Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/105



Japanese works of Western art are sometimes beautiful; but I can say positively that I have had no experience of being carried away by them as by good old Japanese art. There is always something of effort and even pretence which are decidedly modern productions. I will say that it is at the best a borrowed art, not a thing inseparable from us. I ask myself why those artists of the Western school must be loyal to a pedantry of foreign origin as if they had the responsibility for its existence. It would be a blessing if we could free ourselves in some measure, through the virtue of Western art, from the world of stagnation in feeling and thought. I have often declared that it was the saviour of Oriental art, as the force of difference in element is important for rejuvenation. But what use is it to get another pedantry from the West in the place of the old one? I have thought more than once that our importation of foreign art is a flat failure. It may be that we must wait some one hundred Rh