From the point of view of art there was something to be said for these arrangements, because there came a time when aspiring young artists, who were seeking a new mode of expression, discovered in it an agreeable method whereby they could pursue their artistic studies in places that appealed to them most. Within the limitations of their pockets many of the artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries set up their ateliers, as it were, within the boudoirs of the ladies of the Yoshiwara, and thus were born many of the famous ukiyoe—or pictures of the fleeting world of transient pleasures—which now are the prized possessions of the British Museum, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and other famous museums. There the public may view the young ladies without any idea as to what they are or where they resided.
This unusual circumstance whereby the artist lived not upon commissions to paint the portraits of the great, but rather upon the favours of his lady friends of the demi-monde, has created one of the many curious differences between the art of the west and that of Japan. Whilst the picture galleries of Europe and America are cluttered up with portraits of men and women once great, or just opulent, but now largely forgotten, the artists in Japan at that time were so busily engaged in recording in discreet detail the love life and chores of the ladies of the Yoshiwara, that there was little time or desire to do much in the way of recording for posterity the features of many of the great of that period. Few people will dispute the success of those unconventional artists or deny that the world is greatly richer for their wood block prints.
Although the strip dance (which now seems to be as well-known to tourists as cloisonne ware used to be) was introduced into Japan as late as the chewing gum era, nevertheless Nagasaki had its Chonkina dance, a description of which can be found in John Paris' Kimono. A crude imitation of the Chonkina could be seen in the back rooms of some of the cheap dives of Kobe and other port cities, but in all probability Chonkina was not a Japanese invention. More likely it was inspired by sailors and other visitors from overseas in the early days of some three centuries ago when Nagasaki was the "Gay Paree" of the Far East.
A modification of the dance was described by Dr. Thunberg, the Swedish physician and scientific investigator who was attached to the Dutch East India post of Deshima, in Nagasaki harbour, in 1775:
The girls are provided with a number of very fine and light gowns, made of silk, which they slip off one after another, during the dance, from the upper part of their body, so as frequently to leave them to the number of a dozen together suspended from the girdle which envelops their loins.
Whilst the nude does not figure prominently in early Japanese art, except in the so-called "spring" books and "pillow" books, in which pictorial presentations the artists permitted their imaginations to run riot, nevertheless the modern Japanese artist is devoting much attention to the subject. That the Japanese artist is struggling with the female form is evident from the ladies with blotched skins and deformed limbs who so frequently grace the walls of modern exhibitions of art in this country; that a fair section of the public who frequent bookstores to do their magazine reading, is interested in the same subject is evident from the fact that the art magazines are generally kept under glass to preserve them from dog-ears and limp covers.
The responsibility, if it is a responsibility, for introducing to Japan the first picture of a western nude most probably goes to an Englishman, Capt. John Saris, commander of the "Clove," the first ship of the English East India Company to visit Japan. That was in 1613 during the reign of James I of England. The Daimyo or Lord Governor of Hirado paid a visit to the "Clove" accompanied by some ladies of his court. Capt. Saris records in his diary:
I gave leave to divers women of the better sort to come to my Cabbin, where the picture of Venus did hang very lasciviously set out in a large frame. They, thinking it to be our Ladie (the Virgin Mery), fell downe and worshipped it, with shewes of great devotion telling me in a whispering manner (that some of their own companions, which were not so, might not heare) that they were Christianos, whereby we perceived them to be Christians converted by the Portugall Jesuits.
Saris seems to have had quite a penchant for the form of art, miniatures of which geisha used once to carry around in their purses for good luck, because the following appears in the Court Minutes of the East India Company:
December 16, 1614. Some imputations and assertions being cast upon Captain Saris for certain lascivious books and pictures brought home by him and divulged which is held to be a great scandal unto this Company and unbeseeming their gravity to permit, Mr. Governor assured them of his dislike thereof.... and therefore purposed to get them out of his (Saris's) hands if possibly he could, to be burnt....
Under date of 10th January, 1615, there appears a further entry:
Mr. Governor acquainted them that great speeches having been made of certain books brought home by Captain Saris.... he hath procured them from Capt. Saris and shut them up ever since, and now hath brought them forth that such as have heard derogatory speeches used upon the Exchange and elsewhere should now likewise be eye-witness of the consuming them in the fire which he hoped would give satisfaction to any honestly affected....And thereupon in open presence put them into the fire where they continued till they were burnt and turned into smoke.
Thus ended the first Japanese "spring" books to be brought into England.
As witches, among other things, were also occasionally burnt in those days, historians have been somewhat uncertain as to just how bad, or how good, Capt. Saris' pictures were. Possibly they would cause less excitement to-day on the Exchange than they did three hundred and fifty years ago. Standards change over the years, and in Japan no less than elsewhere. There was a time less than thirty years ago when Rodin's scuptural masterpiece "The Kiss" was exhibited in Japan behind drawn curtains, which were only pulled aside for artists, who like doctors were thought to be able to look upon the geography of nude forms without experiencing too much shock. Possibly Rodin's masterpiece could be exhibited today in the window of any department store without stopping the traffic or raising more than a snicker.
