ection with "personality" or "impersonality."
Furthermore, the Japanese have another method of signifying the age of
a child which corresponds exactly to ours. You have but to ask what is
the "full" age of a child to receive a statement which satisfies our
ideas of the problem. The idea of calling New Year's day a great
"impersonal" birthday because forsooth all the members of the
community and the nation then enter on a new year period, and of using
that as an argument for the "impersonality" of the whole race, is as
interesting as it is inconclusive.

Much is made of the fact that Japanese art has paid its chief
attention to nature and to animals, and but little to man. This
proves, it is argued, that the Japanese artist and people are
"impersonal"--that they are not self-conscious, for their gaze is
directed outward, toward "impersonal" nature; had they been an
aggressive personal people, a people conscious of self, their art
would have depicted man. The cogency of this logic seems questionable
to me. Art is necessarily objective, whether it depicts nature or man;
the gaze is always and necessarily outward, even when it is depicting
the human form. In our consideration of the aesthetic elements of
Japanese character[CM] we gave reasons for the Japanese love of
natural beauty and for their relatively slight attention to the human
form. If the reasons there given were correct, the fact that Japanese
art is concerned chiefly with nature has nothing whatever to do with
the "impersonality" of the people. If "impersonality" is essentially
altruistic, if it consists of self-suppression and interest in others,
then it is difficult to see how art that depicts the form even of
human beings can escape the charge of being "impersonal" except when
the artist is depicting himself. If, again, supreme interest in
objective "impersonal" nature proves the lack of "personality," should
we not argue that the West is supremely "impersonal" because of its
extraordinary interest in nature and in the natural and physical
sciences? Are naturalists and scientists "impersonal," and are
philosophers and psychologists "personal" in nature? If it be argued
that art which depicts the human emotions is properly speaking
subjective, and therefore a proof of developed personality, will it be
maintained that Japan is devoid of such art? How about the pictures
and the statues of warriors? How about the passionate features of the
Ni-o, the placid faces