Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/118



I say that I received almost no impression from the annual Government Exhibition of Japanese Art in the last five or six years, I have a sort of same feeling with the tired month of May when the season, in fact, having no strength left from the last glory of bloom (what a glorious old Japanese art!), still vainly attempts to look ambitious. Although it may sound unsympathetic, I must declare that the present Japanese art, speaking of it as a whole, with no reference to separate works or individual artists, suffers from nervous debility. Now, is it not the exact condition of the Japanese life at present? Here it is the art following after the life of modern Japan, vain, shallow, imitative, and thoughtless, which makes us pessimistic; the best possible course such an art can follow in the time of its nervous debility might be that of imitation.

When the present Japanese art tells something, I thank God, it is from its sad failure; indeed, the present Japanese art is a lost art, since it explains nothing, alas, unlike the old art of idealistic exaltation, but the general condition of life. It is cast down from its high pedestal.

I do not know exactly what simplicity means, when 8