Japan: A Record in Colour. Dorothy Menpes

of the Japanese drama, it seems to me that I cannot do better than describe a day that I once spent with this great master.

      I was taken to see him by Fukuchi, Japan’s most eminent dramatist and the greatest of living writers. We were shown into a small room with spotless mats to await Danjuro’s arrival, and my attention was at once attracted towards an exquisite kakemono that hung on the wall, which was the only decoration the room possessed. It was a picture, a masterpiece, that seemed to suggest one of the early Italian masters; it impressed me tremendously, and I told Fukuchi so. “Ah, I am glad!” he exclaimed, “for Danjuro, the great master, when I told him you were coming and that you were a painter, asked me many questions about you. He took much pains to discover the quality of art that appealed to you, and the side of Nature that you liked the best. He also wished to know your favourite flower, and which kind of blossom you loved the most—whether you preferred, as he did, the single cherry-blossom, or the double. This Danjuro was unable to find out; if he had known he would have chosen a kakemono of flowers for you. But I am glad you like the picture.” I was amazed at the kindness of this man Danjuro. There was no accident about this picture that I admired so vastly: it had been chosen for a definite reason—to give me pleasure. And I afterwards learnt that there is no end to the amount of trouble a Japanese gentleman will take in the choosing of the picture that is to hang in the room where you are being entertained.

      When you enter a house in Japan, the first and one idea is to give you pleasure, and the people of the house will take elaborate pains, almost the care that a detective will take in detecting a crime, to find out, as delicately as possible, your taste in regard to this picture. They will send their servant round to your hotel to find out what flower you have expressly asked to have placed on your table, and that will be the flower that you will find adorning either a kakemono or a vase when entering the house of your friend.

      SUN AND LANTERNS

      This room where Fukuchi and I were waiting looked out upon the garden—a miniature garden, no bigger than an ordinary dining-room, yet perfectly balanced, one that held infinite joys: there were the miniature bridges, lakes, and gold-fish, the mountains, the valleys, and the ancient turtles—all correct as to colour and marked by that exquisite taste which only a Japanese landscape-gardener can display. It was a bright sunlit day, and looking from this room with its perfect masterpiece to the little jewel of a garden, you felt that you were living in another world. And it was all so pure and so “right” that I began to feel hopelessly “wrong.” It seemed that I was the only blot in these perfect surroundings. And at last I became so shy that I really didn’t know what to do with myself, and I felt that the only thing left for me was to take off my clothes and dig a hole in the ground, and then be ashamed that I had left my clothes behind me. However, I controlled my emotions and waited on with Fukuchi until the sliding doors dividing us from the adjoining room were quietly opened and Danjuro appeared. So unlike an actor!—no moving of the eyebrows, no stroking of the hair, but just a simple dignified gentleman, and an old gentleman, quite old. He was a slim, spare man, very refined, with the look of a picture of Buddha by Botticelli. The face was thin and narrow and keen; bright eyes glanced at me from under heavy eyebrows; his manner was magnetic; and I felt at once that he was a great artist. The way his servants saluted him! You could see that they loved him, and yet by the reverence they showed him he might have been a cardinal. I was at once offered exquisite delicacies in little lacquer cups, and we all sat down, on the floor of course, and Danjuro began to talk. One of the first things he said to me, through Fukuchi, who spoke English perfectly, was, “I am told that I have many qualities like your great actor Sir Henry Irving,” and even as he spoke I could trace a distinct facial likeness between the two men. His voice was rich and powerful and his enunciation deliberate; he used his hands quietly, and the expression varied very little except when he was anxious to emphasise, and then the change was extraordinary, while the expression and poses were so admirable that I could almost understand what the man was saying.

      I instinctively felt that the right thing to do was to first talk of the kakemono, and Danjuro, seeing my genuine enthusiasm, smiled and said, without a touch of false modesty, “Yes; it is a great masterpiece!” and then he began to tell me about this picture, and I felt at once that this dignified little gentleman was a true artist.