Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/106

Rh years at least before we can make it perfectly Japanised, just as we spent many years before thoroughly digesting Chinese art; but we have not a few pessimists who can prove that it is not altogether the same case. Although I have said that the foreign pedantry greatly troubles the Japanese work of Western art, I do not mean that it will create the same effect as upon Western artists. Iam told the following story:

A year or two ago a certain Italian, who had doubtless a habit of buying pictures (with little of real taste in art, as is usually the case with a picture-buyer), went to see the art exhibition of the Taiheiyo Gakwai Club held at Uyeno Park, and bought many pictures on the spot, as he thought they were clever work of the Japanese school. Alas, the artists meant them to be oil paintings of the Western type! The Italian's stupidity is inexcusable; but did they indeed appear to him so different from his work at home? The saddest part is that they are so alien to our Japanese feeling in general; consequently they have little sympathy with the masses. It is far away yet for their work to become an art of general possession; it can be said it is not good art when it cannot at once enter into the heart. It is not right at all to condemn only the Western art in Japan, as any other thing of foreign origin is equally in the stage of mere trial. I often wonder about the real meaning of the modern civilisation