THE JAPANESE NATURE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 28, 12 July 1890, Page 3

THE JAPANESE NATURE.

Sir Edwin Arnold writes: —Who can do justice to the eternal sweetness and simplicity of the Japanese nature ? This placid grace is not in the least degree childish, but rather intensely artistic, and springs from the more than Greek moderation, which Nature, taste, and the serene influence of Buddhism have imparted. Just as they delight

in a picture, where a few sweeping lines set the imagination working ; in the delicate cup of pale tea which soothes without stimulating ; in sober colours for their dress touched with one point of splendour ; in emotions that are gentle ; in industries not too ardent; in life generally cultivated as their plum and cherry trees are, for the blossom mainly, and not for the wood, the foliage, or the fruit; so they like their pleasures to be easy, cheap, graceful, quiet, simple, and common. But there is refinement and distinction in all they do. Were I a painter or a sculptor, I could at this

moment reproduce from the memory of the eye the figure of a Japanese lady, ardently engaged with her battledore, her soft eyes lighted with the joy of exercise and rivalry—her glossy black hair, white teeth, smooth ivory face and neck ; demure silken Kimono, dazzling obi, graceful skirts, and bare faultless feet, making an ensemble quite as classical, quite as graceful, quite as worthy of the highest effort of art to perpetuate as the Princess Nausicaa playing at ball in the Odyssey, or any antique charm of the Discobolus, or the Dancing Faun.