nently worthy of preservation; no intrinsic merits fit to survive independently of environment. The fact is that if the present era is without giants of the brush like Okio or Sosen, it is not without masters of great talent and high technical skill. Twenty years ago Bunrin died in Kyoto: an artist of whom it has been well said that he “fixed upon paper and silk with exquisite refinement and suggestiveness the most striking of the atmospheric effects that cast a fairyland glamour over the scenery of Japan.” At a yet more recent date died Shōfu Kiyosai, a genre painter of immense versatility, force and humour, who has left a gallery of pictures showing a wide range of conception and study. Still more recently these strong representatives of the Shi-jo and the Popular School, respectively, were followed to the grave by Ganki,[1] who ranks not much below Ganku, the founder of his school. These three artists are sufficient in themselves to redeem the Meiji era from any charge of hopeless decadence. Nor is the present time without painters that will certainly be remembered by posterity. Kawabata Gyokusho, Hashimoto Gahô, Ogata Gekko, Imao Keinen, Taki Katei, Kumagaye Naohiko, Nomura Bunkyo, Watanabe Seitei, and Araki Kwampo, not to speak of others whose talent seems full of promise, make a group of artists inheriting many of the highest qualities of the various schools they represent.
But while the old art flourishes, quietly and steadily enriching the nation with its products, there flourishes also a most pernicious outgrowth of foreign influence; a great crop of wretched pictures; weak, hurried examples of brush tricks which constitute the sole equipment of the purely conventional copyist. It is not implied that such efforts of mere mechanical dexterity have been suggested by contact with the art of the West. The wave of Western ideas, penetrating, as it has done, to the very heart of the nation, could not fail to be felt in the region of the national art. It has been felt, as we shall presently explain. But the comment which we wish to make here—a comment that extends to the whole range of modern Japanese art whether pictorial or applied—is that the mercantile demand resulting from foreign intercourse has created an essentially mercantile supply. Multitudes of people whose purses can never bring objects of Western art within their reach, and who lack either innate taste or educated liking for such things, are tempted by cheapness and novelty to purchase Japanese pictures, and naturally the shrewd trader and the needy draughtsman take care that this undiscriminating public shall be satisfied. Dozens of studios are devoted to the manufacture of painted parodies which no Japanese connoisseur would regard as pictures, and not a bric-a-brac store is without rolls and albums of weak daubs poured out from these workshops. On the evidence of such paintings it is that the great majority of foreign critics base their estimate of modern Japan’s pictorial ability, ignorant that they have before them merely a staple of foreign trade, not an effort of Japanese art.
- ↑ Generally known as “Chikudo Ganki.”
