VII

Chilly! With a towel in hand I went downstairs for a warm dip. Leaving my clothes in a small chamber, four more steps downward brought me into the bath room which was about eight mats in size. Stones appeared plentiful, in these parts, the floor of the room being paved with fine granite, as was also the tank and its walls. The reservoir which the tank really was, was a hollow in the centre of the floor, about four feet deep and about as many feet square. This was a hot spring which contained, no doubt, various mineral ingredients; but the water in the basin was perfectly clear and transparent, and tasteless and without odour as well, as some finding its way into the mouth testified. The spring is said to possess medical virtues, but I did not know for what kind of ailments, as I have not taken the trouble to find out. Nor was I subject to any chronic disease, and this phase of the matter had never occurred to me. Only a line of poetry that comes to me, every time I take a dip is that of the Chinese poet Pai Le-tien:

“Soft and warm the water of the spring,
All impurities are cleansed away.”

A mention of a spring awakens in me the pleasant feeling which this couplet expresses, and I hold that no hot spring deserves to be called by that name unless it makes one feel that way. This is an ideal, apart from which I have no demand to make of any hot spring.

Clear up to a little under my chin the pleasant warm water in the tank reached and was indeed overflowing beautifully on all sides, without making it known where it was welling up from.

Resting my head, with face upward, on the back of my hands which held on to the slightly raised side of the tank, I let my body rise up to the point of least resistance and I felt my soul float buoyantly like the jellyfish. Life is easy in this state of existence. You unlock the door of prudence and cast all desires to the Four Winds, and become part of the hot water, leaving it completely to the hot water to make what it likes of you. The more floating, the less is the pain to live for that which floats. There will be more blessings than to have become a disciple of Jesus Christ, for one who lets even one’s soul float. At this rate, even drowning is not without its picturesqueness. I have forgotten what piece, but I think I remember reading Swinburne, where the poet depicts a woman rejoicing in her eternal peaceful rest. Millais’ Ophelia, which has ever been a source of sentimental uneasiness to me, offers also something aesthetic, when viewed in this light. Why he should have chosen so unpleasant a scene has always been a puzzle to me; but now I saw that it made an artistic production. A form, a figure, a look, floating in sweet painlessness, as it were, whether on the surface, or under water or floating and sinking, is indisputably aesthetic. With wild flowers judiciously sprinkled on the banks and the water, the floating one, and the floating one’s dress, making a harmonious and well arranged ensemble of colours, it will without fail make a picture. But if the floating one’s expression were nothing but peace itself, the picture would almost make only a mythology or an allegory, while convulsive pain will, on the other hand, destroy the whole effect. The expression of a naive and care-unknown face will not bring out human sentiments. What kind of a face should it be to be a success? Millais’ Ophelia may be a success; but I doubt that he is one with me in spirit. However, Millais is Millais and I am I; and I feel like painting a person drowned. But I fancied that the face that I wanted would not easily come to me.

Buoying myself in the bath, I next tried to make poetry of the appreciation of the drowned:

“Will get wet in rain,
Will be cold in frost,
Will be dark underground,
On the wave when floating,
Under the wave when sunk,
Will be painless in warm Spring water.”

It was raining outside, the soft, quiet, warm rain of Spring. The plaintive twang, twang of a samisen heard at a distance on a night like this is a peculiarly appealing sound, and it was catching my ear, as I was humming my extempore song of the drowned. Not that I pretend to know anything about this particular instrument of string music; in fact I am rather dubious about my ear being able to tell any difference of a higher or lower pitch of the second or third string. Nevertheless, with a gentle mercy-like rain putting me in this fame of mind, and even my soul lazily sporting in a delightfully pleasant warm bath, it gladdened my heart to hear floating music, with not a shadow of care within or without me.

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 well-shaped feet, that supported the legs carrying the whole weight of the body, easily solved the complex problem of equipoise and gravitation, presenting a unity so natural, so gentle, and so free from constraint that the like could nowhere else be found.

Withal this figure stood before me, not thrust to view like the ordinary nude, but enveloped in an atmosphere that lends mystery to everything in it; only suggesting, so to speak, the profound loveliness of its beauty behind a thin veil. A few scales in a spread of inky cloud, make one see in fancy the horned monster of a dragon behind the canvas; such is the power of art and spirit behind it. The vision before me, was perfect, as art would have it in its atmosphere, geniality and phantasmality. If it be true that painting carefully six times six, thirty-six scales of a dragon can only end in a ludicrousness, there is a psychic charm in gazing not too clearly at the stark nakedness of a body. When the figure appeared before my eyes I fancied to see in it a heavenly maiden, fled from the moon, standing hesitatingly, being hard pressed by the chasing aurora.

The figure gradually rose out of the water, and I feared that a step more would make it a thing of this fallen world. But just in the nick of time, the black hair shook like a magician’s wand calling for wind, and the snowy vision swept through the whirling cloud of steam and flew up the steps to the doorway. A moment later a woman’s ringing chuckle sounded on the other side of the door, leaving dying echoes behind in the still quiet of the bath room. The agitated water of the tank washing over my face, I stood on my feet, and its waves beat me about my chest. The water overflowed from the bath with a noise.