Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/77

72 bewildered mind, and, as a result, he immortalised the role. It was the age when realism, of course, in more vague, doubtful meaning than the present usage, had completely conquered the stage, the old idealistic stage art having fallen off the pedestal. Certainly Danjuro, the first of all to be absorbed in that realism which prevailed here twenty or twenty-five years ago, did never serve the stage art for advancement, but, on the contrary, it was the realism, if anything, that cheapened, trivialised, and vulgarised the time-honoured Japanese art; but it seemed that there was nobody to see that point of wisdom. It is ridiculous to know how Danjuro insisted, as Tomonori, in the play of Sembon Sakura, that the blood upon his armour should be painted as real as possible, and troubled the great artistic brush of Yoshitoshi on each occasion during the whole run of the play; but how serious the actor was in his thought and determination! Again that realism was the main cause why Yoshitoshi's art failed to compete with the earlier Ukiyoye artists like Shunsho, Utamaro, and even Hokusai; it was an art borrowed from the West doubtless, when I observe how Yoshitoshi, unlike the earlier artists, was delighted to use the straight, forceful lines as the modern Western illustrators; the picture called "Daimatsuro" is a fit example in which he carried out that tendency or mannerism I with most versatility. I daresay that his