clever construction it is enabled to retain its vertical position even during the continuance of earthquake shocks, for by the swinging of this vast pendulum the centre of gravity is kept within the base. I now understood the reason for that lavish use of timber which I had so rashly pronounced to be useless; and I see that there is a method in Japanese construction which is worthy of high appreciation. In the absence of any other instance, the employment of this scientific method of keeping the pagoda upright shows how carefully the Japanese have thought out the requirements to be met."
That account, which is absolutely new, would of itself justify the publication of Dr. Dresser's book. We doubt if anything so utterly exceptional, so much outside the usual grasp of a people's thought, is to be found elsewhere. The Japanese, with all their cleverness, are, when all is said, a kicking people, who devote their cleverness to small things, who over-ornament everything, who prefer the grotesque to the beautiful, and who have scarcely risen to the conception of the simply grand. Yet their architects must, at one time, have risen to a conception which would, if Europe were worried with earthquakes, have given perpetual honour to the name of the European mechanician who conceived it,—to a device which actually en- ables man to resist the effects of a force utterly and hopelessly beyond his control. The New Zealander who in A.D. 3000 builds a spire to his cathedral may be indebted for the safety of his building to the careful observation of a Japanese, who, moreover, with his metal sockets, may even now teach the European how to protect the ends of his timber joists, just as he can teach all the furniture.makers of Europe the art which seems so impossible, how to make lacquer which cannot scratch
"After purchasing, amongst other things, a lacquer 'spill' of great beauty, and made eighty years since by a most excellent man, whose ancestors for eight generations had made similar work, I told, a packer to treat this rare object with great care. Fancy my state of mind when I saw my beautiful 'spill' filled with old nails and bits of rough iron l• I stormed and blustered ; emptied the vessel of its contents, wiped it tenderly, felt for it as I should for a slog whose tail had been crushed, and ordered the packer to wrap it in many. thicknesses of soft paper, and give it a box all to itself. In an hour after this I returned to see how the packing was proceeding, and how my injunctions had been obeyed. To my surprise and disgust, I saw my favourite pot again filled with nails and scrap-iron. My wrath knew no bounds ; and with more of the British lion in my voice and gestures than I am in the habit of displaying, I hurled at the poor packer an amount of abuse which I should not like to see in print. When my wrath was somewhat exhausted, the poor man, whom I had so lavishly censured, said calmly, ' You would not have me put them into the commoner articles, for if I did they would be scratched ;. but this is the best lacquer and cannot scratch ?' I am bound to say that he was right, and that I cannot now find any mark on my lovely spill which tells of the rough usage to which it was subjected."
Dr. Dresser revels in describing things like these, and in his minute accounts succeeds in deepening the impression, already, so deep, of the boundless ingenuity of a people who, neverthe- less, have been unable to pass a self-fixed point, and whose artists now admire helplessly the wonderful work of centuries ago ; while their native patrons are, without exception, anti- quarians, and estimate value almost entirely by antiquity. Many of these artists, however, only lack inducement to display originality, and we suspect that the English porcelain-makers might obtain from some of them valuable secrets as to methods- of glazing. Dr. Dresser mentions the very curious fact that the Chinese probably, and the Japanese certainly, derived much of their knowledge of pottery and porcelain from the Coreans, of whose arts Europeans as yet know nothing.
Of the Japanese themselves, Dr. Dresser tells us little, except incidentally ; but one of his experiences strangely illustrates that entire insensibility to suffering which so marks the races of the Far East. We do not remember an incident so conclusive as to the inner character of the Japanese :—
" Resting on a large Cutani; dish is a mat formed of rounds of. glass hold together by plaited threads, on which is a. living fish with gills and mouth moving regularly : at its back rises a bank of white shreds resembling clamp isinglass, but in reality a colourless sea weed,. while the fish itself rests on green Mew,. In front is a pile of small. slices of raw fish garnished with eradiating tuft of variegated bamboo leaves. A portion of the raw fish from the pile in front of the living victim is now placed on a saucer and passed to one guest, and so, with the rest, till the pile is consumed. Then, to my disgust, the- serving-maid, not having enough in the pile for all, raised the skin of the upper side of the fish, which I now saw was already loose, and simply picked up slice after slice from the living creature, which, although alive, had been already carved ; nay, even the pile of flesh already served consisted of the lower half of the creature's body.. There is a refinement of barbaric cruelty in all this which contrasts strangely with the geniality and loving nature of the Japanese, for with consummate skill the fish has been so carved that no vital part has been touched ; the heart, the gills, the liver, and the stomach are- left intact, while the damp algae on which the fish rests suffice to keep the lungs io action. Tho miserable object with lustrous eye looks upon us while we consume its own body ; and rarely is it given to any creature to put in a living presence at its own entombment ;- but, if being oaten is to be buried, this most miserable of victims to, man's sensual pleasure actually enjoyed (P) that rarest of oppor- tunities. This cruelty- is practised only by the rich."
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