Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/75

Rh the last two decades of his life, Japan had begun to turn slowly but surely towards Occidental civilization. It is customary to speak of the Restoration in 1867 as the period when this change of sentiment first made itself distinctly manifest. But the calculation is nearly half a century late.

Officialdom, indeed, still adhered firmly to the traditional policy of seclusion handed down from the days when the intemperance of Christian propagandists and the jealousies of warring creeds lent to foreign intercourse a startling and deterrent aspect. But in spite of officialdom with its iron rule and pitiless penalties, intrepid reformers among the people stealthily studied Occidental systems, and with wonderful patience struggled to emerge from the intellectual isolation to which their country had been condemned for more than two centuries. Watanabe was among these pioneers. He fell under suspicion and his pictures helped to bear witness against him; eloquent witness, for the talent they displayed could scarcely fail to popularize the heresy they represented. He received the fatal order which every samurai was bound to obey unflinchingly, the order to commit suicide. But his work survived. It would have been more consistent with the heroic methods of those days had every picture painted by him been burned, or buried with his decapitated corpse. That extremity was not resorted to, however, and on the fiftieth anniversary of his death “new Japan” did homage to his memory by bringing together a large collection of his works at the Reigan temple in Tokyo, and exhibiting them for two days while the priests chaunted litanies and recited masses for the repose of the ill-fated painter’s soul. At the edge of the dais supporting the high altar lay an object of sad interest. It was the sword with which Watanabe had committed seppuku, and it rested on the same tray of white pine from which the artist had taken it at the supreme moment. Beside it was placed the