Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... JAPAN THE ART OF JAPAN I. PICTORIAL ART HE VICTORIOUS WAR OF Japan with the neighbouring empire in 1894-95 showed the world that she was something more than a kind of pretty toy country, where the trivial tourist might enjoy the sight of people using paper pocket-handkerchiefs, feeding themselves with two sticks instead of a knife and fork, and living in houses without windows; and where the dilettante might find art treasures as charming as they were novel. Up to the eve of that war, the average European or American bestowed upon her no more attention than he accorded to some new phenomenon in the world of physics. A sentiment of curiosity, perhaps academical, perhaps ethnographical, but certainly languid, was awakened in: hjs; breast by the intelligence that an. .Oriental; nation-had undertaken not merely "to" "discard its" Oriental garments, but also to prove that they had always been a misfit. He watched the result much as he would have watched the experiments of a horticulturist seeking to make peonies blow on a brier stem . In the field of art, however, his estimate of her capacities was different. He could not hide from himself that the revival of decorative art in Europe had been stimulated and guided by the study of first-class Japanese work, and that types of the highest sesthetic quality were to be found among Japanese chefs dceuvre. But what, after all, was Japanese art? Must it be regarded as simply decorative, or might it also be considered representative? That question pressed importunately for an answer. People were unwilling to admit that a new star of the first magnitude had really risen on the horizon. They found something slight, something trivial, in Japanese pictures; a lack of emotion-inspiring motive; an absence...
