CHAPTER FIVE

Domestic Interiors

WHILE IN PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE, in painting and sculpture, in the industrial arts, and even in the greater part of the domestic architecture of the better class, Japan is fast losing all national quality, the houses of the lower and middle classes still preserve the beautiful characteristics of the old art, so unique, so refined, so wholly ethnic and national.

The nobles are making themselves uncomfortable and absurd in preposterous structures designed by third-rate English and German architects, and the same agency is responsible for shocking public buildings, vast in size, fearful and humiliating in design.

Each year exhibitions are held in Uyeno Park where the pitiful attempts of Orientals to copy European modes of painting are held up to the awestruck admiration of those that short-sightedly desire the death of Japanese civilization, and to the pity and dismay of such Westerners as feel the glory of the abandoned art and the futility and folly of the movement that aims to establish in its place a false theory, an alien ideal.

Yet there are wise and philosophical men in Japan who fight strenuously against the foolish fashion of Westernism, and are made to suffer for it. Then there are architects who steadily refuse to have anything to do with foreign architecture in any of its forms. Such is my old friend, Kashiwagi San, whose house is a faultless model of native architecture, and who now and then builds some delicate and exquisite house for such of the nobility as are still unreconciled to the new era in Japan. Thanks to these men and their colleagues, and thanks also to the strong conservatism of the middle classes, Japanese domestic architecture is still a vital art, strong with a life that may last even through the present inauspicious days, and form a basis for more logical work, when the times have changed and national self-confidence is restored again.

The wonderful power and splendor of Japanese decorative art are a byword. The masterly sculpture of the seventh and eighth centuries is as yet rated only at a part of its value; native architecture is almost wholly unconsidered, or at least is dismissed as flimsy, erratic, undignified. I am sure this latter condemnation is wrong and that the national architecture is just as logical, just as firmly based on the enduring laws of art, as any other style in the world. It is the perfect style in wood, as Gothic may be called the perfect style in stone. Considered as an expression of profound and subtle artistic feeling through the mediumship of wood, it demands and must receive recognition and admiration. The great temples are the apotheosis of this system of building, but the private houses are its base, and in them one feels equally the logic of the construction, the clear knowledge of the essential beauty of the material.

To the Japanese, wood, like anything that possesses beauty, is almost sacred, and he handles it with a fineness of feeling that at best we only reveal when we are dealing with precious marbles. From all wood that may be seen close at hand, except such as is used as a basis for the rare and precious lacquer, paint, stain, varnish, anything that may obscure the beauty of texture and grain, is rigidly kept away. The original cost of the material is a matter of no consequence; if it has a subtle tone of color, a delicate swirl in the veining, a peculiarly soft and velvety texture, it is carefully treasured and used in the place of honor.

The same respectful regard is shown towards plaster. With us of the West plaster is simply a cheap means of obtaining a flat surface that afterwards may be covered up in many different ways; with the Japanese plaster is an end in itself, and well it may be! We ourselves know nothing of the possibilities of this material. In Japan it has the solidity of stone, the color of smoke and mist and ethereal vapors, and the texture of velvet.

Wood and plaster: these are two of the four components of a Japanese interior. The third is woven straw of a pale, neutral green. This is for the inevitable mats that carpet all the floors. The fourth is rice paper; creamy white, thin, and tough, stretched over the light latticework that forms the windows and the outer range of sliding screens (shoji), or covering the thicker screens (fusuma) that form the dividing partitions of the rooms. (PLATE 29.) Now and then these fusuma are covered with dull gold and faintly traced with dim landscapes or decorative drawings of birds and flowers, or else they are wrought with great black ideographs; sometimes the paper is faintly tinted, or varied by an admixture of delicate seaweed, but as a general thing, and except in a noble’s “yashiki” or in some house of entertainment, the four materials remain: natural wood, tinted plaster, pleated straw, and rice paper.

Not an ambitious collection of materials, and yet for refinement, reserve, subtle color, and perfection of artistic composition and ultimate effect, I know of few things to compare with the interior of a Japanese house.

