y blossoming again.

Even from so imperfectly gathered a garland it will be seen that the
Japanese do not lack for opportunities to admire, nor do they turn
coldly away from what they are given. Indeed, they may be said to live
in a chronic state of flower-fever; but in spite of the vast amount of
admiration which they bestow on plants, it is not so much the quantity
of that admiration as the quality of it which is remarkable. The intense
appreciation shown the subject by the Far Oriental is something whose
very character seems strange to us, and when in addition we consider
that it permeates the entire people from the commonest coolie to the
most aesthetic courtier, it becomes to our comprehension a state of
things little short of inexplicable. To call it artistic sensibility is
to use too limited a term, for it pervades the entire people; rather
is it a sixth sense of a natural, because national description; for the
trait differs from our corresponding feeling in degree, and especially
in universality enough to merit the distinction. Their care for tree
flowers is not confined to a cultivation, it is a cult. It approaches
to a sort of natural nature-worship, an adoration in which nothing is
personified. For the emotion aroused in the Far Oriental is just
as truly an emotion as it was to the Greek; but whereas the Greek
personified its object, the Japanese admires that object for what it is.
To think of the cherry-tree, for instance, as a woman, would be to his
mind a conception transcending even the limits of the ludicrous.

Chapter 6. Art.

That nature, not man, is their beau ideal, the source of inspiration
to them, is evident again on looking at their art. The same spirit that
makes of them such wonderful landscape gardeners and such wonder-full
landscape gazers shows itself unmistakably in their paintings.

The current impression that Japanese pictorial ambition, and consequent
skill, is confined to the representation of birds and flowers, though
entirely erroneous as it stands, has a grain of truth behind it. This
idea is due to the attitude of the foreign observers, and was in fact a
tribute to Japanese technique rather than an appreciation of Far Eastern
artistic feeling. The truth is, the foreigners brought to the subject
their own Western criteria of merit, and judged everything by these
standards. Such works naturally commended themselves most as had least
occasion to deviate from their canons. The si