JAPANESE ART AND ART INDUSTRIES.*

'THE three NI, orks described in the foot-note, and all appearing nearly simultaneously, are sufficient evidence of the wide-spread

interest which the decorative art and the artistic industries of Japan have created and still maintain. Nor is it undeserved. When we think how few are the original schools of art which

-the world has produced, the discovery of one to be added to the

number was calculated to excite a lively and permanent in- terest, wherever the art-creations of the human mind are held in high esteem. And we may very properly consider Japanese Art as among the discoveries of this generation, for thirty years ago we had no knowledge of the art treasures which were hid sway in those islands of the Far East, shut out from all inter- course with the Western world. If the great International Exhibitions, first initiated by the Prince Consortin 1852, had ren- dered no other service to the art-industries of the civilised world than to attract attention, and give a wide field for the display -of, all the varied and novel products of the Japanese industries, they would have been most valuable. The applied arts of Japan, which embrace most of the great divisions of manufacturing and industrial work, were first made known in Europe, as Mr. Cutler informs his readers, through one of those world-shows, in 1862. He observes, in his introduction, that ' the magnifi- cent collection brought to England by Sir Rutherford Alcock, then her Majesty's Minister to Japan, first gave the outside -world an insight into the decorative arts of this interesting 'country, and' aroused that enthusiasm for its productions which has exercised so great an influence on European decora- tive art, and awakened the desire in art circles to explore the fresh field of inquiry thus thrown open."

The following general remarks of Mr. Cutler are especially 'deserving of attention in reference to the influence which Europe and Japan seem calculated to exercise on each other by the interchange of art-motives and processes, stimulated by a too indiscriminative admiration

That the Japanese are consummate masters of decorative art, there can be no question ; and, much as they have to learn from Europeans in certain directions, Europe has much to learn from thorn in others. The fear that a bastard art of a very debased kind may arise in Japan, is not without foundation, and the art world is too much interested in the preservation of pure types to regard vith indifference any measure which threatens their extinction. The European artist who will study the decorative art of Japan carefully end reverently will not be in any haste to disturb, still less to up. root, the thought and feeling from which it has sprung; it is, per. , Imps, the ripest and richest fruit of a tree cultivated for many ages, -with the utmost solicitude and skill, under conditions of society pecu- liarly favourable to its growth. If we study the decorative art of the Japanese, we find the essential elements of beauty in design, fitness for the purpose which the °bleat is intended to fulfil, good workmanship, and constructive soundness, which give a value to the commoner article, and some touch of ornament by a skilful hand, together creating a truo work of art."

And, again, we cannot too earnestly endorse the truth of the following warning to the Japanese themselves, against a great danger and loss :—

"Japanese fart may now be said to have culminated, and to have ;shown all that it is capable of producing, and it is with pain we per- ceive that the hour of decadence has arrived, for all modern Japanese work shows the inability of the artist to preserve its original deli- • cacy, or to blend it harmoniously with foreign elements. No student can fail to recognise the signs of impotence and the depreciation of , taste. It may not be too late to awaken the Japanese to a sense of the wrong they are doing to their national art, in which they might, if they so chose, continue supreme; but should their intuitive taste be overlaid by imitations of European vulgarities, it is no unimportant Atask to preserve the records of the most brilliant period in the artistic life of a sigularly gifted people."

• * South Kensington Art Handboaks.—Japanese Pottery. Edited. by A. W. Franks, RSA. London : Chapman and Hall.

A Grammar of Japanese Ornament and Design, with Introductory, Deseriptive, ond Analytical l'etct. By T. A. Cutler, 1 vol. London: B. T. Botsford. MO, Pugaku Hiyakts./fei; or, a Huns/red View, of Risiyasna. By Hokustd. Intro. duettn7 and Explanatory Preface, with Translations from the Japanese and Descriptions of the Plates. By P. V. MMus. 4 vole, London : B. T. Botsford. Mr. Cutler is quite right; and this important duty in the interests of Art he has very perfectly fulfilled in the valuable work now given to the public. There is no doubt another danger to be deplored, not for the Japanese, but for ourselves, in the crude and unintelligent imitations of Japanese models by European workmen wholly nnacquainted with the art-thonghts and methods of a people so long and jealously secluded from all foreign intercourse. The artistic temperament of the Japanese cannot, of course, be transferred to another race. As little com- municable is the peculiar power and fine sense of colour and its harmonies possessed by the Japanese, due in part, perhaps, to the beauty of their climate and the familiarity with the most delicate and vivid tones which nature gives to every object. The delicacy of execution, no less the special gift of the Japanese workman, has descended from father to sou for ages, as may also, to a certain 'extent, be said of the sense of colour, which their skill turns to such account. They seem to have learnt by intuition the exquisite relations of colours, and to know by heart the law of contrasts and that of complementaries, for it never fails them. We see how little such gifts can be acquired by mere imitative effort, in the numerous attempts made, especially in ceramic ware, to reproduce Japanese models in our own pot- teries. A kind of debased type is recognisable, but wanting in all the finer harmonies of form, colour, and decorative design which constitute the excellence of Japanese work. Without some knowledge of the history, religion, and habits of thought and life of the Japanese, with all their surroundings, it is vain to hope there can be any reproduction of their characteristic art by servile imitation, or suggested art motives. Without this knowledge, the most incongruous and discordant elements will be brought together,—anachronisms in composition, winter birds with summer blossoms, religious symbols interlaced with rebus follies and historic legends or popular games, to the con- fusion of all congruity and fitness. This happens whenever the European workman tries to break up Japanese designs in search of some new combination, without any knowledge of the original art motive and governing ideas. To blindly copy Japanese models is lost labour in other respects, for they can produce the originals much cheaper and better than we can any imitations. And to try and seize the spirit of the original types is equally futile, without extensive knowledge of the life of the people.

