The samisen awoke in me the long-forgotten memories of my boyhood days, when I used to go out into my father’s garden and sit under three pine trees, to listen to O-Kura-san, the fair daughter of a sake shop on the other side of the street, sing and play a samisen on calm Spring afternoons.
I was lost in living over again the long past, when the door of the bath room opened. I thought somebody was coming in. Leaving my body buoyant, I turned my eyes only toward the entrance. I had my head resting on that part of the tank which was farthest from the entrance door, so that my eyes covered obliquely the steps leading downward, about seven yards away from me. Nothing as yet appeared before my uplifted eyes: my ears caught only the sound of the rain dropping from the eaves. The plaintive samisen had stopped I did not know when. Presently something appeared at the head of the steps. There was in the room a solitary small hanging oil lamp, which, even at its best, shed but scanty light, to make things clear in their colour; but what, with the rain outside shutting in the vapours, and the whole place filled with a cloud of mist, there could be no telling who it was coming down.
The dim figure carried its foot a step down; but one might have fancied that the step stone was velvety smooth and its stepping so noiseless that it could not have moved at all. The figure became clearer in outline, and an artist as I am, my perception of the build of a body is more accurate than you might have thought, so that, the moment it came a step down, I knew that I was alone with a woman in the bath room. The woman came fully in view before me as I was debating with myself whether I should or should not take any notice of her. The next moment I was lost to all but a beautiful vision. The figure gracefully straightened itself to its full height, with the soft light of the lamp playing about the warm light pink of the upper regions, over which hung a cloud of dark hair. The sight swept away from me all thoughts of formality, decorum and propriety, my only consciousness then being that I had before me a superbly beautiful theme.
Be the ancient Greek sculpture what it is, every time I see a nude picture, which modern French painters make their life of, I miss something in its unuttered power of impression, because of the voluptuous extremes to which effort is made in order to bring out the beauty of the flesh. This feeling has always been a source of mental uneasiness to me, as I could not answer myself exactly why, pictures of this class looked low in taste, as I think they do.
Cover the flesh, its beauty disappears; but uncovering makes it base. The modern art of painting the nude does not stop at the baseness of uncovering; but not content with merely reproducing the figure stripped of its clothing, would make the nude shoulder its way into the world of decorum and ceremony. Forgetting that being wrapped in clothes is the normal state of human life, they are trying to give the nude all the rights. They are striving to bring out strongly the fact of being stark-naked, emphasizing the point excessively, indeed, over-excessively beyond fullness. Art carried to this extreme debases itself, in proportion as it coerces one who looks at it. The beautiful begins, as a rule, to look the less beautiful, the more beautiful it is struggled to make it appear. This is precisely what, in human affairs, gives life to the proverb, “fullness is the beginning of waning.”
Care-freeness and innocence generally present something comfortably in reserve, which latter is an indispensable condition in paintings as in literature. The great failing of modern art is its labouring in the mud, which the so-called tide of civilization is depositing everywhere. The painting of the nude is a good example of it. In Japanese cities are what are called the geisha, who traffic in their own beauty. These demi-mondes know not how to express themselves, but are concerned about how they may look in the eyes of those who come for their company. The yearly salon catalogues are full of pictures of the nude, who are like these geisha. They are not only unable to forget that they are naked, but they are bringing every muscle of their bodies into full play to show that they are nude.
Not a trace of all that pertains to this vulgar atmosphere was about the exquisitely beautiful vision before me. To say “being stripped of clothes” would be descending to the human level; but the vision before me was as natural as one called into life in a world of snow in the age of gods, when there was no clothes to wear, nor any sleeves to put hands through.
Cloud after cloud of vapour rolled and tumbled in the half transparent light, and a world of trembling rainbows hung in the midst of which rose a snow white form, shading upward into mistily black hair. Oh, that dreamy figure!
The two lines that inwardly met at the neck, slanted gracefully downward over the shoulders, and bent roundly ending in five tapering fingers. The plump chest heaving and unheaving sent its slow undulations downward and a pair of
