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y blossoming again. Even from so imperfectly gathered a garland it will be seen that the Japanese do not lack for opportunities to admire, nor do they turn coldly away from what they are given. Indeed, they may be said to live in a chronic state of flower-fever; but in spite of the vast amount of admiration which they bestow on plants, it is not so much the quantity of that admiration as the quality of it which is remarkable. The intense appreciation shown the subject by the Far Oriental is something whose very character seems strange to us, and when in addition we consider that it permeates the entire people from the commonest coolie to the most aesthetic courtier, it becomes to our comprehension a state of things little short of inexplicable. To call it artistic sensibility is to use too limited a term, for it pervades the entire people; rather is it a sixth sense of a natural, because national description; for the trait differs from our corresponding feeling in degree, and especially in universality enough to merit the distinction. Their care for tree flowers is not confined to a cultivation, it is a cult. It approaches to a sort of natural nature-worship, an adoration in which nothing is personified. For the emotion aroused in the Far Oriental is just as truly an emotion as it was to the Greek; but whereas the Greek personified its object, the Japanese admires that object for what it is. To think of the cherry-tree, for instance, as a woman, would be to his mind a conception transcending even the limits of the ludicrous. Chapter 6. Art. That nature, not man, is their beau ideal, the source of inspiration to them, is evident again on looking at their art. The same spirit that makes of them such wonderful landscape gardeners and such wonder-full landscape gazers shows itself unmistakably in their paintings. The current impression that Japanese pictorial ambition, and consequent skill, is confined to the representation of birds and flowers, though entirely erroneous as it stands, has a grain of truth behind it. This idea is due to the attitude of the foreign observers, and was in fact a tribute to Japanese technique rather than an appreciation of Far Eastern artistic feeling. The truth is, the foreigners brought to the subject their own Western criteria of merit, and judged everything by these standards. Such works naturally commended themselves most as had least occasion to deviate from their canons. The si
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