Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/114



memorial exhibition of Busho Hara, a Japanese artist of the Western school, held recently in Tokyo to raise a fund for his surviving family as one of its objects (Hara passed away in October, 1913, in his forty-seventh year), had many significances, one of which, certainly the strongest, was in contradiction of the general understanding that Western paintings will never sell in Japan; even a trifling sketch in which the artist only jotted down his momentary memory fetched the most unusual price. Hara is a remarkable example of one who created his own world (by that I mean at least the buyers, though not real appreciators) among his friends through his personality, which strengthened his work; paradoxically we shall say he was an artist well known and utterly unknown; and when I say he was an utterly unknown artist, I have my thought that he never even once exhibited his work to the public, and his often defiant spirit and high aim made him scorn and laugh over people's ignorance on art. How he hated the Japanese art world where real merit is no passport at all. But Hara's friends are pleased to know from this exhibition the fact that Rh