e whether a board or post is upside down, though
it would often puzzle a Westerner to decide the matter. The natural
wood ceilings and the soft yellows and blues of the walls are all that
the best trained Occidental eye could ask. Dainty decorations called
the "ramma," over the neat "fusuma," consist of delicate shapes and
quaint designs cut in thin boards, and serve at once as picture and
ventilator. The drawings, too, on the "fusuma" (solid thick paper
sliding doors separating adjacent rooms or shutting off the closet)
are simple and neat, as is all Japanese pictorial art.

Japanese love for flowers reveals a high aesthetic development. Not
only are there various flower festivals at which times the people
flock to suburban gardens and parks, but sprays, budding branches, and
even large boughs are invariably arranged in the homes and public
halls. Every church has an immense vase for the purpose. The proper
arrangement of flowers and of flowering sprays and boughs is a highly
developed art. It is often one of the required studies in girls'
schools. I have known two or three men who made their entire living by
teaching this art. Miniature flowering trees are reared with
consummate skill. An acquaintance of mine glories in 230 varieties of
the plum tree, all in pots, some of them between two and three hundred
years old. Shinto and Buddhist temples also reveal artistic qualities
most pleasing to the eye.

But the main point of our interest lies in the explanation of this
characteristic. Is the aesthetic sense more highly developed in Japan
than in the West? Is it more general? Is it a matter of inherent
nature, or of civilization?

In trying to meet these problems, I note, first of all, that the
development of the Japanese aesthetic taste is one-sided; though
advanced in certain respects it is belated in others. In illustration
is the sense of smell. It will not do to say that "the Japanese have
no use for the nose," and that the love of sweet smells is unknown.
Sir Rutherford Alcock's off-quoted sentence that "in one of the most
beautiful and fertile countries in the whole world the flowers have no
scent, the birds no song, and the fruit and vegetables no flavor," is
quite misleading, for it has only enough truth to make it the more
deceptive. It is true that the cherry blossom has little or no odor,
and that its beauty lies in its exquisite coloring and abounding
luxuriance, but most of the native flowers are praised