Page:A Grammar of Japanese Ornament and Design (1880).djvu/43

25 If we study the decorative art of the Japanese, we find the essential elements of beauty in design—Fitness for the purpose which the object is intended to fulfil, good workmanship and constructive soundness, which give a value to the commonest article, and some touch of ornament by a skilful hand, together creating a true work of art.

Japanese art may now be said to have culminated, and to have shown all that it is capable of producing, and it is with pain we perceive that the hour of decadence has arrived, for all modern Japanese work shows the inability of the artist to preserve its original delicacy, or to blend it harmoniously with foreign elements. No student can fail to recognize the signs of impotence and the depreciation of taste. It may not be too late to awaken the Japanese to a sense of the wrong they are doing to their national art, in which they might, if they so chose, continue supreme; but should their intuitive taste be overlaid by imitations of European vulgarities, it is no unimportant task to preserve the records of the most brilliant period in the artistic life of a singularly gifted people.