Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/53

48 greatest simplicity is the greatest complexity, and I will say that Gaho holds both extremes. The elements of his art embrace something older than art, larger than life, something which inspires you with the sense of profundity. They give us strange and positive pulses of age and nature, and the sudden rapture of dream, for which we will gladly die. They give us the feeling of peace and silence, and suggest something which we wish to grasp. The delight we gain from Gaho is purely spiritual. His pictures are living as a ghost which vanishes and again appears.

His conception of Buddhism was not sad, although this religion is generally said to be a pessimism, but joyous and sympathetic. I am sure that to associate Buddhism with something of grief and tears is not a proper understanding at all. (See Gaho's pictures of the Buddha and Rakans, the Buddha disciples. They do not inspire any awfulness.) Tenderness and joy, with a touch of sorrow, which is poetry, are the road toward the Nirvana. For Gaho, silence meant the highest state of peacefulness. The sad joy, which is the highest joy, is an evolution which never breaks the euphony of life, while tears and grief are rebellious. His art inspires in us a great reverence, which is religious, and it is always justified. And it reveals a light of faith under which he was born as an artist, and he was glad to fulfil his appointed work. Then his