The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

Shimaki’s opinion of Koizumi had been determined in part by the lighthearted side of his character, but those bleary eyes revealed a more complex and puzzling personality—one not to be taken lightly.

  Koizumi’s words, “manner of Bashō,” disturbed Shimaki. Already in the painting that he had shown that fall, Old Pagoda at Dusk in Autumn, Shimaki had focused on an old pagoda and had eliminated the roof and concrete wall of a nearby school (what Koizumi called “extraneous things”) to achieve a “Bashō-like style.” Although Shimaki readily accepted that his Bashō -like effect differed from Koizumi’s, he had complete confidence in his talents as a landscape painter, yet he was quite upset when he heard that Koizumi was going to stop painting in his wonted “realistic” style and experiment with a “cocktail of realism and imagination” to paint a landscape—and wondered more than ever about Koizumi.

  In fact, the day after he had called on Koizumi, Shimaki was so unsettled that all the while he prepared for the sketching trip from Hōryūji temple to Nara—he was then quite interested in painting old pagodas and temples—he kept saying to himself such things as “Koizumi is urged to work by his wife, and I’m stimulated to paint by Koizumi.”

  That day he had painted the Hall of Dreams at the Hōryūji and the Nanendō Hall of Kōfukuji temple in Nara.9 It seemed to him that both paintings had turned out exceptionally well, so well in fact that he considered the Hall of Dreams to be one of the best paintings he had ever done. And whenever he thought of the Hall of Dreams, Koizumi’s words, “in the manner of Bashō,” came to mind.

  This he could hardly avoid, for all the time he painted the Hall of Dreams, he kept mumbling those very words. Even as he planned the work he was talking to himself, saying, “I won’t emphasize its architecture; I’ll concentrate on bringing out its traditional associations—‘like Bashō.’ I’ll shorten the lines to give more weight to the whole so that it will look more like a painting than what I actually see—‘like Bashō.’ I want the viewers of this painting to feel . . . to hear . . . soft, peaceful, ancient music flowing from somewhere . . . beyond.”

  He recalled all this while he was sketching Takabatake. He didn’t have to tell himself that he had used a “Bashō type” style to paint the Hall of Dreams before Koizumi intended to do the same with Landscape with Withered Tree. He already considered this style his trademark.

  But then he remembered the snowscapes—Monet’s and Koizumi’s—and burned with shame.

  Koizumi’s simple composition, his deft coloring, and the way that small painting conjured up a word much larger than itself created feelings that no work in the traditional “Bashō manner” ever achieved. He tried to compare the “cold and the loneliness” of Koizumi’s snowscape with a Bashō haiku and the “quiet and beauty” of Monet’s snowscape with the haiku of another poet, but he didn’t know any such poet, neither did he know much about haiku. And what about his own “Bashō style”? With whose haiku could it be compared . . . ? As he was thus cogitating, it dawned on him that Koizumi may already have tried out his “Bashō style” when he painted his snowscape, that is, four or five years before he told him, “from now on I’m going to try a cocktail of realism and imagination in the style of Bashō.”

  He must have; otherwise how could he have said, just like that, “I’m thinking of putting four or five fallen logs alongside the reclining nude,” nor would he have said so calmly, “I’m still planning the rest of it.” This statement, Shimaki thought, should certainly be taken with a grain of salt. He most probably had the whole composition already worked out. If he didn’t, how could he have said in such a detached way, “How about Landscape with Withered Tree as a title?”—

  “Koizumi is indeed an extraordinary person. . . .” Shimaki stopped sketching and began putting away his painting gear. It was almost noon.

  The following day Yata and Irii set out for the Naniwa Western Painting Institute around ten A.M. about ten minutes apart from each other. Now they were smoking as they looked at the snowscape outside the window and talked about going to Nara to paint the snow, when a messenger entered with Shimaki’s postcard with the message, “I’ll be away for four or five days.”

