impossible to detect which was
which. This particular statue of Michael Angelo's I had studied and knew
well; yet here was a portion of a Japanese god that looked exactly the
same--the same broad handling, the same everything. In both there was
the same curious exaggeration of the bones and muscles, wrong from the
anatomical standpoint, yet conveying an impression of terrific strength
that is so typical of the work of Michael Angelo--indeed, one masterly
hand might have executed both pictures. Yet the little Japanese artist,
the creator of this Buddha, was but a modern, and in all probability
had never so much as seen Michael Angelo's pictures, much less had he
been in the slightest degree influenced by him.

Japanese painters have a great admiration for Michael Angelo's work, and
for Italian painters in general. If you were to show a Japanese artist,
any ordinary little minor artist, some photographs of masterpieces by
men such as Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Botticelli, you would find that he
would at once spring on to the early Italian work, peer into it, hold it
up, devour it, muttering to himself the while--nothing could tear him
away. Rembrandt does not appeal to him much; Velasquez not much; but
Botticelli--yes. Still, I have often thought that could Hokusai and
Velasquez, Kiosi and Whistler, have met and talked, they would have had
much in common with one another; for there is in the works of each,
although in many senses so widely different, that simplicity,
truthfulness, and restraint which render them all so very much alike.

[Illustration: AFTER THE FESTIVAL]

The broad principles of art are much the same all the world over; but it
is between the lesser artists of Japan and the myriads of comparatively
unknown artists of Europe that there is so great a gulf fixed. Japanese
minor artists are artists indeed. Our minor artists are, I fear,
anything but artists. The veriest Japanese craftsman is an artist first
and a tradesman afterwards. Ours is a tradesman first and last and
altogether; and even as a tradesman he is, I fear, a failure, for the
honest tradesman has at least something worth the selling, whilst our
men--the jerry builder, the plumber, the furniture maker, and the
carpenter--give in return for solid money an article which it would
break the heart of the merest artisan in Japan to put forward as the
work of his hands. But perhaps nowhere is the difference between
European and Japanese art so sharpl