Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/67

 work of the great artists. The noble club men contribute specimens from their collections of lacquer, porcelain, ivories, bronzes, and kakemonos. Behind glass doors hang kakemonos by the great artists, and Japanese visitors gaze with reverence on the masterpieces of the Kano and Tosa schools. The great art treasures of the empire are sequestrated in private houses and godowns, and to acquire familiarity with them, to undertake an art education in semiannual instalments by grace of the Fine Arts Club, is a discouraging endeavor. It would be more hopeful to seek the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the British Museum, or Mr. Walters's Baltimore galleries, which contain an epitome of all Japanese art. At the Tokio Club, however, works of Sosen and Hokusai, the two masters of the last century, are often exhibited. Sosen painted inimitable monkeys, and connoisseurs of to-day award him the tardy fame which his contemporaries failed to give. As a rule, foreigners prefer Hokusai to all other masters, and they search old book-shops in the hope of stumbling upon one of the innumerable books illustrated and sometimes engraved by this prolific genius. His genius never lacked recognition, and a century ago all feudal Yeddo went wild over his New-year's cards, each one a characteristic and unique bit of landscape, caricature, or fantasy. His fourteen volumes of Mangwa, or rough sketches, and his One Hundred Views of Fuji are most celebrated; but wonderfully clever are his jokes, his giants, dwarfs, demons, goblins, and ghosts; and when he died, at the age of ninety, he sighed that he could not live long enough to paint something which he should himself esteem. After the visit to the club Sanjiro takes his patron to the tomb of Hokusai, in a near-by temple yard, and shows the brushes hung up by despairing and prayerful artists, who would follow his immortal methods.

East of Uyeno stands the great Asakusa temple, shrine 51