One of the most important principles in the art of Japanese painting--indeed a fundamental and entirely distinctive characteristic--is that called living movement, _sei do_, or _Kokoro machi_, it being, so to say, the transfusion into the work of _the felt nature_ of the thing to be painted by the artist. Whatever the subject to be translated--whether river or tree, rock or mountain, bird or flower, fish or animal--the artist at the _moment of painting it must feel its very nature_, which, by the magic of his art, he transfers into his work to remain forever, affecting all who see it with the same sensations he experienced when executing it. This is not an imaginary principle, but a strictly enforced law of Japanese painting. The student is insistently admonished to observe it. Should his subject be a tree he is urged when painting it to _feel_ the _strength_ which shoots through the branches and sustains the limbs; or if a flower to try to _feel_ the grace with which it expands or bows its blossoms. Indeed, nothing is more constantly urged upon his attention than this great _underlying principle_ that it is _impossible to express in art what one does not first feel_. * * * * * “Waga kokoro waga te woyaku Waga te waga kokoro ni ozuru.” Our spirit must make our hand its servitor; Our hand must respond to each behest of our spirit. [Illustration: SOUSA CARDOZA Stronghold] The Japanese artist is taught that even to the placing of a dot in the eyeball of a tiger, he must _first feel_ the savage, cruel, feline character of the beast, and only under such influence should he apply the brush. If he paint a storm he must at the moment _realize_ passing over him the very tornado which tears up trees from their roots and houses from their foundations. Should he depict the seacoast with its cliffs and moving waters, at the moment of putting the wave-bound rocks into the picture he must _feel_ that they are being placed there to resist the fiercest movement of the ocean, while to the waves in turn he must give an irresistible power to carry all before them. Thus, by this sentiment called living movement (_sei do_), _reality_ is imparted to the inanimate object. This is one of the marvelous secrets of Japanese painting handed down from the great Chinese painters and based on psychological principles--_matter responsive to mind_.[62] * * * * * In the light of the foregoing, one begins to understand why Winslow Homer painted such wonderful realizations of the sea and rocky coasts--he _lived_ removed from men, his most intimate friends the rocks and waves.