The originality and the nationality of Japanese a.rt has been much discussed. They have borrowed so much in past ages from China, which long possessed great superiority in all the arts of civilisation, that many of their European critics have been disposed to consider that all possessed by the Japanese has not only a Chinese origin, but still remains essentially Chinese in form and character. Thus in a work recently from the pen of Mr Basil Hall Chamberlain, devoted to the reproduction in an English dress of The Classical Poetry of the Japanese,* a very difficult but praiseworthy effort to familiarise foreign nations with the imagery and thoughts which constitute the poetic literature of this people, so long secluded in the Far East, we are told in the first sentence of the in- troduction that the Japanese are a nation of imitators. "As they copy us to-day, so did they copy the Chinese and Coreans a millennium and a half ago. Religion, philosophy, laws, administration, written characters, all acts but the very simplest, all science, or, at least, what then went by that name, every- thing was imported from the neighbouring continent, so much so that of all we are accustomed to term " Old Japan," scarce one trace in a hundred is really and properly Japanese." Yet even Mr. Chamberlain, starting with this foregone conclusion, no sooner devotes himself to the study of the classic poetry col- lected in twenty volumes of the 21Icinyrfnehifu, or " Collection of a Myriad Leaves," than he discovers that the poetry of the Japanese, so far from being "fashioned on the Chinese model and expressing Chinese ideas, as was a priori to be expected," "has preserved down to our own times the unaltered form and the almost unaltered substance of the earliest manifestation of Japanese thought." This is all very well, and we are not un- willing to believe that the author may be correct in his conclu- sion as to the poetry. But when he goes beyond his own sub- ject of special interest, and generalises his observations to the effect that "the one original product of the Japanese mind is the native poetry," lie seems to fall into the common error of specialists and experts, and jumps to the conclusion that * The Metrical Poetry of the Japanese. By Basil Ball Chamberlain. London: Tritimer and Co.

nothing else is to be put in the same line of importance or originality. The author of the Grammar of Japanese Art, who has devoted eighteen years of loving study to the artistic products of the Japanese mind, arrives at a very different, and, we believe, a mach truer judgment. Mr. Cutler tells us that, "The Japanese doubtless obtained their first ideas of architecture, like the sister-arts, sculpture and, painting, from China, and the Buddhist religion brought with it from India many native characteristics and details." And further on, he bears the following emphatic testimony to the final outcome :—

" The specially national and unmixed character of Japanese art is due to the isolated position which, until within the last few years, she has maintained since the earliest ages. With the exception of China and Corea, she has had no intercourse with any nation which could in -any way affect her art productions. We have seen that China was her art-master, and that on her teachings she has founded her own school. It is not, as in Europe, the grafting of one style upon another, and the accumulated knowledge and practice of all the various schools of art from the remotest antiquity ; it has been a growth unaffected by any extraneous influences, self-contained and strictly national, and hence the astonishment and delight created when the Art of Japan was revealed to the outside world by the open- ing of the country. It is when we consider the decorative art of Japan, that we find how, for many years, they have distanced their Chinese masters, and produced a style peculiarly their own. Study- ing its application to ceramics, lacquer, bronzes, costume, we see the ground upon which they triumph, and we recognise the superiority of their art. Other nations have produced porcelain and pottery as fine as theirs, but no nation has originated lacquer ware (urushimono) to be compared with that of Japan. It stands alone for perfection of manufacture, high finish, and artistic worth, and its entire originality."

Mr. Cutler has f urther rightly concluded, as Mr. Franks also, in his excellent Handbook on Japanese Pottery, in the South Kensing- ton Museum, points out, that "to make clear the motives of decorative ornament among the Japanese, it is necessary to give some idea of the principles which guide them, and the influences by which they are governed." This work Mr. Cutler has satis- factorily, if not exhaustively, done. And Mr. Chamberlain's volume of classic poetry will form an additional contribution, by furnishing in an accessible form much of their poetic imagery and the motives of their poetry.

In like manner, Mr. Dickins gives three Japanese volumes of Ilosukai's Hundred Views of Pusiyama,—an exact reproduction, even to the paper, form, size, and wood engravings, of the original, elucidating the principles and art motives of the Japanese. Nor have we anywhere met with a truer summary -of the characteristic features of Japanese art than the follow. ing, from Mr. Dick-ins's introduction, speaking of the range of their art :—

"The excellence of that art—to sum up briefly its merits, and -viewing it as distinct from the decorative art of Japan, which is otherwise supremo within its limits of flat ornamentation—lies in the unrivalled ease and fluency rather than accuracy of its drawing, in the sobriety of its means and aims, and in the naïve and admirable sin- cerity, and often truly Hogarthian wealth of incident, with which the peculiar and indescribable moods of the Japanese artistic mind, ,arising mainly out of the fi tndy of conventional models, themselves evolved originally from a loyal, though narrowed contemplation of Nature, are represented."