Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/290

Outline of Topics: Japan's debt to art.—Wide diffusion of æsthetic ideals.—Chinese origin of Japanese art.—Painting the key-note.—Considered a form of poetry.—Characteristics.—Color prints.—Sculpture.—Keramics.—Metal work.—Cloisonné. Lacquer.—Embroidery.—Music.—Poetry.—Dancing.—Drama. Tea ceremonies.—Flower arrangement.—Landscape gardening.—Unity of the arts.—Bibliography.

It has been said with a great deal of truth that no other country in the world owes so much to its art as Japan. As Huish puts it, "Japan would never have attracted the extraordinary notice which she so rapidly did had it not been for her art. . . . Her art manufactures have penetrated the length and breadth of the world." Yet it is a curious fact, to which Chamberlain calls attention, that the Japanese have "no genuinely native word" for either art or nature. The expression "fine art" is commonly represented by the word bi-jutsu, a Chinese compound meaning literally "beauty-craft." So intimately are æsthetic ideals bound up with the whole course of Japanese life and modes of thought, that art is not, as in the Western world, a mere sporadic efflorescence, but the inevitable expression of the spirit of the Eastern civilization, and needing there-