VI. ARCHITECTURE

Temples—Palaces—The shrine of Iyeyasu—Homes

In the year 594 the Empress Suiko, being convinced of the truth or utility of Buddhism, ordered the building of Buddhist temples throughout her realm. Prince Shotoku, who was entrusted with carrying out this edict, brought in from Korea priests, architects, wood-carvers, bronze founders, clay modelers, masons, gilders, tile-makers, weavers, and other skilled artisans.⁵⁸ This vast cultural importation was almost the beginning of art in Japan, for Shinto had frowned upon ornate edifices and had countenanced no figures to misrepresent the gods. From that moment Buddhist shrines and statuary filled the land. The temples were essentially like those of China, but more richly ornamented and more delicately carved. Here, too, majestic torii, or gateways, marked the ascent or approach to the sacred retreat; bright colors adorned the wooden walls, great beams held up a tiled roof gleaming under the sun, and minor structures—a drum-tower, e.g., or a pagoda—mediated between the central sanctuary and the surrounding trees. The greatest achievements of the foreign artists was the group of temples at Horiuji, raised under the guidance of Prince Shotoku near Nara about the year 616. It stands to the credit of the most living of building materials that one of these wooden edifices has survived unnumbered earthquakes and outlasted a hundred thousand temples of stone; and it stands to the glory of the builders that nothing erected in later Japan has surpassed the simple majesty of this oldest shrine. Perhaps as beautiful, and only slightly younger, are the temples of Nara itself, above all the perfectly proportioned Golden Hall of the Todaiji Temple there; Nara, says Ralph Adams Cram, contains “the most precious architecture in all Asia.”⁵⁹

The next zenith of building in Japan came under the Ashikaga Shogunate. Yoshimitsu, resolved to make Kyoto the fairest capital on earth, built for the gods a pagoda 360 feet high; for his mother the Takakura Palace, of which a single door cost 20,000 pieces of gold ($150,000); for himself a Flower Palace, that consumed $5,000,000; and the Golden Pavilion of Kinkakuji for the glory of all.⁶⁰ Hideyoshi too tried to rival Kublai Khan, and built at Momoyama a “Palace of Pleasure” which his whim tore down again a few years after its completion; we may judge its magnificence from the “day long portal” removed from it to adorn the temple of Nishi-Hongwan; all day long, said its admirers, one might gaze at that carved portal without exhausting its excellence. Kano Yeitoku played Ictinus and Pheidias to Hideyoshi, but adorned his buildings with Venetian splendor rather than with Attic restraint; never had Japan, or Asia, seen such abounding decoration before. Under Hideyoshi, too, the gloomy Castle of Osaka took form, to dominate the Pittsburgh of Japan, and become the death-place of his son.

Iyeyasu inclined rather to philosophy and letters than to art; but after his death his grandson, Iyemitsu, content himself with a wooden shanty for his palace, lavished the resources of Japanese wealth and art to build around the ashes of Iyeyasu at Nikko the fairest memorial ever raised to any individual in the Far East. Here, ninety miles from Tokyo, on a quiet hill reached by a shaded avenue of stately cryptomerias, the architects of the Shogun laid down first a series of spacious and gradual approaches, then an ornate but lovely Yo-mei-mon Gate, then, by a brook crossed with a sacred and untouchable bridge, a series of mausolea and temples in lacquered wood, femininely beautiful and frail. The decoration is extravagant, the construction is weak, the omnipresent red paint flares like a hectic rouge amid the modest green of the trees; and yet a country incarnadined with blossoms every spring may need brighter colors to express its spirit than those that might serve and please a less impassioned race.

We cannot quite call this architecture great, for the demon of earthquake has willed that Japan should build on a timid scale, and not pile stones into the sky to crash destructively when the planet wrinkles its skin. Hence the homes are of wood and seldom rise beyond a story or two; only the repeated experience of fire and the reiterated commands of the government prevailed upon the citizens of the cities, when they could afford it, to cover their wooden cottages and palaces with roofs of the. The aristocracy, unable to raise their mansions into the clouds, spread them spaciously over the earth, despite an imperial edict limiting the size of a dwelling to 240 yards square. A palace was rarely one building; usually it was a main structure connected by covered walks with subordinate edifices for various groups in the family. There was no distinction of dining-room, living-room or bedroom; the same chamber could serve any purpose, for at a moment’s notice a table might be laid down upon the matted floor, or the rolled up bedding might be taken from its hiding-place and spread out for the night. Sliding panels or removable partitions separated or united the rooms, and even the latticed or windowed walls were easily folded up to give full play to the sun, or the cooling evening air. Pretty blinds of split bamboo offered shade and privacy. Windows were a luxury; in the poorer homes the summer light found many openings, which in winter were blocked up with oiled paper to keep out the cold. Japanese architecture gives the appearance of having been born in the tropics, and of having been transported too recklesssly into islands that stretch up their necks to shivering Kamchatka. In the more southern towns these fragile and simple homes have a style and beauty of their own, and offer appropriate dwellings for the once gay children of the sun.