Excerpt from Japan, Vol. 7: Its History Arts and Literature<br><br>But what, after all, was Japanese art? Must it be regarded as simply decorative, or might it also be con sidered representative? That question pressed 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 ofemotion-inspir ing motive; an absence of massiveness and breadth of treatment. It could easily be detected that the range of the painter's fancy was limited by a logical canon; that he forbade himself to transfer to his canvas any scene too extensive to be revealed by a single glance of the eye; that, in short, just as Japanese poetry never rose to the dignity of an ode but stopped Short at a couplet, so Japanese pictures, instead of telling a com plete story, merely suggested an incident. But that they displayed remarkable directness of method and strength of line; that the artist knew exactly what he wanted to draw and drew it with unerring fidelity and force; that the very outlines of the picture were in themselves a picture, and that the whole was pervaded by an atmosphere of tenderness and grace indicating a refined conception of everything beautiful in nature, these were facts that forced themselves upon the at tention of every close observer.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.