Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/41

36 "She is an art (let me call her so) Hung, as a web, in the air of perfume, Soft yet vivid, she sways in music; (But what sadness in her saturation of life!) Her music lives in intensity of a moment and then dies; To her, suggestion is her life. She is the moth-light playing on reality's dusk, Soon to die as a savage prey of the moment; She is a creation of surprise (let me say so), Dancing gold on the wire of impulse."

Some one might say that Utamaro's ladies are brainless, but is it not, as I said before, that the sacrifice of individuality or personality makes them join at once with the great ghosts of universal beauty and love? "They are beautiful, because all the ghosts and spirits of all the ages and humanity of Japan speak themselves through them; it is perfectly right of him not to give any particular name to the pictures, because they are not the reflection of only one woman, but of a hundred and thousand women; besides, Utamaro must have been loving a little secrecy and mystification to play with the public's curiosity.

We have his art; that is quite enough. What do I care about his life, what he used to wear and eat, how long he slept and how many hours he worked every day; in fact, what is known as his life is extremely slight. It is said that he was a sort of hanger-on to Juzaburo Tsutaya, the well-known publisher of his day, at the house within a stone's throw of Daimon or Great Gate of Yoshiwara, the Nightless City of hired beauties