Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/43



Sumida River's blue began to calm down, like that of an old Japanese colour-print, into the blue, I should say, of silence which had not been mixed with another colour to make life; that blue, it might be said, did not exist so much in the river as in my very mind, which has lately grown, following a certain Mr. Hopper, to cry, "Hiro—Hiro—Hiroshige the Great!" The time was late afternoon of one day in last April; the little boat which carried a few souls like mine, who, greatly troubled by the modern life, were eager to gain the true sense of perspective towards Nature, glided down as it finished the regular course of the "Cherry-blossom viewing at Mukojima." And my mind entered slowly into a picture of my own creation—nay, Hiroshige's. "Look at the view from here. (I was thinking of Hiroshige's Sumidagawa Hanasakari among his Yedo pictures.) It may be too late now to agree with Wilde when he said that Nature imitates Art," I said to my friend. He saw at once my meaning, though not clearly, and Rh