Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/59

54 set his lofty eyes. He stood aloof above the age. His life, not only in his art, was the song of triumph too.

To his relief, his insane wife died; and his appointment as a draughtsman at the Imperial Naval Academy meant for him a substantial help. He kept it up till the eighteenth year of Meiji, when the revival of Japanese art began to be chronicled, as Gaho expected, in the formation of art societies like the Kanga Kwai or Ryuchi Kwai. When he left the Naval Academy he was called to do service at the Investigation Bureau of Drawing and Painting in the Department of Education. His fellow-workers were the most lamented Hogai Kano, another great artist of modern Japan, and the late Mr. Okakura, that able art critic, in whose guidance Kano trusted. And those three men at the start are the true life-restorers of Japanese art. When the Tokyo School of Art was founded (22nd year of Meiji), Gaho was first made warden of the school, and then its director. And he was appointed professor when his investigation bureau happened to close up. However, he voluntarily resigned his professorship when Mr. Okakura, then the president of the school, was obliged to resign his office. Gaho took the principal's chair of the Nippon Bijitsu when Okakura established it afterwards; but this school soon became a story of the past.