Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/84

RV 62 as Gekkei, Keibun, Hoyen, Kikuchi Yosai, Kōrin and Bunrin, it is for the same reason that has compelled the omission from other sections of any detailed account of the works and styles of scores of other famous masters, from the early Tosa and Kano celebrities to Tani Buncho and Hokusai.

What is the present condition of pictorial art in Japan, and what are its prospects? The former question has been answered more than once in a pessimistic strain. Japan is said to have outlived the manners and customs from which her old art derived vitality, and to have entered upon a phase of existence so permeated with Occidental influences that her artists, like her tailors and her barbers, cannot resist the change. Surely that is a superficial view. It involves the assumption that her art has no elements permanently worthy of preservation, no intrinsic merits fit to survive independently of environment. The fact is that if the present era is without giants of the brush, like Okio or Sosen, it is not without masters of great talent and high technical skill. Twenty years ago, Bunrin died in Kyōtō: an artist of whom it has been well said that he "fixed upon paper and silk with exquisite refinement and suggestiveness the most striking of the atmospheric effects that cast a fairyland glamour over the scenery of Japan." At a yet more recent date died Shöfu Kiyōsai, a genre painter of immense versatility, force, and humour, who has left a gallery of pictures showing a wide range of conception and study. Still more recently these strong representatives of the Shi-jo and the Popular schools, respectively, were followed to the grave by Ganki, generally known as Chikudo Ganki, who ranks not much below Ganku,