opinion that Japanese
art was the only real living art. This surprised, perplexed, and
irritated many people, as home truths generally do. Without adopting in
integrity every word of the Commission's report, I must confess that I
found in it a great deal of truth.

The great characteristic of Japanese art is its intense and
extraordinary vitality, in the sense that it is no mere exotic
cultivation of the skilful, no mere graceful luxury of the rich, but a
part of the daily lives of the people themselves. It is all very well to
draw gloomy deductions about the decay of Japanese art from the
manufacture and the importation of curios destined for the European
market. That there is such an importation there can be no doubt, any
more than that this condition of things will continue while people fancy
that they are giving proof of their artistic taste by sticking up all
over their walls anything and everything, good, bad, and indifferent,
which professes to come from Japan or to be made on Japanese models.

[Illustration: SUN AND LANTERNS]

What an educated Jap would think of some of our so-called "Japanese
rooms" I shudder to imagine. But let me ask--and this is much more to
the purpose--what would an uneducated Jap think? And let me give my
own answer. He would be as much surprised by any bad taste or bad art as
his educated superior would be. This is the burden of my argument--that
art in Japan is universal and instructive, and therefore living; not an
artificial production of a special class, and therefore not living. Art
was certainly a living thing in the best days of Athens; art has been,
in some measure, a living thing elsewhere and in later days. For we must
remember that art does not merely consist in the production of a certain
number of works of art, or even of masterpieces. A country may produce a
great many works of art, and yet as a country be entirely lacking in
living artistic feeling. France is a land of works of art; but the works
do not appeal to the voyou--still less do they appeal to the ouvrier, to
the bourgeois, to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker. Now,
what I claim for Japan is that in its most real and most important sense
it is a living artistic country. The artistic sense is shared by the
peasant and the prince, as well as by the carpenter, the fan-maker, the
lacquer-worker, and the stateliest daimio whose line dates back to the
creation of things.

But do not run away with my cont