im as he is. He has got a pose. Good! Then he suddenly
puts down his head, and there is another pose. The bare fact of the bird
being there in an altered pose would compel me to alter my idea; and so
on, until at last I could paint nothing at all." I asked him what, then,
was his method. "I watch my bird," he replied, "and the particular pose
I wish to copy before I attempt to represent it. I observe that very
closely until he moves and the attitude is altered. Then I go away and
record as much of that particular pose as I can remember. Perhaps I may
be able to put down only three or four lines; but directly I have lost
the impression I stop. Then I go back again and study that bird until it
takes the same position as before. And then I again try and retain as
much as I can of it. In this way I began by spending a whole day in a
garden watching a bird and its particular attitude, and in the end I
have remembered the pose so well, by continually trying to represent
it, that I am able to repeat it entirely from my impression--but not
from the bird. It is a hindrance to have the model before me when I have
a mental note of the pose. What I do is a painting from memory, and it
is a true impression. I have filled hundreds of sketch-books," he
continued, "of different sorts of birds and fish and other things, and
have at last got a facility, and have trained my memory to such an
extent, that by observing the rapid action of a bird I can nearly always
retain and produce it. By a lifelong training I have made my memory so
keen that I think I may say I can reproduce anything I have once seen."

Such, then, is Kiyosai's method of work. It is purely natural, and one
that has obtained for generations, and that is the Japanese whole theory
of art. Captain Brinkley told me a story, the outcome of that
conversation. Kiyosai came one day to work at a screen which Captain
Brinkley was very anxious for him to complete; but he could not finish
it at the time, do what he would. He said nothing; but it came out that
he had a fresh impression in his mind, and he could not go on with the
old impression until he had worked off the new one--something he had
seen on his way up to the house.

The painters always live with fish, and birds, and animals of different
sorts. They have fish in bottles and in ponds in their gardens. I went
to many studios in Japan, and I found each one with its ponds and fish
in the little garden surrounding the studio,