Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/36

Rh art was pleased to take its own free independent course; but his greatness is that when the Prince passed away and he was left to poverty, he never trembled and shrank under its cold cruel baptism; indeed that baptism made his personality far nobler, like the white flame from which the whiteness is taken out, and consequently his art was a thing created, as we say here, by the mind out of the world and dust. The works which to-day remain and are admired by us are mostly the work he executed after he reached his seventieth year. We have many reasons to be thankful for the fact that he left Kyoto, the old city of court nobles and ladies, somewhat effeminate, and the side of his brother Korin, whose great influence would have certainly made him a little Korin at the best; we see no distinction whatever in the work which he gave the world under Korin's guidance. His art made a great stride after he appeared in the Yedo of the warriors and manliness and touched a different atmosphere from that of his former life; I will point, when you ask me for the proof, to the now-famous six-fold screen with the picture of plum-blossom, or the hanging also of the plum-blossom owned by the Imperial Museum. Oh, what a noble plum-blossom, which reminds us of a samurai's heart, simple and brave!