Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/291

Rh fore no distinctive term to denote it as a thing set apart and existing by itself.

While this is true, it is also true that Japan furnishes no exception to Mr. Whistler's dictum that "there never was an art-loving nation." The explanation of this seeming paradox is one which needs to be borne in mind. The æsthetic ideals crystallized in the works of the countless generations of artists who for more than a thousand years have held to them firmly as their guiding principles, have become so much the intellectual heritage of the people as a whole that it is most natural that the foreign observer, noting the æsthetic impress upon everything about him, should look upon the Japanese as a nation of artists. To an extent not known elsewhere the Japanese mechanic is indeed an art-isan. And there is a measure of truth in Percival Lowell's assertion that there are "no mechanical arts in Japan simply because all such have been raised to the position of fine arts." From the Japanese point of view, however, differences in degree of artistic perception are as pronounced among the Japanese as among other peoples. In Japan, as in all other lands, artistic inspiration is given to but few among the many; artists having creative genius tower high above their fellows; and the little touches that excite the wonder and admiration of the outside world are seen to be in large degree the outcome of conventional notions rather than the expression of individual feeling.