Note 241 — Chapter IV

While in Europe the arts of daily use and decoration were struggling for life after many interruptions and revolutions, the civilization of Japan, which is nearly contemporary with Christianity, spent itself in perfecting to the most exquisite finish the arts which had been imported from China and Corea. Japan also inherited the power and the tradition of concealment, and so Europe remained unconscious, until the last century, of the miraculous arts which a semi-barbarous people were cultivating—not for commercial purposes. Auberville, “Tissus,” pp. 2-4.