Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/86

RV 64 public shall be satisfied. Dozens of studios are devoted to the manufacture of painted parodies which no Japanese connoisseur would regard as pictures, and not a bric-à-brac store is without rolls and albums of weak daubs poured out from these workshops. On the evidence of such paintings it is that the great majority of foreign critics base their estimate of modern Japan's pictorial ability, ignorant that they have before them merely a staple of foreign trade, not an effort of Japanese art.

Apart from this commercial taint, which, after all, is a mere accident, the influx of Western ideas shows itself in two directions: it has called into existence a school based solely and faithfully on the art of the Occident, and it has given new vitality to a school which, while using the old materials and following the old lines, recognises the value of Western principles as to perspective and chiaroscuro, and endeavours to engraft them upon the traditional art of the nation.

Concerning the purely Western school, a few words will suffice. Its students have virtually neither patrons, nor opportunities, nor instructors. There is no place in a Japanese house for their paintings. There are no studios which they can attend, no galleries which they can visit. Their means, with very rare exceptions, are altogether too scanty to permit travel in Europe or America, and at home they are without teachers to guide their hand or examples to educate their eye. Finally, public sentiment is opposed to their radicalism. Yet for thirty years they have struggled with such extraordinary courage and perseverance against these terribly adverse circumstances that it seems impossible to doubt their