Japanized them, and made them, as it were, independent streams. There is an underlying something that stamps our art as distinctively Japanese, yet its conceptions and techniques have largely been adapted from those of the Asian Continent and Europe.

The first main current from abroad came to Japan thirteen centuries ago, when Prince Shotoku was instrumental in introducing the Buddhist religion and Buddhist art from China. Later, the great Chinese art of the Sui and Tang dynasties swept over our primitive attempts. Our genius seemed, at first, entirely powerless to Japanize the invading culture. In China, however, a series of civil wars continued, so that the Japanese government had to suspend the regular dispatch of students to that country. Our artists were given a chance of falling back upon their native genius. Hence arose the first purely Japanese school of art, the so-called Yamato-e, Yamato being a classical name for Japan, while e means painting.

The second wave of Chinese art influence began to reach our shores in the twelfth century, during the Kamakura period of Japan's feudal age. Many Japanese priests who went to China for their education, as well as the Chinese missionaries who came over to this country, brought back with them the writings, fine arts, and Buddhist sects of the Sung and Yuen (or Mongol) dynasties. The grace and delicacy that had characterized Buddhist paintings in a peaceful period gave place to the vigor and directness of stressed lines 'with fat and thin,' which developed into a new Japanese school of religious painting called Takuma-ha.

The Zen priests introduced another phase of art from China. It was an amateurism, usually in black and white, cultivated by priest-painters who tried to symbolize an abstract idea with a few simple touches of the brush, or to

indicate a profound inner meaning in a simple object. Shubun and Sesshu, both priest-painters, were the first great masters of this amateurish'school in Japan, which, when sufficiently Japanized, became known as the Kano school. The Yamato-e school continued to exist side by side with the other.

In a similar way the Tosa school, derived from the Yamato-e, which became the Sumiyoshi school in the Tokugawa period, declined through official patronage and hereditary orthodoxy. As the Tosa and Sumiyoshi artists confined themselves to painting Imperial Court manners and life at Kyoto, so the Kano masters did not dare go beyond the routine subjects of Chinese genre, landscape, or figures. All lost the originality of their ancestors, had no courage to put their prestige to a test on new themes, and only sought ease in their patrons' ignorance of the past. But the people in general, whose conditions of living had become improved by a long continuance of peace, began to demand an art more popular and up to date. They took no interest in conventionridden subjects and time-worn methods, were not satisfied with the lifeless toythings of the aristocracy. Thus it was that the Ukiyo-e school of genre painting made its appearance in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and the art of color-printing evolved out of the wood-cut illustrations of popular novels and of picture-books for children. To be popular in price, reproduction was made easy through printing; to be popular in nature, everyday life was depicted: everyday life on the street or in the family, everyday scenes in the country or on the water; and finally a subject of everlasting interest was hit upon in the delineation of the stage folk.

At the opening of the Meiji era, after the Imperial Restoration of 1868, we find the various schools of art that are described above virtually dead. For a

time there was no privileged or moneyed class to patronize artists or to revive the decaying art of the latter feudal days. Professional painters of all schools were thus submerged in the great social earthquake, until a sweeping wave of Westernization began to beat upon our shores after the Civil War of 1877, and the consequent consolidation of the modern régime. Material improvements and legal reforms were the first fruits of our intercourse with the West; but Japan did not wake to the real value of her own art until unduplicatable masterpieces had passed into foreign hands and Western critics had begun to urge us to preserve our national treasures.

A result of the revival of the old schools and the birth of a modern art was a sort of reaction against excessive Westernization. Hogai and Gaho were pioneers of this new movement in Tokyo, Bairei and Gyokusho in Kyoto. They stood for a legacy handed down from the tottering feudalism. They represented different schools of art, but equally shared in the hardships of unemployed life. Some of them resorted to the European style simply 'to earn their rice.' The pendulum at last swung back in the midst of a violent clash between Westernization and a ‘National Purity Conservation Movement.' A Fine Arts Association was organized in Tokyo, while a local art academy was established in Kyoto. The first government exhibition of pictures was given at the new capital in 1882. The Educational Department appointed a Committee for the Investigation of Painting, and the members of this Committee traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, and America, in the interest of art and art education. National art-treasures are still being studied and catalogued.

