Volume 4, Number 5 · April 8, 1965
The Arts of Japan
By Alexander Soper
Japan, a History in Art
by Bradley Smith
Simon & Schuster, 295, 288 color pls. pp., $30.00
Japanese Buddhist Prints
by Mosaku Ishida, translated by Charles S. Terry
Abrams and Kodansha International, 196, 801 illus., 32 in color pp., $35.00
The Traditional Arts of Japan
by H. Batterson Boger
Doubleday, 351, 369 figs., 26 color pls., 40 line drawings pp., $17.50
Of these three late additions to the small but already crowded field of Oriental art books, Japan, a History in Art is likely to win the widest attention and to disappoint the largest number of readers. Rather than a mere succession of aesthetic objects, its pages record human life. Prince and peasant, court lady and courtesan, priest, artisan, and loyal warrior, are immortalized in glowing colors by the artists of their own centuries—one hundred generations of them according to the jacket blurb, forty according to the Preface. This was a potentially good idea, much less hackneyed in the Asiatic world than elsewhere and particularly appropriate to Japan. The resulting book has obvious, virtues, and if its limitations had somehow been made evident to the reader it would not deserve serious criticism.
Review, 1560 words
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