The furnishings; they are few and of the utmost simplicity, nothing appearing except such articles as are absolutely necessary, and, inconsistent as it may appear with the common ideas of Japanese society, there is a certain austerity, asceticism even, about the native character that reduces this list of necessities much below what would be acceptable to Western ideas. A number of thin, flat, silk cushions to kneel on, one or two tansu, or chests of drawers, andon, or lamps with rice paper screens, small lacquered tables a foot square and half as high for serving food, hibachi or braziers, several folding screens, a standing mirror of burnished steel, and dishes of lacquer and porcelain form the entire list, with the exception of cooking utensils and the beds that are rolled up and put away in closets during the day. Under ordinary circumstances, a living room, even of the best class, contains nothing in the way of furniture except what appears in the tokonoma and chigai-dana. Cushions are produced when the room is in use by day, beds at night, small tables when food is served, and a brazier if the weather is cold—this last apparently as a formality for it has no appreciable effect on the temperature. One would say that the result would be barren and cheerless, but this is not the case, every detail of form and color being so exquisitely studied that the empty room is sufficient in itself. There is something about the great spacious apartments, airy and full of mellow light, that is curiously satisfying, and one feels the absence of furniture only with a sense of relief. Relieved of the rivalry of crowded furnishings, men and women take on a quite singular quality of dignity and importance. It is impossible after a time not to feel that the Japanese have adopted an idea of the function of a room and the method of best expressing this, far in advance of that which we have made our own.

From the moment one steps down from one’s kuruma and, slipping off one’s shoes, passes into soft light and delicate color, amongst the simple forms and wide spaces of a Japanese house there is nothing to break the spell of perfect simplicity and perfect artistic feeling; the chaos of Western houses becomes an ugly dream.

Except in the state residence or yashiki of daimyo (PLATE 30) the entrance to a private house was usually without distinguishing marks, and one alighted at any portion of the narrow veranda or yen-gawa that surrounds the house, but in more pretentious structures the vestibule was a dominant feature and nowadays this emphasis has been borrowed from yashiki and temple and is found in all houses of the better sort. This vestibule is a square porch, open in front, with a wide, curved roof. At the end is a narrow wooden platform from which a big door gives access to the grand corridor or iri-kawa that surrounds and isolates the state apartments. Opposite the door is a low, square, painted screen in a lacquer frame, usually most gorgeously decorated; sometimes a dwarf tree stretches its gnarled branches athwart the burnished gold, or a great branch of blossoms in a precious vase gives a note of splendid color. The iri-kawa (PLATE 31) is a corridor from six to twelve feet wide that serves at once as a passageway and as a kind of anteroom to the chief apartment, called jo-dan and gedan. When it leaves these rooms of honor its name changes and it becomes the ro-ka or passageway, giving access to the parlors or zashiki (PLATE 32), the anterooms or tamari, the tearooms or cha-dokoro. In addition to these rooms are the kitchens, baths, dressing-rooms, and servants’ waiting-rooms, but no bedrooms as such, for any apartment serves this latter purpose and also that of a dining-room, the beds being made up on the thick floormats, the meals brought by the myriad servants to any part of the house and served on many little tables of red and black lacquer.

Nor does the arrangement or decoration of the rooms differ materially. Posts and beams of natural satiny wood, wonderful plaster of many subtle colors, ceilings of narrow timbers and delicately grained boards, floors covered with straw mats two inches thick and always three by six feet in size, this is the inevitable setting. In all the chief rooms one end is formed of two alcoves called tokonoma and chigai-dana (PLATE 33), the former to hold the picture or kakimono of the day, the other to display the selection of artistic treasures made from the stores ordinarily concealed in the fireproof kura or “godown.” These two alcoves form the places of honor, and in feudal times the daimyo sat in front of them on the floor of the jo-dan, raised a step above the lower half of the room, or ge-dan where guests and retainers assembled to pay their respects. Now the guest is placed nearest the tokonoma while the host chooses a lower station.