Painting, whether in Japanese, Chinese, or European styles, felt a strong impetus after the Chino-Japanese

War; the stimulus was even more salutary after the Russo-Japanese War. The institution of a Government Academy of Fine Arts, the nursery of modern Japanese art, was decided in 1886, and came into being three years later. Hogai dying in the previous year, Gaho represented the Tokyo masters in the school, while Gyokusho was invited from Kyoto to join its teaching staff. These painters did not try merely to transmit their respective styles of art to their pupils. They themselves evolved a new Japanese school. Its further evolution was wrought by their more prominent pupils, such as Kogyo, Kwanzan, Tiakwan, and Gyokudo, under the Tokyo master; or Hyakusui, Somei, and others, under the Kyoto master. In Kyoto itself, Bairei produced from among his pupils such talented artists as Seiho, Hobun, and Kako; Shunkyo was trained by another painter.

But, it may well be asked, What is modern Japanese art, after all? Some painters still faithfully keep to the inherited traditions of the various Chinese and Japanese schools; others have added something new from the West to their methods and ideas; but a third set, however different in their original training, have so completely assimilated the Western elements that they must be called as a group modern Japanese artists. These modern masters, of course, had to learn the techniques of the older schools, but they felt no need of clinging to any particular school. On the contrary, they freely copied the European art in the choice of subjects and the composition of a picture. Oriental art of the past had rigidly limited itself to a Utopia, a land of imagination, or to symbolism; modern Japanese art proposes to arouse the spectator's interest by its mode of expression on a familiar theme of our daily life or observation. Eastern art of

the past, again, never depicted the sky or water or night-time as such- these merely entered into the composition of a picture. Modern Japanese art takes up such subjects to show its skill in the use of colors in a realistic manner. Eastern art of the past laid principal stress on refinement, dignity, self-composure, finesse, unworldliness, tastefulness, and other abstract qualities; modern Japanese art tries to appeal to the understanding and appreciation of the general public outside a small circle of critical lovers of painting. Some modern artists have gone the length of using European pigments in a Japanese

way.

The whole tendency, is a word, seems to have been toward realism, at the very time that the West is showing signs of the adoption of idealistic or symbolical elements. And yet the realistic in our art is not identical with

that of Europe; nay, the spirit of our modern art is still Japanese or Eastern, however much of Western influence upon some masters may be found in outward appearance. This peculiar spirit, emanating as it has from the personality and technique of the priest and literary artists of the early and latter feudal days, still expresses itself in the professional pride of not painting for vulgar appreciation or with the hand, and in the simplicity, naïveté, even childlike helplessness of the touches and strokes. After extracting what they can use from European methods and materials, certain contemporary painters are already aiming at the multum in parvo in their work, at storing a wealth of invisible contents in an apparently artless form. Our art-loving public, too, is progressing in the direction of finding and valuing the personality or thought of a painter.

WE entered the port of an island which the sailors identified by the sawtooth profile of its mountains as Sakhalin. I landed, and came to a street in the town where a procession was passing, accompanied by music, flowers, and many flags. An elderly grayhaired man invited me to view this sight from the steps of a mahogany shrine. There I watched a throng of gay people passing, bearing branches of acacia blossoms, the undulating movement of which recalled the motion of our vessel. The marchers also carried gigantic spheres of gilded straw, and

representations of animals made of gauze. They themselves were clad in bright-colored summery attire.

'What festival is this?' I asked with interest. 'Is the war over?'

'We've heard nothing of a war,' was the reply. 'We are the subjects of a prince whom we have never seen; but his power and wisdom we see every day in his commands. Our prince has forbidden his subjects to occupy themselves with foreign affairs.'

'Don't you then receive the latest news every day by wireless?'

'It used to be so, many years ago,'

said the old man. "Then they took down the mast, which had been erected on the summit of yonder mountain. It was burned, because it had served for spreading falsehoods, and its ashes were cast into the sea.'

Her verses were merely a hymn of thanks to the mountain for the shade, for the flowers, for the fresh foliage, and for the dry twigs which it has so generously given her for sixty years.' 'What surprises me,' I said, 'is that

'Certainly that's where you are,' replied my venerable companion. 'Why are you surprised? Join us in our festival to-day. It is in honor of our popular poets. Prizes are to be distributed to those who have written the best poems in our annual competition.'

A few others joined us, and we fell in behind the procession, which proceeded to a neighboring garden-crowned height. From this elevation I could look down on the sea and our vessel lying in the harbor. We were led to a gigantic pine, whose dense branches formed a thick canopy above us, and between whose drooping tassels we had a wide prospect over the surrounding country. Here we were served rice, lobster, roast chicken, candied flowers and fruits, and hot sweetened wine. They did me the honor, as a stranger, of seating me at the same table with the successful poets.

