Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/354

 man, and by the latter, generally an ill-educated, vulgar person, artists and art-artisans were taught to interpret in undeservedly low terms the requirements of the foreign trader and, vicariously, the tendencies of foreign taste. They were taught something else also. It became their business to devote the resources of their skill not merely to imitating, but also to forging, the works of the old masters. Imitation is fair enough so long as it is frank; but when its purpose is to pass off a counterfeit for a genuine object, the artist himself suffers more than the purchaser. The latter acquires at any rate a specimen of fine workmanship, but the former learns to think that successful simulation is the highest aim of his art, that it is hopeless to win fame by his own unequivocal efforts, and that, even though conscious of being able to surpass the masters whose productions he is required to imitate, he must subserve his talents to the demands of an avaricious middle-man and an undiscerning public. The science of forgery in Japan was not invented in modern times. The reader has seen that among the noted experts of former eras, some are remembered for their skill in re-producing old masterpieces. Craft of that kind will always be practised so long as humanity is human. But in no pre-Metji period did there exist an organised conspiracy to deceive the public; its discovery would have been inevitable. The element needed to make such a thing possible was a foreign market. The foreign buyer is an ideal victim. He has no direct access to the artist and cannot form any accurate conception of the latter's capacities or make any scrutiny into the methods he is pursuing. The statements of the middle-man are his gospel—statements transmitted through an inter-