One of the earliest of antics in the nude in which foreigners were involved, was in Capt. Saris' time in Japan. During the late summer months in those days of sail there were always several ships laid up in the port of Hirado. They came in on the southerly monsoon at the beginning of summer and after discharging their rich cargoes of lead, tin, iron, steel, leather, glassware, cannon, ammunition, and gunpowder, and also spices from the Indies, they had to wait until autumn before loading their outward cargoes of rice, brimstone, porcelains, art-pieces, silver, and gold, and be ready to sail south again with the winter northerly behind them. At the peak of trade there were over six or seven hundred seamen ashore, bent upon entertainment in the many dubious houses that were seeking their trade. When the men had spent their money, the keepers of those houses gladly extended them credit against the security of their clothing, whereupon the sailors later had to make their way back to their ships, drunk and in a semi-naked condition, among the ribald gibes of the populace. Richard Cocks, head of the English House, writing home to the East India Company in 1621, complained:
And as soon as our men goe along the street the Japons kindly call them in and geve them wines and whores till they be drunk and then stripp them of all they have (some of them stark naked) and soe turne them out of dores.
But Cocks admitted the fault was not always with the Japanese, "for som of our men are bad enough," and later he wrote:
I know I need not to adviz of the unrulynesse of many our marreners, and som of them not of the meanest sort, whoe daylie lie ashore att tipling howses, wasting their goodes and geving bad example to others.
And again:
And that which maketh me more afeard then all the rest is the unreasonablenesse and unrulynesse of our owne people which I know not how it will be amended.
When in 1860 the first Japanese embassy visited the United States, the New York newsp
apers of that time described how upon the arrival of the Japanese party at the grand ball given in their honour at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York, the band struck up the tuneful melody Kathleen Mavourneen, that being the best that the bandmaster (probably an Irishman) could think of in the absence of a Japanese national anthem. The Japanese guests then:
sat down in quiet amazement at the rapid evolutions made by the lady dancers, who twirled around in the giddy waltz with a rapidity that would have done credit to an artificial fire-wheel.
What the New York reporters did not know was the confused speculation that was passing through the minds of the guests as to why European women should so completely clothe their form in the daytime with skirts so low that they dragged in the dust rather than show an ankle, and with blouses with neck-pieces supported on whale bone so high that they even hid their Adam's apples, whereas at night on formal occasions they displayed their shoulderblades and protruded their chests rendered the more massive by the corsetry of those days.
It is obvious that the last-mentioned feature of foreign women of a century ago must have made a big impression on the Japanese people, because I have before me an illustrated A.B.C. book and dictionary published in Tokyo in the year 1873 for the use of students of English. A is for "air," B is for "breath" (both wonderfully enough are illustrated with sketches), whilst P is for "parapet" and here the artist seems to have gone wrong because he has illustrated it with the well developed upper anterior portion of the torso of a woman. There seems also to be some error in the illustration against N for "naval," where the artist has drawn the front view of the abdomen of a sumo wrestler!
Workmen and porters in Japan (or coolies as the foreign press and literature of those days preferred to call them) wore during the summer months a single garment known by the musical name of a G-string, which ancient outfit although exactly one garment less than a modern Bikini swim-suit did in fact represent about a yard more of material! Those sights so offended the foreigners of those days that the Japanese authorities in Yokohama posted notices in Japanese reading in part as follows:
Those who come from divers places to Yokohama and make their living as porters, carters, labourers, coolies and boatmen are in the habit, especially in the summer, of plying their calling in a state bordering on nudity. This is very reprehensible and in future no one who does not wear a shirt or tunic properly closed by a girdle will be allowed to remain in Yokohama....
An Imperial Rescript was later issued on the subject of dress, and police regulations provided that the police should remonstrate with those who exposed their bodies unnecessarily.
That those regulations did result in some change, slight though it may have been, is evident from the following description of a rickshaw-man's clothing as seen by the wife of a British Ambassador when she arrived in Japan some years later
His clothes were of the impressionist kind, some rather slight good intentions carried out in cool blue cotton, the rest being brown man and straw sandals.
Arising out of the police regulations governing dress there was what came to be known as the Jonas Case—one of those antics which threw the foreign community into such fits of indignation that the Kobe Chronicle devoted three learned and lengthy leading articles to the subject. The days of extraterritoriality had just come to an end and foreigners had become subject to Japanese law. It was a hot summer day and Mrs. Jonas was passing down Shin-saibashi-suji in Osaka in a rickshaw with her seven-year-old daughter who was wearing a light sleeveless summer dress, whereupon a policeman put them under temporary restraint and then ordered the child home to dress properly!