One of the latter was a railway official. He pointed out to me the beautiful, perfectly tilled plain which extended from the foot of the hill where we were seated. Pointing to another of the prize-winners, a young man scarcely more than a boy, he said:

"The subject set for us was a short poem upon our mountain. I compared it with a song rising from a crowd of people. It seemed like that to me, lifting itself aloft from the dumb, stony, submerged underworld of the ocean. That boy called the mountain the throne of our invisible prince, whom he compared to the god of the air. An old woman, however, who earns her living gathering fagots, also received a prize.

map your island is shaped like a pinecone; but it looks from here like a round apple floating in the water.'

'Perhaps our island has changed in form somewhat,' said the railway official. 'Do you see that great dike extending far out into the sea? It blocks the Tartar Channel, and has given us another coast. Not only that, but it diverts the cold ocean currents, which used to bring us chill fogs and wintry rain; so we now have almost constant sunshine. More than that, it permits us to extend and cultivate that fertile plain at the foot of the hill, which is now the site of so many happy homes. Already the older children of the first settlers there are past school-age. Yonder young poet is one of them.'

So speaking he pointed out a little badge on the shoulder of the youngest prize-winner. It was a tiny silver spade. The boy himself remarked to me:

'We shall always wear that badge as long as we live.' It was obvious that he was very proud of it.

'According to the accounts I have heard of your island,' I said, 'it is covered most of the year with snow, and its mountains are dark, gloomy places, clothed with virgin forests, the haunt of wolves. And forgive me for saying it—most of us thought we knew that Sakhalin Island was a place where the worst criminals of a mighty empire were sent into banishment.'

My elderly companion replied: 'It used to be what you describe. You can hardly conceive what a few years of freedom from all political strife can do for a country. It is only a little more than twenty years ago since I myself

was sent here, to be confined in chains for life, for committing highway robbery. My early memories are like a den of serpents. But now my fate has changed. I date my transformation from the day our present prince ascended the throne. I do not know just what events immediately preceded his coming into power.'

'But you are the happiest and, without flattery, the kindest and most likable people I have met for a long, long time,' I exclaimed.

'We are happy because the sun makes us so; and it would seem irrational to us not to be as kind and courteous to each other as we are to our guests, whom we delight to honor.'

'Of course you have driven out the wild savages who used to be the plague of this region?'

"The former dwellers on our island, who consisted only of desperate criminals and their armed guards, had at some earlier date expelled the aborigines, driving them far away into the Polar snow-fields. But we have invited them back to dwell in our midst, together with our former guards and wardens. To-day we are all friends and neighbors, and we have almost forgotten our former contrasts of condition. If you, sir, knew the different types of men who used to live on our island, and who were separated from each other by bitter prejudices and hatred, you would appreciate that our younger generation has begun to form a truly new race. By dwelling in peace and amity with each other we are growing more alike; just as by dwelling in hatred and conflict with one another in olden times, we were constantly growing more dissimilar.'

'Happy island,' I said. 'You must be right. Your unknown prince must be one of the wisest men that ever lived. It seems to me that he must possess supernatural powers, to convert men

whom the world has hitherto regarded with horror into such happy and perfect beings.'

"To be sure,' said the old man, 'it was not entirely due to that great seadike, which we built at our prince's bidding. The temple which we erected at the same time on yonder lofty mountain should have part of the credit.'

'Do you mean that great white structure at the foot of the precipice?' 'Higher up.'

'Oh, that golden roof shining through the trees, half-way up yonder slope?' 'Higher up.'

'Is it that glittering point between the highest summits?

"That's it. We call that light the radiance of the divine dewdrop. The temple really is resplendent inside with all the colors of heaven. Its shines brightest in the last hours of the night, just before dawn.'

'It is too bad that I cannot stay longer,' I said; 'but it's growing dusk and my ship will soon be leaving. Otherwise I should ask you to show me your temple, in order that I might describe it to my companions.'

"The temple is empty,' said the old man. 'You would find nothing inside except lofty windows of every possible color, and a great hall, whose inner partitions form smaller chambers. But these can be removed, so that all the colors intermingle. The red light from one of the windows awakens in the people exposed to it the quality of human love; the blue light fortifies their wisdom, and the golden light makes them gentle. Of course, all these colors are found in nature, and it is enough if we are truly receptive to them. We have, to name but a few examples, the red blossoms of the rose, the blue heavens, and the golden sun.'

Meanwhile, the people gathered on the hill had lighted their torches and were moving in a long column to the