Yosai, who died in 1878, was the last great Japanese painter. He studied in all the schools, and combined some of the best characteristics of each. Since his death there have been clever painters but no great artists.
Like many other things in Japan to-day, her art of painting is in the transition stage. There are two schools, the conservatives, who cling to the art of ancient days, and the progressives, who believe that they must borrow fresh conceptions from the Western masters, and feel that want of reality has been a defect in the old Japanese work. However, in copying Western methods, they are introducing vulgar subjects, from which Japanese painting has generally been free. At the art exhibitions of 1913 there were ninety-three who entered oil paintings; this alone shows the great change in their work. While the Japanese painters of to-day cannot escape the influence of European art, it is to be hoped that they will not lose the delicacy of treatment, the subtle suggestiveness, and the grace and sweep of line that belonged to the old masters.
To my mind the most interesting things for Europeans to collect in Japan are the prints, which first came in vogue about 1690. The Japanese have, in these, added a charm quite their own to every thought which they have received from other nations. The conditions under which the artists worked in olden times were most favourable, for they lived under the protection of the great _daimyos_, were supplied with the necessities of life, and were free from care.
Mr. Keane, of Yokohama, is an authority on old prints, of which he has made several collections. "We lunched one day with him at his home in the upper part of his office building on the Bund, in Yokohama. (When foreign merchants first went to Japan they always lived over their places of business.) The view over the sparkling harbour and away off to the horizon, where little fleets of slanting-sailed sampans were working their way up the Bay of Yedo with the sunlight striking their sails, was really superb. Mr. Keane stores his prints in a safe, but for the enjoyment of his guests he took them out on the day of the luncheon. They were so much finer and more interesting than the common, every-day prints of the dealers that they quite took our breath away.