The Governor of Osaka made a form of apology and the policeman was reprimanded, but at this late date we extend a word of sympathy to that confused man. If he had ever seen in those days a foreign woman bathing at the seaside clad in tunic and bloomers, not the modern brief variety but flounced and gathered in below the knee and firmly anchored with buttons and bows, with cotton stockings (and black ones at that), sandshoes and hat, he must surely have believed that foreign women considered it a mortal sin to show any flesh. He could hardly have been expected to know that it is fashion not logic which dictates what portions of the human frame may be displayed.
When the Japanese commenced to adopt Western dress, the etiquette associated with that portion of male clothing known as trousers proved to be the most puzzling, particularly in the finer points that the buttons must never be released from the buttonholes in public, and must be replaced in the buttonholes in private. That a button out of position could so scandalise our great-grandmothers when young as to throw them into a swoon, but can if necessary be suffered in fortitude by women of today without calling for smelling salts and other restoratives, is a fact which indicates that our ideas change. However, the change was not sufficiently great as to render unnecessary the quaintly worded notices in English that appear in the gentlemen's wash rooms of some European hotels where the management strive in a few words to explain the involved etiquette of the trouser-buttons to their Japanese guests.
And here one of the antics of the Occupation—a contribution to the "Now it can be told" secrets—an unofficial "Top Secret." When the female personnel of the Occupation came into Tokyo in 1946, at first the New Kaijo Building, and later other immense blocks of office buildings were converted into quarters for them, a fact that quickly became known to the male personnel occupying quarters in neighbouring buildings, and more particularly to those whose rooms commanded a view, even although a very distant one, of the windows of the female blocks. It was then that the Japanese vendors of binoculars suddenly noticed a considerable increase in sales. So excellent and high-powered were the Japanese binoculars, that even those Occupationaires living at a distance of nearly a mile from the New Kaijo Building were not discouraged in the pursuit of their optical studies.
When a man fell out of a window in his excitement, it was suggested by his pals, at the court of inquiry into the accident, that a few of the girls in the New Kaijo were possibly seeking to carve out a new career for themselves after their return to the States, because they seemed to be practicing in their rooms, to a vast and unseen audience, the art of strip!
There are antics also in the trade notices. The advertising poster in near English that recently appeared drawing attention to the exciting features of a local circus, including "Lady tamer with wild breasts," recalls the advertisement, issued by the cultured pearl producers of Miye Prefecture, which might appeal to some Oriental potentate seeking suitable garb for his dancing girls, but to ladies and gentlemen (if they be gentlemen) about to make a purchase of pearls, the wording must surely prove inept:
.... That's the Pearl.... the apple of the eye to all the fair sex of the world....How the graceful arc of the necklaces rest on your breasts enhance your charm.... how the tiny pearls are growing up.... and looking forward to the happy days when they can adorn your graceful figure....
The chapter will now be brought to a timely end with a quotation from a letter which we received from a Japanese student:
Early summer has come. Trees and Grasses have put on beautiful green clothes. Contrary to nature we have took off our clothes.
MESDAMES
CHRYSANTHEMUM
AND BUTTERFLY
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Shakespeare—King John
When French naval officer Julien Viaud, alias Pierre Loti, came ashore at Nagasaki in 1885 and propositioned a tea-house girl through the medium of one of the local inhabitants, he had no idea that he was providing the background for one of the world's most popular operas. Of course Loti had not done anything original, but he was the first to record his experiences in a book that gained world fame.
More than half a century later the G.I's did everything that L<5ti had done, but by coining the word "shacking-up," they attempted to express in one word all that Pierre
Loti had put into a whole book. At any rate Madame Chrysantheme set some minds in the West stirring and the tourist traffic to Japan perceptibly moved upwards. A new cast of characters—and somewhat more respectable ones—a few additions, several dramatic twists and the story then the libretto of Madame Butterfly were born. It then required the musical genius of Puccini to produce an opera that could always be sat through with closed eyes, but with keen enjoyment, if the stage setting proved too disturbing or if poor Cho-Cho San were too monstrous in bulk to look upon. Of course only Japanese or foreigners familiar with Japan ever writhed in their seats and reacted that way. The audiences in the West lapped up the music as they sat enraptured at the pseudo-Japanese scenes that unfolded themselves.
With the Occupation and the advent of air travel, Japanese scenery and customs became so much more widely known to the world abroad that during the postwar years greater attention had to be given to the stage-settings and the production of this opera for Western eyes than in prewar days. Closer attention has also been given to geography—there were occasions when the producers made Cho-Cho San sing that lovely aria Some day he'll come whilst gazing across Nagasaki Harbour at Fuji San in the distance!
Casting Cho-Cho San was always a problem abroad. Not infrequently she was tall, and half as tall as she was wide. For awhile Tamaki Miura proved a solution, but she gained such a liking for Continental cooking that she also became quite a rotund Butterfly.
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