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Page 45
Almost immediately after the beginning of hostilities, thousands of
"war pictures"--mostly cheap lithographs--were published. The drawing
and coloring were better than those of the prints issued at the
time of the war with China; but the details were to a great extent
imaginary,--altogether imaginary as to the appearance of Russian
troops. Pictures of the engagements with the Russian fleet were
effective, despite some lurid exaggeration. The most startling things
were pictures of Russian defeats in Korea, published before a single
military engagement had taken place;--the artist had "flushed to
anticipate the scene." In these prints the Russians were depicted
as fleeing in utter rout, leaving their officers--very fine-looking
officers--dead upon the field; while the Japanese infantry, with
dreadfully determined faces, were coming up at a double. The propriety
and the wisdom of thus pictorially predicting victory, and easy
victory to boot, may be questioned. But I am told that the custom of
so doing is an old one; and it is thought that to realize the common
hope thus imaginatively is lucky. At all events, there is no attempt
at deception in these pictorial undertakings;--they help to keep up
the public courage, and they ought to be pleasing to the gods.
Some of the earlier pictures have now been realized in grim fact.
The victories in China had been similarly foreshadowed: they amply
justified the faith of the artist.... To-day the war pictures continue
to multiply; but they have changed character. The inexorable truth
of the photograph, and the sketches of the war correspondent, now
bring all the vividness and violence of fact to help the artist's
imagination. There was something na�ve and theatrical in the drawings
of anticipation; but the pictures of the hour represent the most
tragic reality,--always becoming more terrible. At this writing, Japan
has yet lost no single battle; but not a few of her victories have
been dearly won.
To enumerate even a tenth of the various articles ornamented with
designs inspired by the war--articles such as combs, clasps, fans,
brooches, card-cases, purses--would require a volume. Even cakes and
confectionery are stamped with naval or military designs; and the
glass or paper windows of shops--not to mention the signboards--have
pictures of Japanese victories painted upon them. At night the shop
lanterns proclaim the pride of the nation in its fleets and armies;
and a whole chapter might easily be written about the new designs in
transparencies and toy lanterns. A new revolving lantern--turned by
the air-current which its own flame creates--has become very popular.
It represents a charge of Japanese infantry upon Russian defenses;
and holes pierced in the colored paper, so as to produce a continuous
vivid flashing while the transparency revolves, suggest the exploding
of shells and the volleying of machine guns.
Some displays of the art-impulse, as inspired by the war, have been
made in directions entirely unfamiliar to Western experience,--in
the manufacture, for example, of women's hair ornaments and dress
materials. Dress goods decorated with war pictures have actually
become a fashion,--especially cr�pe silks for underwear, and figured
silk linings for cloaks and sleeves. More remarkable than these
are the new hairpins;--by hairpins I mean those long double-pronged
ornaments of flexible metal which are called _kanzashi_, and are more
or less ornamented according to the age of the wearer. (The _kanzashi_
made for young girls are highly decorative; those worn by older folk
are plain, or adorned only with a ball of coral or polished stone.)
The new hairpins might be called commemorative: one, of which the
decoration represents a British and a Japanese flag intercrossed,
celebrates the Anglo-Japanese alliance; another represents an
officer's cap and sword; and the best of all is surmounted by a
tiny metal model of a battleship. The battleship-pin is not merely
fantastic: it is actually pretty!
As might have been expected, military and naval subjects occupy a
large place among the year's designs for toweling. The towel designs
celebrating naval victories have been particularly successful: they
are mostly in white, on a blue ground; or in black, on a white ground.
One of the best--blue and white--represented only a flock of gulls
wheeling about the masthead of a sunken iron-clad, and, far away, the
silhouettes of Japanese battleships passing to the horizon.... What
especially struck me in this, and in several other designs, was the
original manner in which the Japanese artist had seized upon the
traits of the modern battleship,--the powerful and sinister lines of
its shape,--just as he would have caught for us the typical character
of a beetle or a lobster. The lines have been just enough exaggerated
to convey, at one glance, the real impression made by the aspect of
these iron monsters,--vague impression of bulk and force and menace,
very difficult to express by ordinary methods of drawing.
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