The Japanese landscape painter sums up nature in broad lines, to which all details are more or less subordinated. This rendering of the momentary vision of life and light,—the spirit, not the letter of the scene,—is what is meant by Impressionism. Whereas, however the French impressionists express light by modelling surfaces, the Japanese adhere rigidly to line, and rely upon gradations of colour and the effect of washes to produce the illusion of light. Their landscape is expressed in clear-cut lines and flat masses of colour. In the prints this virtue of abstract line is exemplified, the outline being the essential element of the composition, for upon line and arrangements of balanced colour the artist must depend, cramped as he is by the necessities of the wood-cut. And here he displays his wonderful ingenuity, his fineness of gradations and opposition, his boldness and infinity of device, and in spite of the limitations which hamper him, he realizes absolute values in the narrowest range, by virtue of his knowledge of lines and spaces. [Illustration: Wistaria Viewing at Kameido. By Hiroshige.] “No scientifically taught artist,” said Jarves, “can get into as few square inches of paper a more distinct realization of space, distance, atmosphere, perspective and landscape generally, not to mention sentiment and feeling.” This virtue of the line is the inheritance of the Japanese, the consummate handling of the brush almost a racial instinct. From China, far back in the centuries, came the sweeping calligraphic stroke, of which in Japan the school of Kano became the noblest exponent. “_L’école_,” said M. de Goncourt, “_des audaces et de la bravoure du faire, l’école tantôt aux écrasements du pinceau, tantôt aux ténuités d’un cheveu._” As soon as the tiny hand of the Japanese baby can grasp the brush its art education begins. The brush is the Japanese alphabet—it is their fairy wand, their playmate—they learn to paint intuitively, though later the most assiduous study is given to acquire the characteristic touch of the school with which they affiliate. The brush is their _génie_, subservient to their imagination; they master and “juggle” with it. For no foreign taught technique will they barter their birthright.