  When they had read it, they remarked on the fact that he had braved the heavy snow and set off alone without revealing where he was going. “How like Shimaki Shin’kichi to do something like that,” they commented wryly. Then sometime after noon, they took the eight students who had come to the institute that day on a three-day sketching excursion to Nara. They decided to stay at the inn where those associated with the Naniwa Western Painting Research Institute always stayed, the same inn that Shimaki had avoided. That day and the next they divided the students into two groups. Yata took one group in the direction of the park, and Irii led the other group toward town to do their sketching. Neither of them knew that Shimaki was in Nara. Nor did Shimaki know that they had come. Even if they had not brought students, Yata and Irii would not have stayed more than three days, whereas Shimaki would have spent at least three days in Nara. In this respect, too, Yata and Irii were alike, as Shimaki and Koizumi were alike—.

  It was around eight P.M. the following day, that is, Shimaki’s third day in Nara and the second day that Yata and Irii were in town.

  After finishing their evening meal around six, Yata and Irii sat around the foot warmer and talked about art, as they had done the day before and for the past six months or so. But talking about art meant for them talking nine-tenths of the time about their associate and good friend Koizumi—at least they believed that he was their friend; it is not clear how he saw the relationship.

  “I think Koizumi’s painting entered a mature period around 1923,” said Yata in his seven-parts Tokyo and three-parts Osaka dialect. “The paintings of his early period also are outstanding, but by and large what he produced for about a year following his trip abroad was still somewhat crude; in fact, I believe there was something vulgar about it.

  “There are some interesting stories connected with those early works.

  “For instance, about four or five years ago Koizumi and I had left the research institute and were walking along Shinsaibashi Avenue. As we approached the corner of the Bunbōdō shop, we saw the painting of a nude in the showcase. It seemed to be one of Koizumi’s old works. Koizumi right away went into the store and told the clerk, ‘You mustn’t display that. Take it down, I’ll send you another one to put up instead.’ It was a painting from his early period dating back to 1918 and 1919.

  “Another story, which is even more extreme, is about a man—you’d know him if I told you his name—who had one of Koizumi’s old paintings. Having heard that Koizumi had said that he would destroy his early paintings if he found them, he got so scared when Koizumi came to visit that he invited him in only after he had removed his own frame from the canvas. So you see, Koizumi shares my judgment about his early works; he thinks they’re terrible.”

  “The first thing you always do is bring up and harp on ‘the early works,’” replied Irii in his seven-tenths Osaka and three-tenths Tokyo dialect.

  “There is indeed a raw quality in the early works, as you say, but hasn’t that quality always been characteristic of Koizumi? We’ll theorize about Koizumi Keizō later. Take A Family,10 his first painting, which won the G prize, and Portrait of a Daughter, which won the K prize; doesn’t the blue and earth red color scheme used in both those paintings run through all the work he’s done in the ten years since then? Of course, blue and gray appear a lot in the work he did after his trip abroad . . . but aren’t the antique flavor and the exoticism found in those first two paintings, especially in the background of Portrait of a Daughter, present in all the work he’s produced in the ten years since then?”

  When he drank saké, Irii, who usually was taciturn, rose to challenge the talkative Yata.

  “Now we’ll take up the question of why Koizumi paints the way he does. Yata, you remember when A Family was first shown and some critic wrote that ‘its artistic flavor is weak,�
�� and Koizumi read the review and said, ‘the hell with “art”’? It’s that spirit that makes him great. At that time, sentimental elegance was popular, and paintings that focused entirely on technique were disparaged. . . . When you think about it, that man Koizumi is really great. Didn’t he prevail in the end with his emphasis on technique? Not only that, when you look at it now, weren’t there times when the technique he perfected reached the essence of art . . . ?

  “What’s more, . . .” Irii continued enthusiastically, “look at Koizumi’s paintings from last year, the year before last, and the year before that; that wonderful series of nudes—just the paintings of nudes alone—the oils he did in a mere two or three years, and the sketches—and the paintings on glass that he does so well—there are more than ten. Add to those the snow landscape, the suburban landscape, the still lifes of Vegetables on a Table11 and Peony on a Table—put them all together and there are probably fifteen, sixteen pieces. Is there a single bad painting among them? Not only that; focus on his brush stroke; it has the sharpness of a fine sword—what skill.

