[108] Mrs. Yanagi is one of the best contraltos heard at the now
numerous Japanese concerts of Western music.

[109] _Shinjū_, or suicide for love, the girl often being a geisha, is
common.

[110] "I am inclined to think," wrote Yanagi in 1921, in a paper on
Korean art, "that we have paid if anything rather too much attention
to European works while making little effort to pay attention to what
lies much nearer to us."

[111] POLICE STANDARDS.--The sale of one issue of the magazine was
prohibited by the police, who found a nude "antagonistic to the
ordinary standard of public morals." The editors' answer next
month--the police standard being, "No front views"--was to publish
half a dozen more nudes with their backs to the reader.

[112] It will be remembered that this conversation took place in the
summer of 1915 at the outset of my investigation. Since then, as noted
throughout this book, economic questions have increasingly pressed
themselves forward. I may mention that in 1919 Yanagi wrote a
vigorous and moving protest against misgovernment in Korea. In a
recent letter to me he says: "You know that I am going to establish a
Korean Folk Art Society in Seoul. This is a big work, but I want to do
it with all my power for love of Korea. I approach the solution of the
Korean question by the way of Art. Politics can never solve the
question. I want to use the gallery as a meeting-place of Koreans and
Japanese. People cannot quarrel in beauty. This is my simple yet
definite belief." Yanagi's manifesto on his project made one think of
the age when the great culture of China and India glowed across the