tufts of human
hair; scores of pictures, where the few may be counted works of art
while the rest are hideous beyond belief; frightful faces of tengu,
with their long noses and menacing teeth, decorated with scores of
spit-balls or even with mud-balls; these are some of the more
conspicuous unaesthetic features of multitudes of popular shrines and
temples. And none of these can be attributed to the debasing influence
of Western art. And these inartistic features will be found
accompanying scrupulous neatness in well-swept walks, new sub-shrines,
floral decorations, and much that pleases the eye--a strange compound
of the beautiful and the ugly. Truly the aesthetic development of the
Japanese is curiously one-sided.

A survey of Japanese musical history leads to the conclusion that
while the people are fairly developed in certain aspects of the
aesthetics of music, such as rhythm, they are certainly undeveloped in
other directions--in melody, for example, and in harmony. Their
instrumental music is primitive and meager. They have no system of
musical notation. The love of music, such as it is, is well-nigh
universal. Their solo-vocal music, a semi-chanting in minors, has
impressive elements; but these are due to the passionate outbursts and
plaintive wails, rather than to the musically aesthetic character of
the melodies. The universal twanging samisen, a species of guitar,
accompanied by the shrill, hard voices of the geisha (singing girls),
marks at once the universality of the love of music and the
undeveloped quality of the musical taste, both vocal and instrumental.
But in comparing the musical development of Japan with that of the
West, we must not forget how recent is that of the former.

The conditions which have served to develop musical taste in the West
have but recently come to Japan. Sufficient time has not yet elapsed
for the nation to make much visible progress in the lines of
Occidental music. But it has already done something. The popularity of
brass bands, the wide introduction of organs, their manufacture in
this land, their use in all public schools, the exclusive use of
Occidental music in Christian churches, the ability of trained
individuals in foreign vocal and instrumental music--all these facts
go to show that in time we may expect great musical evolution in
Japan. Those who doubt this on the ground of inherent race nature may
be reminded of the evolution which has taken place among the Hawai