ck grounds and golden birds and fish
on them. I told him I did not like them; and he answered, "Neither do
we. Here in Japan we would not have them in our houses; but they are
what the English and American markets demand. We ourselves never buy
them; we nearly always choose screens with light grounds, beautifully
painted"--in fact, splendid pieces of decoration. A screen painted by a
first-class artist is valued very highly, while the fact of one from the
hand of an old Japanese master being for disposal is known all over the
country at once, and everybody is prepared to bid for it as one would
bid for a Sir Joshua here. A really good screen fetches an enormous
price, for it takes the place there of pictures and frescoes with us,
and every man of taste requires one or two fine specimens in his house
beautiful. One I saw at the house of the Minister for Foreign Affairs
was painted with a blue wave--an arrangement, in fact, in blue and gold.
I never saw such a gorgeous screen, nor, I verily believe, anything more
beautiful as an arrangement of colour--the huge wave, one sweep of blue,
and the piece of gold at the top. It was, I was told, by an old master
of Japan, and worth an enormous sum. The Japanese perfectly appreciate
the value of things like that, and they very rarely let them leave the
country, so that it has become very difficult to get hold of anything
really fine.

An experience which gave me a close insight into Japanese feeling was a
meeting of some of the painters of Japan. It was arranged by a Japanese
gentleman who, though not an artist himself, is deeply interested in
art, and keenly alive to everything touching it. Knowing me personally,
he was anxious that I should come in contact with these men whose
practice he so much revered, and so he invited several of these artists
of different kinds--designers of metal work and designers for
manufactures--to his house to meet me. I talked to them with his
interpreting help, just a little about art and its principles and so
forth, in the hope that the others would be brought to speak freely, and
I expressed my readiness to give them what information I could of
European art and its practice. They asked me remarkable questions. Most
of them, it appeared, were discouraged because "the European required
such ugly things." If they made what the Europeans really enjoyed, their
productions were looked upon as unsaleable. It appeared to me that it
must be extremely diffi