Chavannes and Millet,
particularly Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin and Blake, has been marked. The
Silver Birch group has never tired of extolling the great names of
Rembrandt, Duerer, El Greco, Van Eyck, Goya, Leonardo, Michael Angelo,
Tintoretto, Giotto and Mantegna[110].

While an ardent Young Japan has formed and dissolved many societies,
movements and fashions, this Shirakaba group has held fast and has
gained friends by its sincerity, its vision and its audacity[111].
Rodin encouraged the Shirakaba efforts to reproduce the best Western
art by presenting it with three pieces of sculpture.

"The intellectual man does no fighting," Froude has written. Why do
not Yanagi and his friends make a stand on public questions?
"Because," he said, "at the present stage of our development it is
almost impossible to take up a strong attitude, and because, important
though political and social questions are, they are not, in our
opinion, of the first importance. To artists, philosophers, students
of religion, such problems are secondary. More important problems are:
What is the meaning of this world? What is God? What is the essence of
religion? How can we best nourish ourselves so as to realise our own
personalities? Political and social problems are secondary for us at
present; they are not related emotionally to our present
conditions[112].

For the East the Root,
For the West the Fruit.

"If we faced such problems directly we should probably make them
primary problems, as you do in Great Britain. Our present attitude
does not prove, however, that we are cold to political and social
problems. In fact, when we think of these terrible political and
social questions they make us boil. But you will understand that in
order to have something to give to others, we must have that
something. We are seeking after that something."

Yanagi, continuing, spoke of the direct contribution which the new
artistic movement in Japan, under the influence of modern Western art,
was making to the solution of political and social questions[113]. The
interest of the younger generation in Post Impressionism was "quite
disharmonious with the ordinary attitude towards militarism."
European art broke down barriers in the Japanese mind. When the
younger generation, nourished on higher ideals, grew up, it would be
the State, and there would be a more hopeful condition of affairs.
People generally supposed that social questions were the most