  “Isn’t there something eerie about it, though? Yata, do you think there is a single artist in the whole of Japan, no, the whole world, who can paint such truthful paintings? Is there a single painter who has made the nude figure of a Japanese woman come to life in so many ways? Is there a single painter who depicts nudes so skillfully? Yata, if there is, tell me his name. . . .”

  “Irii,” Yata waited for the moment when Irii tired of talking. “Irii, when you drink, you’re really quite a critic, quite a theorist. I agree with practically everything you’ve just said. I especially agree with your remarks about the eerie quality of his work. There is an indescribable eerie beauty in both Vegetables on a Table and Peony on a Table in the way that the vegetables and the peony are painted in the astringent drab color that Koizumi favors and yet seem to rise up against the practically solid black background. That reminds me of the time I once said to Koizumi, ‘There’s a ghostly quality in your painting, isn’t there,’ and he agreed with me right away. Speaking of ghostliness, Irii, have you ever seen the large oil painting of a withered, winter landscape that Koizumi did in mid-December last year?”

  “I haven’t been there since last summer and am not familiar with it.”

  “But you remember Suburban Landscape which you just mentioned, don’t you? That composition . . .”

  “I remember it vaguely, but what do you mean by composition? . . .”

  “Well, the bottom half of the picture plane is a summer field; there’s a bed of cannas in the foreground and a weedy patch on the left side, facing the edge of a wood; the corner of a Western-style building is visible on the right, and across from the field on the horizon line, there’s the low structure of a sort of shack and a distant hill about the same height as the shack; there are two telegraph poles in front of the shack and a road below; a summer sky with a pinkish hue fills the top third of the picture plane. . . .”

  “You really have a good memory.”

  “You should know the place,” Yata went on. “There’s an open field right next to Koizumi’s house in Sumiyoshi. In Suburban Landscape, the landscape is transformed into the kind of decorative pattern that Koizumi likes, but it’s done in a realistic style, which may be deceiving. Although the large painting that he did this time of a withered winter landscape is about three times the size of Suburban Landscape, he painted the same spot as in Suburban Landscape, but the composition, the whole ambience is so different that if you don’t look carefully, you’d think it was an entirely different place. For one thing, in this painting there isn’t a trace of the ornamental style. It’s not the sort of difference where Suburban Landscape is a summer scene in bright, fresh colors and this one a winter scene in faint gray. . . . To put it in literary terms, it’s the difference between realism and symbolism. So I feel that with this painting, Koizumi reached a turning point. At any rate, putting aside such abstract theorizing, when I saw the painting, I felt as if I had been doused with cold water. It was more than awesome or eerie; it felt really ghastly. . . .”

  “Well, that’s still very abstract; it may be clear to you, but I have absolutely no idea what you saw. I want you to try to explain not how Suburban Landscape felt different but how it looked different from the more recent painting.”

  “Very well. . . .” After closing his eyes for a minute, Yata began to talk. “In this one, the bottom half of the picture plane is a completely bare, withered field; where there was a flower bed in the previous painting, in this one there are five or six large logs lying about on the ground in disarray. In other words, those dead tree logs are the only things occupying the foreground, that is, the lower quarter of the picture plane. It seems to be nothing but a Picture of Dead Tree Logs. It seems that those strangely shaped, dead tree logs stimulated Koizumi to paint, for in the place where there are no logs there’s just an empty field of red earth and withered grass. The upper half of the remaining picture plane is occupied by a cold-looking winter sky, and between the sky and the withered field, the horizon line is sectioned off by a low, one-story, shack-like building and a low hill. In a spot that seems to be a pathway leading to the shack, in place of the two telegraph poles that appeared in Suburban Landscape, there’s a ridiculously large, oddly shaped, high-voltage wire pylon cutting the winter sky in two.—Yes, the sky alone is rendered in Koizumi’s characteristic ornamental style.—Four to six electric wires are stretched from the upper and lower part of the pylon, creating a horizontal, striped pattern against the monotonous winter sky, and the sky creates a decorative pattern dyed in cold blue and white and yellowish brown.—That’s the way I see it as a painter. Close your eyes, Irii, and try to picture what I’ve just described as a composition; that alone should probably be enough to give you a spooky feeling. . . . But in the upper half of the painting, on the highest wire, there’s something like a black bird just sitting there; Irii, what do you think it is . . . ?”12

