Chinese Paintings
Three brief reflections on Chinese painting reveal Akutagawa’s eye for the point where exact observation gives way to spirit. A solitary pine by Ni Zan seems more alive than literal realism; a Song painting of lotuses and a heron possesses a continental weight unlike the lightness of Japanese art; and Jin Nong’s monsters, gathered among desolate trees, appear lovable rather than merely grotesque. Moving between celebrated painters, private collections, and memories of works seen in China and Japan, Akutagawa asks what makes an image true. His answer lies neither in faithful imitation nor in strangeness for its own sake, but in the depth of vision that allows nature, character, and even the supernatural to breathe through ink.
The Pine-Tree Picture
I have seen only one work by Ni Yunlin. It belonged to the Xuantong Emperor and was in an album called Marvels of Past and Present. Most of the paintings in that album appeared to have come from the former collection of Dong Qichang.
There were also three or four hanging scrolls in the Wenhua Hall attributed to Yunlin. Yet beside the vigorous pine in that album, they were works of far inferior quality.
I saw Wu Zhen’s ink bamboo, Huang Gongwang’s landscapes, and Wang Meng’s waterfall—not the waterfall in the Wenhua Hall, but the one in Chen Baochen’s collection. Whether it was the force of the artist’s spirit that compelled me to bow my head, none equaled Yunlin’s pine.
The pine rises perfectly straight into the sky from among pointed rocks. Across its crown lie angular banks of cloud and mist, like quartz. That is all the scene contains. Yet no one but Yunlin ever entered this world of utter seclusion. Even a master such as Huang Gongwang stopped short of setting foot there—to say nothing of the painters of the Ming and Qing.
It is said that in Southern School painting, once the unfettered spirit within the breast has been expressed, nothing else need be asked. But does not nature live, almost palpably, even in this pine drawn with ink alone? Oil painting is said to reproduce truth. Yet nature’s light and shadow cannot remain identical for a single instant. Shall we call Monet’s roses true and Yunlin’s pine false? In the end, does it not all depend on what we mean by the words? I remember thinking such things as I looked at the picture.
The Lotus and Heron Picture
In a Song-dynasty painting owned by Mr. Shiga Naoya, lotus blossoms and a heron are depicted. The lotuses of painters such as Shen Nanpin come closer than this picture to what is usually called sketching from life. The thinness of the petals and the sheen on the leaves are rendered more literally. But they have none of this painting’s air of spacious, ethereal serenity.
Every flower and every leaf in this painting’s lotuses possesses a calm, weighty composure. The seedpod in particular retains a metallic beauty upon the time-darkened silk, making one feel the very weight of the seeds. Nor is the heron merely an ordinary heron. If one stroked the feathers on its back against the grain, their tips seem as though they would press sharply into the palm. This grave impression made by the whole is absent not only from modern painting. It can be found only in the paintings of our neighboring country, rooted in the climate and soil of the continent.
Japanese painting is of course kin to Chinese painting. Yet this tenacity is not found even in Japan’s old paintings or its Southern School works. Japanese painting has more lightness, and at the same time more tenderness. Even the fish of Bada Shanren and the birds of Silla seem too robust to swim beneath Ike no Taiga’s crags or perch in Buson’s trees. Chinese painting, it appears, is in fact far less like Japanese painting than one might have imagined.
The Picture of Ghostly Delights
In the collection of Mr. Fang Ruo of Tianjin there was a rare hanging scroll by Jin Nong, also known as Dongxin. On a sheet of paper roughly two feet by one, it portrayed all manner of supernatural creatures.
I had once seen a photographic reproduction of what was called Luo Ping’s Picture of Ghostly Delights. Luo Ping was Jin Nong’s pupil, so the prototype of that picture may perhaps be found in a work like this. In the reproduction, Luo Ping’s creatures possessed an uncanny eeriness. Jin Nong’s have none of that spectral menace; instead, each is lovable. If such creatures existed, the night itself would be brighter than day. Looking at them gathered among the desolate trees, I thought that monsters were not to be treated with contempt.
There is a German-made book, whose title I forget, devoted entirely to pictures of monsters. Most of the creatures in it are no more than fairground signboards. Even the best of them carry something strangely unnatural, something morbid. Jin Nong’s creatures lack this quality not merely because his standpoint was different. The eyes of this monk, living on gruel in his hermitage after renouncing the world, were fixed upon something farther away.
Was it Mr. Kishida Ryusei who found “the smile of the soul” in the grotesque faces of Hanshan and Shide? Add a touch of mischief behind that “smile of the soul,” and you have Jin Nong’s monsters: lovable beings of strange kind and stranger shape, some weeping and some laughing, in the pale twilight of this ink painting.