Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/90

RV 68 foreign methods. But he did not carry this tendency to the length of attracting political censorship. He showed it rather in the undefined though still palpable manner of the modern master Watanabe Seitei, who enjoys in Europe and America the highest, though not, perhaps, the most highly deserved, reputation of any living Japanese artist. The hybrid school of the present day, however, goes far beyond the dubious adaptations of Hokusai or Seitei. It has proposed to itself the same problem that Watanabe Kwazan partially solved sixty years ago,—the problem of preserving the characteristics of Japanese painting while adopting all the technical teachings of the West. Hashimoto Gaho stands at the head of this school. He has talent sufficient to secure partial success for any effort. But if there be any justice in the estimate here set down of the distinctive characteristics of Japanese pictorial art, the conclusion must be that to marry it to the art of the West would be to deprive it of its individuality, and therefore of much of its charm.