That art and imagination are necessarily bound together receives no very forcible confirmation from a land where, nationally speaking, at any rate, the first is easily first and the last easily last, as nations go.

It is to quite another quality that their artistic excellence must be ascribed.
That the Chinese and later the Japanese have accomplished results at which the rest of the world will yet live to marvel, is due to their--taste.

But taste or delicacy of perception has absolutely nothing to do with imagination.

That certain of the senses of Far Orientals are wonderfully keen, as also those parts of the brain that directly respond to them, is beyond question; but such sensitiveness does not in the least involve the less earth-tied portions of the intellect.

A peculiar responsiveness to natural beauty, a sort of mental agreement with its earthly environment, is a marked feature of the Japanese mind.
But appreciation, however intimate, is a very different thing from originality.