Much is made of the fact that Japanese art has paid its chief attention to nature and to animals, and but little to man.  This proves, it is argued, that the Japanese artist and people are “impersonal”—­that they are not self-conscious, for their gaze is directed outward, toward “impersonal” nature; had they been an aggressive personal people, a people conscious of self, their art would have depicted man.  The cogency of this logic seems questionable to me.  Art is necessarily objective, whether it depicts nature or man; the gaze is always and necessarily outward, even when it is depicting the human form.  In our consideration of the aesthetic elements of Japanese character[CM] we gave reasons for the Japanese love of natural beauty and for their relatively slight attention to the human form.  If the reasons there given were correct, the fact that Japanese art is concerned chiefly with nature has nothing whatever to do with the “impersonality” of the people.  If “impersonality” is essentially altruistic, if it consists of self-suppression and interest in others, then it is difficult to see how art that depicts the form even of human beings can escape the charge of being “impersonal” except when the artist is depicting himself.  If, again, supreme interest in objective “impersonal” nature proves the lack of “personality,” should we not argue that the West is supremely “impersonal” because of its extraordinary interest in nature and in the natural and physical sciences?  Are naturalists and scientists “impersonal,” and are philosophers and psychologists “personal” in nature?  If it be argued that art which depicts the human emotions is properly speaking subjective, and therefore a proof of developed personality, will it be maintained that Japan is devoid of such art?  How about the pictures and the statues of warriors?  How about the passionate features of the Ni-o, the placid faces of the Buddhas and other religious imagery?  Are there not here the most powerful representations possible of human emotions, both active and passive?  But even so, is not the gaze of the artist still outward on others, i.e., is he not altruistic; and, therefore, “impersonal,” according to this method of thought and use of terms?  Are European artists who revel in landscape and animal scenes deficient in “personal” development, and are those who devote their lives to painting nude women particularly developed in “personality”?  Truly, a defective terminology and a distorted conception of what “personality” is, land one in most contradictory positions.

Those who urge the “impersonality” of the Orient make much of the Japanese idea of the “family,” with the attendant customs.  The fact that marriage is arranged for by the parents, and that the two individuals most concerned have practically no voice in the matter, proves conclusively, they argue, that the latter have little “personality.”  Here again all turns on the definition of this important word.