  “On a withered branch a bird has settled. . . .”13

  “No, nothing as simple as that. At first for a moment I, too, thought that it was a bird, but it’s a human being. You understand now why I felt it was ghastly. Moreover. . . .”

  “Wait a minute . . .,” Irii interrupted. “There’s an ordinary electric pole in the empty lot next to Koizumi’s house, but there are no high-voltage wires. And even if there were, anyone who sat on a high-voltage wire would be dead. I don’t know if it’s symbolism or imagination, but such a . . .”

  At that moment, they had no sooner heard hurried footsteps in the hallway, then a maid slid open the door to the room and laid down two telegrams. Yata, who was closest to the door, picked them up and separated them, the one addressed to himself from the one addressed to Irii. They opened their envelopes simultaneously. Each one, sent from each of their homes, contained the news that Koizumi had died that day at four P.M. Both men were momentarily speechless. They eventually managed to exchange a few simple words and quickly got ready to leave. By the time they had arranged with the inn keeper to take care of the students they had brought and settled the inn bill, it was 8:20 when they left the inn. In order to catch the 8:40 train, they had to run to the station, at times nearly falling on the frozen road.

  Because it was a cold day, and the hour was late, there were only five or six passengers in the waiting room when they burst in at a half run and discovered Shimaki sitting on a bench in the comer reading a book. Shimaki, too, for his part, looked up at the sound of running footsteps and discovered Yata and Irii. None of them had time to register surprise at the unexpected meeting or to ask questions; nor was there any need to, for they could guess why they all were there, and as they greeted one another, the conductor began collecting tickets.

  The three of them were the only passengers on the train, so Irii, who had been roused from a drunken sleep, was able to lie down on a seat and immediately go back to sleep. Shimaki and Yata sat side by side a short distance away from their sleeping com
panion. After exchanging a few words of shock, sadness, and condolence about the death of their friend, which had seemed so sudden, yet not all that unexpected, they fell silent. Eventually Yata broke the silence.

  “I guess you must know that three years ago in the fall, Koizumi was saying that he wanted to go abroad again and then live in Tokyo for a year or two.”

  Shimaki, who had been thinking of something else, nodded belatedly.

  “Irii,” Yata continued, “said that it was merely a whim on Koizumi’s part, but I think that Koizumi, who disliked the West so much that he returned before half a year had gone by when he went abroad before, decided to go abroad again because he was determined to renew his art. I think he also wanted to move to Tokyo for the sake of his art, which he loved more than anything else. And I think he also wanted to move to Tokyo to get away from the Hanshin area where he had lived for so long and of which he was tired and where his home life had grown gloomy.”

  “I agree that he wanted to revitalize his home life by moving to Tokyo.” As usual, Shimaki was thinking of something else, but the mention of Koizumi’s home life caught his attention. For Shimaki, the reference to Koizumi’s “home life” was not an empty formula; he was just then thinking about the wife, who, he had been told by a friend, had taken it upon herself to find buyers for her husband’s paintings and put him to work. Was the wife who forced Koizumi to work in a craftsman-like manner a good or a bad wife?

  Shimaki’s thoughts were triggered by the following passage in the book—a collection of Koizumi’s essays—that he had been reading in the station a little while ago:

  Nowadays the only place where I’m free to express what I feel without reservation is the canvas on my easel, where I don’t have to resign myself to anything. There I’m permitted to give way to all my desires. It may be natural that despite the difficulties he encounters, a painter is no more able to give up painting than he is able to shake off a bad karma.