In the chigai-dana and tokonoma are concentrated all the richness and decoration in the apartment. In the ancient palaces and yashiki they were of incredible magnificence, gold and lacquer, carving and precious woods forming a combination of almost unexampled richness (PLATE 34); but in the modern house, while they remain very beautiful they have become comparatively simple and modest. In every case, however, they show to perfection the wonderful artistic feeling of the race, for in line and color and form the combination of picture, flowers, and bricà-brac is beyond criticism. One picture only is exposed in each room and this is changed daily. Is the master going a-fishing? Then some appropriate kakimono is hung in its place. Is it cherry time or the time of chrysanthemums or peonies or any other of the wonderful flowers of Japan? Then this feeling is echoed in the kakimono and in the flowers that stand in front.

The whole basis of artistic combination may be gained in a study of Japanese tokonoma, for in them one finds preserved all the matchless refinement of feeling, all the result of centuries of artistic life that raised the art of Japan to the dizzy height from which Europe and America are now engaged in casting it ignominiously down.

In the ultimate analysis a Japanese house is seen to be simply a wide floor raised on posts two or three feet above the ground and matted with woven straw; covered by a low, tiled roof supported on many square posts and then divided into apartments by sliding screens of varying sizes. There are no windows as we know them and no doors.

Around the outside of the narrow veranda run the amado or storm screens of solid wood, closed tightly at night but pushed back into pockets during the day. On the inner side of this yengawa is the sliding wall of translucent rice paper screens, through which the light comes soft and mellow to the living rooms. Between the inner posts run the solid fusuma that may be removed altogether, throwing the whole space into one enormous apartment, should this be desired. In modern times, permanent walls of plaster have taken the place of some of the sliding screens, but the greater part of the dividing partitions still remain temporary and removable. Seldom more than six and a half feet high, these fusuma have a space between their tops and the ceiling and this is filled with openwork panels or ramma, often marvelously elaborate in design, their delicate patterns coming black against the pearly light that glows through the white shoji. (PLATE 35.)

Faultlessly cool, airy, and spacious in summer, a Japanese house leaves much to be desired in the cold winter of the north, for the wind filters through every crack and crevice and the only heat comes from charcoal braziers, beautiful in design but woefully inadequate as heating agencies. But the Japanese are a strangely hardy race, and clothed in thin silks sit comfortably in a temperature that would chill an European to the marrow. Only in a bath is it possible for a foreigner to get warm, and here he is parboiled, for the temperature of the water ranges from 110° to 125°. A bath in a private house or hotel in Japan is, at first, something of an experience, for the bathroom is rather more public than any other apartment; in native inns indeed it is often open in front, giving, perhaps, on a court or garden, and it is possible for a guest to boil placidly in his tank and converse amicably with the other guests and the housemaids as they pass to and fro. But what it lacks in privacy the bath makes up in beauty, for it is often fantastic in design and elaborate in its decoration, with its walls of pierced woodwork, its lofty roof, and its floor of brilliant tiles.

In plan a private house is irregular and rambling to the last degree. The corridors reach off into long perspective, the rooms open out one after another, full of varying light and subtle color; here and there little gardens appear in the most unexpected places, giving wonderful glimpses of pale bamboo groves and dwarfed trees and brilliant flowers, with silver sand underneath and tiny water courses paved with round pebbles. Great stone lanterns and bronze storks and dark pools of water are arranged with the most curious skill, and from every room one can look always either out to the great surrounding garden with its thick foliage and wandering brooks and curved bridges, or into the little enclosed courts, dim and damp and full of misty shadows.

The world offers few experiences more novel and charming than a visit to a Japanese house of the better class. The nation itself is hospitality incarnate, and to see this at its perfection one has only to possess himself of a letter of introduction to some conservative old noble. From the moment his kuruma stops under the great porch he is made to feel that the house is his, the host but an humble agent who has long waited the return of the rightful owner.

