History of art . reeks, no otherpeople in its ensemble was ever an artist to the degreeattained by the people of Japan. Not possessing thepower of illusion and the ennobling vision of the Greeks,to be sure, the Japanese still recall them in a greatnumber of ways^—^in the seminudity with which theylive their sturdy, healthy lives, in their optimism, intheir tendency to deify the forces of nature and todeify human heroism, in the position of woman andof the philosopher-courtesans, in the masks of theirtheater, and in their sinuous and linear conception ofform. It is the land where, in the spring
History of art . reeks, no otherpeople in its ensemble was ever an artist to the degreeattained by the people of Japan. Not possessing thepower of illusion and the ennobling vision of the Greeks,to be sure, the Japanese still recall them in a greatnumber of ways^—^in the seminudity with which theylive their sturdy, healthy lives, in their optimism, intheir tendency to deify the forces of nature and todeify human heroism, in the position of woman andof the philosopher-courtesans, in the masks of theirtheater, and in their sinuous and linear conception ofform. It is the land where, in the springtime, husband-men with their children and their women leave thefields and, taking with them provisions for a journeythat may carry them twenty leagues from their village, MEDIAEVAL ART go to see the blossoming of the cherry trees at the edgeof a torrent. What is strange is how this people, always open toexternal sensations and thus always impressionableand vibrant, still remains master of itself. It resem-. jMyH II IIP- KoRiN (1660-1716). Page of an album. {H. Vever Collection.) bles its soil, whose gayety masks the subterranean firewhich is always ready to send forth its lava from ahundred volcanoes. It is an affable and smiling people,and if it bursts into furious violence, there is always amethodical guidance for these outbursts. Even itsanger is reasoned, its fearful bravery is only a lucidexaltation of its will. Its very emotion is its art—whose flight it accurately controls, whoselyric impetuosity it holds in clear-cut, though some-times abrupt, form—does not abandon itself to theoverflow of the marvelous instinct which directs at bottom, and jealous of keeping its con- JAPAN 185 quests for itself, this people seeks to give only a trans-figured image of them. This is the only point held in common by Japaneseand Chinese art, the two being as different as theindented, violent, gracious islands are different from
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectart, bookyear1921
