. Nine years in Nipon. Sketches of Japanese life and manners. or boys, or anything else that lives and moves andhas conscious being. A rat peeping around makes a very circuitous route toits hole and darts in suddenly, while swallows are career-ing close to the surface of the water, and a kind of gull,which breeds not far off, seems almost to be imitating thecircular flight of kites high up in the air, the cry andstraight flight of crows, the short circular journeys of groupsof house pigeons, and the ways of ducks on the water,—truly a versatile bird is the miako-dori, or bird of thecapital ! H
. Nine years in Nipon. Sketches of Japanese life and manners. or boys, or anything else that lives and moves andhas conscious being. A rat peeping around makes a very circuitous route toits hole and darts in suddenly, while swallows are career-ing close to the surface of the water, and a kind of gull,which breeds not far off, seems almost to be imitating thecircular flight of kites high up in the air, the cry andstraight flight of crows, the short circular journeys of groupsof house pigeons, and the ways of ducks on the water,—truly a versatile bird is the miako-dori, or bird of thecapital ! High above is a great wavering wedge of wildgeese, from which peacefully floats down to earth a mel-lowed and musical chant; five or six ibis-like birds forminga similar wedge follow at a lower level; a stately snow-white crane alights and stalks grandly about for a little,then spreads its broad pinions, strenuously flaps them tothe time of the Dead March in Saul, and, spurning themud, rises into the blue ether with the dignified solemnityof an 238 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER XX. Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. Absence of Degraded Conventionalism—An Exception Proving the Rule-Outlines of Fuji—The Bamboo in Art—Simplicity in Composition—Flight of Birds—Spiders Web in Wood-work—Want of Truth in GreekArt—A Japanese Picture Gallery. f^ O MUCH has already and so ably been written^^ on the subject of Japanese art, that my only apology for the few pages which follow is thehope I have of inducing a still wider circle tobecome interested in the problems it has doneso much both to suggest and to solve. We allknow the painful effect produced upon ourminds when lying sick, by the wall paperpattern of our bed-room transforming itselfinto a series of faces. Those faces are after alloften objective realities ; the pattern designer hasbetrayed the decadence of his art, for his fanciful designsare not unfrequently the descendants of earlier and higherattempts to
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