The rickshaw rolls swiftly into the outer garden and the brownlegged kurumaya gives a long, wailing cry of warning. Hardly has the rickshaw stopped when the vestibule doors are slid back and between them appears an old porter in blue-gray silk, kneeling and bowing solemnly until his head almost touches the floor. Shoes are slipped off in the porch, and following the noiseless porter one is ushered into an anteroom to kneel on silk cushions while his card is taken to the master. Presently the fusuma slide softly and a little maid enters, bringing fanciful sweetmeats in dishes of red and gold lacquer; kneeling to open the fusuma and again to close them, for it is an unpardonable breach of etiquette for a servant to slide the screens standing; she glides away only to return with tea and a tobacco box with its cone of glowing charcoal in fine white ashes. The silence is profound, and there is no sound except, perhaps, the ripple of running water in the garden without, or the splash of a leaping carp in the pool, dark under overhanging azaleas, or purple wistaria with its long racemes of flowers touching the surface of the water.

Finally the fusuma open and danna san is seen kneeling and prostrating himself in courteous greeting. He enters and, placing himself on the cushion opposite, bows again with grave dignity and inconceivable courtliness. The long formalities of a preliminary conversation are proceeded with to the accompaniment of tea and pipes, and presently, summoned by a clapping of hands, the maids slide the fusuma and we pass through the wide low corridors to the state apartments. (PLATE 36.) Fusuma and shoji are wide open and all along one side of the room lies some magical garden, even though the house may be in the midst of Tokyo or Kyoto. One is seldom entertained in a private house, the clubs and restaurants serve this purpose, for there one can have amazing dinners with music and geisha, but now and then specially favored mortals dine with my lord in his own residence. Let us suppose this is to occur now. The master claps his hands, the screens open, and several little maids appear, bringing little tables, covered with bowls of porcelain and lacquer. Facing each other, host and guest kneel on their cushions and the tables are arranged between them, the maids placing themselves on one side to be of instant service at any moment, and to fill little cups with hot, aromatic sake. Soups of many kinds, thin flakes of opalescent raw fish, eels, lobster, and fish of every kind and cooked in every way, follow each other in bewildering succession, and finally rice appears, served from a great lacquer box. Outside the garden is full of shifting light and subtle color, here where we are sitting the room is spacious and airy and at every point the eye is refreshed by the most delicate detail, the most refined tone, the most perfect repose and reserve. Presently, at a gesture from the master, every vestige of the feast vanishes and we are left to smoke and talk, more intimately now and without the many formalities that are unavoidable at first.

When the time for departure arrives, the master himself comes to the door and servants assemble from every quarter to kneel on either side of the platform while host and guest face each other and bow again and again, murmuring the formal phrases of leave-taking, each of which is centuries old and breathes all the courtliness and dignity of a dead epoch, when feudalism was a vital and glorious institution. Shoes are resumed, the guest mounts into his kuruma, and as the circle of servants prostrate themselves, rolls away, bearing some gift commensurate with the rank of the host, and the more enduring memento of an unforgetable impression of refined living, courtesy, the product of immemorial centuries, and hospitality that is genuine in impulse, profoundly grateful to the Western recipient.

For the courtesy and simplicity of Japanese home life, the domestic architecture forms a faultless setting. It is absolutely frank and straightforward in construction, perfectly simple in its forms, and reserved and refined in its decorations; all the ornament is rigidly constructional, while the furnishings are of the simplest quality and only such as the nature of the life demands. There is no ornament for the sake of ornament, no woodwork or carving not demanded by the exigencies of construction, no striving for picturesque effect through fantastic irregularity, no overloading of unnecessary decoration, no confusion of furnishings, no litter of trivial and embarrassing accessories. The spirit of ornamented construction and no other ornament whatever that characterized Greek architecture finds its echo in Asia. As a result the effect is more reserved, refined, gentlemanly, almost ascetic, than is to be found elsewhere. No greater contrast to our own fashion could be imagined. With us the prime object appears to be the complete concealment of all construction of whatever nature by an overlay of independent ornament. With wainscot and marble and tiles, plaster, textiles, and paper hangings, we create a perfectly fictitious shell that masks all construction and exists quite independently of it. We pile up our immutable little cells in superimposed courses, cut narrow openings in the walls and fill them with flapping doors that are always in the way. We perforate the outer walls with awkward holes and fill them with plate-glass in order that we may gaze on a narrow back garden or a narrower street where nothing that is worth seeing ever occurs. With wainscot and drapery and paper hangings we strive for an effect of protection and then nullify it by our plate-glass windows that afford only a garish light, and, in most cases, a view of things not worth looking at.

