Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/112

Rh which the Western art seemed to have attained had a great set-back when the pictures were excluded from the National Exhibition in 1890. But in the reaction the artists of the Western school gained more vigour and determination; Shotaro Koyama, Chu Asai, Kiyowo Kawamura, and others were well-known names in those days. Kiyoteru Kuroda and Keiichiro Kume, the beloved students of Raphael Collin, returned home. when the China-Japan war was over; they brought back quite a different art from that with which we had been acquainted hitherto. And they led vigorously the artistic battle; the present popularity at least in appearance is owing to their persistence and industry. The Government again began to show a great interest in Western art; it sent Chu Asai and Yeisaku Wada to Paris to study foreign art. Not only these, many others sailed abroad privately or officially to no small advantage; you will find many Japanese students of art nowadays wherever you go in Europe or America.

We were colour-blind artistically before the importation of Western art, except these who had an interest in the so-called colour-print; but the colour-print was less valued among the intellectual class, as even to-day. Our artistic eye, which was only able to see everything flat, at once opened through the foreign art to the mysteries of perspective, and though they may not be