Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/80

Rh say for his art, was the realisation of failure. But he was quite proud, I understand, when he published it, and even expected a great sale. And when he could not sell it at all, it is said, he determined that he would run away alone from Tokyo for good, leaving his students behind. Although there is no record of its sale to-day, I am sure that it did not sell well, or, in another way of saying, it sold well enough to save him from the shame of running away. Doubtless the people demanded pictures of such a nature, perhaps to illustrate the time's happening, as it was the time before the existence of any graphic or illustrated paper, and to fill that demand Yoshitoshi brought out a hundred pictures of battles and historical heroes, more or less in bloody scenes, which are mostly forgotten. It was in 1885 that he fairly well found his own art (good or bad) with the historical picture, "Kiyomori's Illness"; the chief character, the Lord Kiyomori, suffered from fever and dream, as we have it in legend, as a destiny brought from his endless brutality and covetousness; the fact that Yoshitoshi's mind was much engaged in the study of the Shijoha school at that time will be seen, particularly in this picture, of which the background is filled with the faint echo of great Okyo in the drawing of the Emma, or Judge of Hades, the green demon, and other things of awful demonstration. "Inaka Genji," a picture