Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/64

Rh but none the less sincere, from which all the writers on Kyosai, Professor Conder included, draw the materials of his life; he is often in danger of being criticised for his self-advertising audacity, this artist of fine madness. He often reminds me of Hokusai, not so much in his artistic expression as in temperament. The books, I mean Kyosai Gwaden, cannot be said, I think, to be more interesting in text than the pictures themselves; these are a series of off-hand sketches showing the actual scenes of his arrest and imprisonment, the story of which Professor Conder's English propriety excluded, although it seems perfectly harmless as it was, on his part, merely the conduct arising out of merriment from excess of wine; beside, his sketches show us the sickening gloominess of prison life in those days when one's freedom and right were denied rather than protected. Kyosai drank most terribly at a party held at a restaurant in Uyeno Park; he made on the spot the caricatures—while overhearing the talk of a foreigner on horseback who, being asked by a tea-house maid at Oji if he came alone, replied that he came accompanied by "a pair of fools"—in which he drew the picture of two people tying the shoe-strings of one man with the longest legs, and also the picture of men of the longest arms pulling out the hairs of Daibutsu's nostrils. The authorities, though it is not clear how the matter came to their knowledge,