International studio (40.1910)

Contemporary Japanese Painting

critics of those days, but principally to the power-
ful influence of the late Mr. Gah5 Hashimoto.
He was originally of the Kano School, but later
originated a new manner of painting and a style
of his own. A man of ideals and aspirations, he
taught both at the Tokyo Fine Art School and
at his own private institution, and thus drew
many new aspirants into the fold of the New
School. He had had a good training in classicism,
and used the new style with proper restraint;
hence he was saved from the production of those
absurd pictures which have sometimes come from
the pencils of inexperienced novices of the school.
Presently clumsy imitators of Gaho's style, in
sheer opposition to that of the Old Schools,
brought out monstrous pictures under cover
of what they called realism or the Occidental
style. This class of crude production was
then joyfully welcomed by younger students
and ill-advised critics, but was never approved
of by the truly artistic instincts of the public.
Foreign students of Japanese art especially
showed little sympathy for these creations,
marred as they were by clumsily imitated
exotic traits, and often secretly remarked with
chagrin, " How in the world can Japanese
painters put their hands to so ungrateful a
task, when they have such excellent classic art
of their own ? " These earlier aspirants of the
New School, in spite of their pretensions to
realism and the Western style, could not, after
all, attain to such excellent naturalistic graces
as were developed generations ago by Hokusai
and Hiroshige.

As already mentioned, the Old Schools are
effete with mannerism, while the New School
has been running into wild eccentricity. In
truth, for the last twenty years or so, there
have been produced no Japanese paintings
worthy of the name. Judging from the present
state of things, the Old Schools, as they are
now understood, seem to be already in the
last stage of decadence with no possible hopes
of recovery. And this is not to be wondered
at, when it is known that the Old-School
painters of the present day, while pretending
to have fathomed the secrets of our classic
art, have not really dipped into its very heart
and spirit. On the other hand, the New
School has failings of its own which cannot
be tolerated, but it commends itself to our
hearty approbation so far as it attempts to
approach closer to nature and to develop art
in keeping with the progress of learning and

knowledge. Its aspirations are good and right,
but it has erred in its choice of means wherewith
to accomplish its ends. And this is why the
New School has not been able to produce works
worthy of consideration.

The rivalry between the Old and the New
Schools is a singular phenomenon in the artistic
society of Japan to-day.

Again, contemporary Japanese paintings may be
distinguished from the point of view of their local
relations. Artistically speaking, Tokyo is one
centre and Ky5to is another. With the advan-
tages of artistic culture under the generous patron-

"a dancing girl" by seiho takenouchi

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