ive
powers, but also in small, out-of-the-way, inartistic things, as, for
instance, photography. I have seen in the Tokio shop-windows photographs
taken by native correspondents during the Chinese war, and it was quite
extraordinary how their sense of placing showed itself even in this. You
never by any chance see a photograph by a Japanese looking in the least
like a European. If they photograph a group of men they will be sure to
place that group near a great bough that juts across the picture; they
cannot help it--it seems to be in the blood of a Japanese to be
decorative. Their taste with regard to enjoyment is widely different
from ours: a little bit of Nature which would give them intense pleasure
would probably be ignored by us altogether. We want parks and stags and
moorlands, broad expanses of country and huge avenues, while the
Japanese will be content with one exquisite little harmony. They will
gaze for whole hours in rapture at a little branch of peach-blossom,
only a cluster, just a few inches of rose-red peach-blossom, with a slim
grey twig, placing itself against a background of hills that stretch
away in the distance indefinitely.

At the same time they love expanse of view as well. It is one of their
greatest joys to look from the top of a mountain downwards, but only
at certain times of the day. A Japanese, holiday-making, will sometimes
spend one whole day waiting for an effect that will perhaps last only a
few moments, or he will toil for hours up a mountain-side to enjoy the
exquisite pleasure of a fleeting colour harmony.

ART IN PRACTICAL LIFE

CHAPTER V

ART IN PRACTICAL LIFE

Throughout this book I have talked of Japan purely from the artistic
standpoint. I have talked principally of the living art of the country
and of its exquisite productions, and I firmly believe that it is
because the Japs are a people of imagination that they will at no
distant date forge ahead of other nations (who are depending solely upon
their muscle) and become a dominating power.

At the same time, it must be clearly understood that the artistic is not
the only quality in which the Japs excel. Take them from any side, and
it will be found that they have achieved remarkable success. Yet the
average Westerner, on returning from a visit to Japan, has always the
same superficial observation to make on the Japanese people. He has
spent a few weeks in the Land of the Rising Sun; he has seen the dainty