As a result the rooms are chilly and without sense of protection in winter, and stuffy and oppressive in summer. The Japanese house is a revelation of the possibilities of exactly the opposite course. It is a permanent lesson in the value of simplicity, of modesty, of frankness, of naturalness in art.

In the inns and public houses of amusement we find the same qualities that mark the private house carried a little further. The form, the arrangement, the materials are the same, but with the greater size come also larger opportunities for artistic effects. The inns are almost always two stories high, never more, and the buildings enclose wonderful little courts surrounded by narrow galleries (PLATE 37), or border on stone terraces and wandering gardens. There is one hotel at Uji that is a vision of delight, as it climbs along the high bank of a river, with its terraces crowded with blossoming, sweet-scented shrubs that lean over the mossy stone paths and crumbling steps. There is another wonderful inn at Hikone that was once the summer pavilion of the great Ii-Kamonno-Kami, and its garden is famous throughout Japan. It is only one story high and rambles for an apparently illimitable distance up and down and away at surprising angles, its last outworks perched on the great wall over Lake Biwa, its scores of apartments opening on marvelous views that almost make one forget the beauty of the architectural surroundings. The Shukinro at Nagoya (PLATE 38) has no views, except of its own inimitable little courts, but it is the perfect type of a courtly and hospitable inn, every room being a work of delicate art. All the true Japanese hotels are practically the same as a private house, so far as planning and construction are concerned, and in them a guest has the same privileges as in a dwelling, being at liberty to wander anywhere and even change his apartments every day if he like. In accordance with universal practice he eats, lives, and sleeps in the same rooms; if he prefers, and the inn is not crowded, he may choose any vacant room he pleases for his meals, or for his sleeping apartment.

The so-called “tea-houses” and restaurants are of course innumerable, for the Japanese, reserved, silent, even dogged when occasion demands, are by nature a gay and gregarious race, demanding relaxation and amusement and taking it frankly and simply at frequent intervals. In general it is of the most innocent sort, flagrant immorality being no more prevalent than in any other type of modern civilization. Domestic etiquette holds the home a personal, even sacred possession, and except amongst the ultra-emancipated classes, a guest is seldom received there for any entertainment. For the high aristocracy, the many and exclusive clubs furnish the means of showing courtesy to the friend or the stranger, but the middle classes resort to hotels and restaurants, while the “tea-house” receives every one, high and low. A typical Japanese dinner in some exquisite restaurant on the edge of the river at Kyoto or overlooking the waters of Shinobazu in Tokyo, with delicate food, the music of samisen or koto, unearthly but bewitching songs and the magical dancing of silken geisha, is as bewildering an experience as usually falls to the lot of man. No less redolent of strange aloofness is rest and refreshment in some country or suburban “tea-house” draped with violet wistaria, showered by cherry petals, or half hidden in fantastic trees and smothering, blossoming shrubs (PLATE 39). Here the architecture is, of course, of the simplest, as it is in the thatched farmhouses that crown every province of the Empire (PLATE 40), but it is direct, spontaneous, ethnic, better in fact from the standpoint of art than some of the splendid new examples of an adapted “palace style” of building, examples of which I have shown in PLATES 32, 33, 34, 35.

In another class of public houses the variation from the domestic type is more marked, for they tend to pile themselves up to the loftiest heights, even five and six stories being not uncommon. In these there is usually one great inner garden with hanging galleries and dizzy bridges curving themselves across the void from one side to another. At night when the whole fabric glows with pale light through latticed rice paper, and blood-red lanterns droop from the gallery roofs, while the air is sweet with the scent of flowers and full of the sound of splashing fountains and the tinkling of samisen, the effect is almost unimaginably dreamy and poetic.

But whatever the nature of the structure the same qualities always express themselves. There is always a perfect frankness almost naïveté of plan; there is airiness and space and a constant variety of view, but quite without affectation or striving after effect; there is a faultless blending of subtle colors, a constant composition of delicate line and graceful form. Above all, there is a soul-reviving simplicity that is infinite in its dignity and reserve.