An Artist's Letters from Japan. John La FargeЧитать онлайн книгу.
| A Priest at Iyémitsŭ | 93 |
| Kuwanon, by Okio | 94 |
| Entrance to the Tomb of Iyémitsŭ | 96 |
| Painting by Chin-nan-pin | 135 |
| Signature of Hokusai | 149 |
| Inscription on Old Lacquer | 152 |
| Inscription from Ho-riu-ji | 155 |
| Bed of the Dayagawa, Nikko | 161 |
| Mountains in Fog before our House | 165 |
| Portrait of a Priest | 169 |
| Old Pagoda near the Priests' Houses | 171 |
| Statue of Oya Jizo | 177 |
| Peasant Girls and Mountain Horses of Nikko | 181 |
| Our Landlord the Buddhist Priest | 187 |
| Kioto in Fog—Morning | 231 |
| Peasant Woman—Thresher | 239 |
| A Pilgrim | 247 |
| Fusi-yama from Kambara Beach | 257 |
| Fishing with Cormorants | 261 |
| Peasant carrying Fodder, and Bull carrying Load | 267 |
| A Runner in the Rain | 275 |
AN ARTIST'S LETTERS
FROM JAPAN
Yokohama, July 3, 1886.
Arrived yesterday. On the cover of the letter which I mailed from our steamer I had but time to write: "We are coming in; it is like the picture books. Anything that I can add will only be a filling in of detail."
We were in the great bay when I came up on deck in the early morning. The sea was smooth like the brilliant blank paper of the prints; a vast surface of water reflecting the light of the sky as if it were thicker air. Far-off streaks of blue light, like finest washes of the brush, determined distances. Beyond, in a white haze, the square white sails spotted the white horizon and floated above it.
The slackened beat of the engine made a great noise in the quiet waters. Distant high hills of foggy green marked the new land; nearer us, junks of the shapes you know, in violet transparency of shadow, and five or six war-ships and steamers, red and black, or white, looking barbarous and out of place, but still as if they were part of us; and spread all around us a fleet of small boats, manned by rowers standing in robes flapping about them, or tucked in above their waists. There were so many that the crowd looked blue and white—the color of their dresses repeating the sky in prose. Still, the larger part were mostly naked, and their legs and arms and backs made a great novelty to our eyes, accustomed to nothing but our ship, and the enormous space, empty of life, which had surrounded us for days. The muscles of the boatmen stood out sharply on their small frames. They had almost all—at least those who were young—fine wrists and delicate hands, and a handsome setting of the neck. The foot looked broad, with toes very square. They were excitedly waiting to help in the coaling and unloading, and soon we saw them begin to work, carrying great loads with much good-humored chattering. Around us played the smallest boats with rowers standing up and sculling. Then the market-boat came rushing to us, its standing rowers bending and rising, their thighs rounding and insteps sharpening, what small garments they had fluttering like scarfs, so that our fair missionaries turned their backs to the sight.
Two boys struggling at the great sculls in one of the small boats were called by us out of the crowd, and carried us off to look at the outgoing steamer, which takes our mail, and which added its own confusion and its attendant crowd of boats to all the animation on the water. Delicious and curious moment, this first sense of being free from the big prison of the ship; of the pleasure of directing one's own course; of not understanding a word of what one hears, and yet of getting at a meaning through every sense; of being close to the top of the waves on which we dance, instead of looking down upon them from the tall ship's sides; of seeing the small limbs of the boys burning yellow in the sun, and noticing how they recall the dolls of their own country in the expression of their eyes; how every little detail of the boat is different, and yet so curiously the same; and return to the first sensation of feeling while lying flat on the bottom of the boat, at the level of our faces the tossing sky-blue water dotted with innumerable orange copies of the sun. Then subtle influences of odor, the sense of something very foreign, of the presence of another race, came up with the smell of the boat.
We climbed up the side of the big steamer and found the Doctor there, who told us that he had been expecting us for a whole month; so that he soon took possession of us, and we found ourselves in the hotel launch, and at the wharf, and passing the custom house and its officers, who let everything go through quickly except my suspicious water-color blocks. Outside of the gate, in the street, we found the long-expected jinrikisha, an arrangement that you know probably as well as I do—a two-wheeled perambulator or gig, very small, with a hood that is usually lowered, and with a man in the shafts. Our fellows were in blue-black clothes, a big inscription on their backs; and they wore apron-like vests, close-fitting trousers, and broad straw hats poised on their heads. But you know all about these; and I have only to add that we were trundled off to our hotel, along the pretty quay which edges that part of the town, past European houses, unlike ours, and having a certain character which will probably appear very commonplace later, because it is not beautiful, but which is novel yet to us. Our hotel is also on the quay, just at a corner where a canal breaks in, and where we can see big walls and trees on the other side. Our rooms open on the water—that same blue water spangled with sunshine and fading into sky. There men-of-war and steamers far out; picturesque junks sailing past rapidly, flattened out into mere edges of shadow and light against the sea and the sky, their great hollow sterns with the rudder far inboard, and sails which are open at the seams. Not far from us was a little sharp-pointed boat with a man fishing, his big round hat as important as