A long moment later a form appears at the top of the steps. The large bathhouse is lit by a single smal lamp hung from the ceiling, so even if the air were free of steam, it would be hard to make out anything clearly at this distance; now, with the thick steam held down by the evening’s fine rain and prevented from escaping, I cannot discern the identity of the standing figure. Unless it descends one step and its foot goes to the second, and the ful light of the lamp bathes it, addressing this figure as either man or woman is impossible.
The dark shape takes a step down. The stone seems velvet soft; indeed, to judge by the sound alone, one could easily believe the shape hasn’t moved at al . But now the outline swims hazily into view. Being an artist, my senses are unusual y acute when it comes to the human frame. The moment the ambiguous figure moves, I understand that the person in the bathroom with me is a woman.
Before I can decide, as I float there, whether to warn her of my presence, the woman has appeared in her ful ness before me. As I see her there, deep within the warm brimming steam that the mil ion soft particles of light have tinged a hazy pink, her black hair drifting about her like a cloud, and her body held poised and erect, al thoughts of politeness, decorum, and moral conduct flee my mind; I am gripped by the single fervent conviction that I have discovered the subject for a splendid painting.
I cannot speak for classical Greek sculpture, but certainly those nudes that contemporary French artists are so committed to painting give me clear evidence of a striving to depict the blatant splendor of the human flesh, as wel as keen disappointment at the lack of any real grace and refinement in the depiction. At the time I merely registered the fact that these works are somehow vulgar, but I realize now that I have al this time been troubled by my failure to understand the reason for their lack of taste. If the flesh is clothed, the beauty of it is hidden; but unless it is hidden, it becomes vulgar. Today’s artists of the nude do not limit their skil s to depicting the vulgarity of the unhidden; they are not content simply to present the human form denuded of its clothes. They do their best to thrust the naked figure out into the world of the ful y dressed. They forget that being dressed is the normal state of man, and they attempt to bestow complete authority on the naked form. In their eagerness to cry out to the viewer, “Look, here is a nude!†they push beyond al natural bounds. When technique reaches such extremes, people are likely to judge it as a vulgar coercion of the viewer. The attempt to make a beautiful thing appear yet more beautiful only detracts from its intrinsic beauty. “Riches breed loss,†as the old saying about worldly affairs goes.
Reverie and innocence signify composure of mind, which is a necessary condition for painting, poetry, and indeed literature in general. The greatest evil in our present age of art is that the tide of civilization has swept artists along on its crest, goading them to an incessant state of pettiness and fussiness. The nude in art is a good example. The city has what are known as geisha, who trade in the art of flirtation and the erotic. In their dealings with the client, their only expressions are those calculated to make themselves appear as attractive as possible to him. Year after year the catalogs of our gal eries are fil ed with nude beauties who resemble these geisha. Never for an instant do they forget their nakedness; indeed, their flesh squirms with the effort to display it to the viewer.
The graceful beauty before my eyes at this moment has about her not one jot of this crude worldliness. Normal people who divest themselves of their clothes thereby lower themselves to the baser realm of human existence, but she is as natural as a figure conjured from the cloudy realms of the age of the gods, innocent of any necessity for clothes and draperies.
The warm steam that is inundating the room continues to pour forth even though the room is already flooded with it to ful ness. In the spring evening, the room’s light is shattered and diffused into semitransparency, al asway in a world of dense rainbows, and from these cloudy depths, hazily, the pale figure gradual y swims into view. Even the blackness of her hair is softened to the point of obscurity. Look at the contours of that shape!
A line begins lightly and modestly at the nape of the neck, then draws in from both sides to slide easily down and over the shoulders, breaks into ample curves that flow on down the arms til they no doubt final y part ways at the fingers. Beneath the ful swel ing breasts, the waves of line recede momentarily, to swel smoothly out again in the gentle curve of her abdomen. The line of force then slips around behind the form, and where the tension of the line gives out, the two columns of flesh tend slightly forward to balance it. The knees now receive the lines and reverse them, and when those long undulations have traveled to the heels, the flat plane of the feet brings al this intricacy to rest in effortless completion at the soles.
The world could hold no more complex tension of forces, and none more unified. One could discover no contours more natural, more soft and unresisting, less troubling than these.
Moreover, this shape is not thrust blatantly before my eyes, revealed like a common nude. The perfection of its beauty is only modestly intimated, hinted in an ethereal atmosphere in which al is transformed to profound subtlety. Like some apparition of a mythic dragon suggested to the imagination’s eye by a few brief flecks of scale within a brushstroke wash, the shape is replete with a subtle air, a warmth, an unfathomable depth that satisfies every instinct of the artistic sensibility. If minutely depicting every scale on a dragon becomes ludicrous, then equivalently, veiling a naked figure from ful and flagrant exposure to the eye resonates with a hidden profundity. Gazing upon this form, my eyes seem to be beholding some faery moon maiden, fled from her lunar realm, hesitating a moment before me as the pursuing rainbows swarm about her.
The white form grows increasingly distinct. Another step, and this delightful moon maiden may, alas, descend into the common world—but just as the thought crosses my mind, her jet-black hair swirls suddenly like the tail of the mythic turtle that cleaves the waves, starting a sinuous undulation rippling along its length, and up the stairs the white figure leaps, rending the swirling veils of steam as it goes. A woman’s clear peal of laughter echoes away down the corridor; in its wake, the bathroom fal s quiet.
I gulp in a mouthful of hot water and stand stock-stil in the bathtub, while startled waves lap at my chest, spil ing with a soft whoosh over the tub’s edge.
CHAPTER 8
I take tea with the master of the house, Mr. Shioda. The other guests present are the abbot of Kankaiji temple, who introduces himself as Daitetsu, and a layman, a young man of twenty-four or -five.
Taking a right turn along the corridor from my door and then a left at the end has led me to the old gentleman’s room, which is down at the far end. The room is a six-mat one, about twelve feet by nine, and a large, low sandalwood table occupies the center, imparting an unexpectedly cramped feeling to the space. Instead of the usual cushions surrounding it, there’s a carpet with a woven flower design. It is no doubt Chinese.
In its center is a hexagon containing a scene depicting a rather strange house and an odd wil ow. The surrounding ground is an almost steel-blue indigo, and at each corner is a brown circle, through which is woven an arabesque design. I doubt that such a thing would actual y be found in a Chinese sitting room, but it is certainly most intriguing here, in place of the normal cushions. Just as the worth of an Indian cotton print or a Persian wal hanging lies in its slight oddness, so this flowered carpet’s generosity and lack of fuss constitute its tastefulness. Al such Chinese household furnishings, indeed, have the same rather dul and unimaginative quality. One is forced to the conclusion that they’re the inventions of a race of patient and slightly slowwitted people. The special value of these objects is the way they daze and bemuse the viewer. Japan’s works of art, on the other hand, are created with al a pickpocket’s fine-tuned alertness. The West creates on a grand and detailed scale, which can never quite free itself of the reek of worldliness.