A cluster of little Japanese children at play somehow suggests to me

a grand picture gallery, … Every picture is a child

upon which has been expended the subtle decorative sense

of its family … as expressed in the tint of a dress and sash …

It is in the children that the national artistic and poetic nature

of the Japanese people most assuredly finds expression.

In July 1896, Mortimer Menpes walked out into a public garden in Kyoto and sat down with his sketchbook. “Now, I am happy”, he is reported to have said to the journalist who accompanied him, as he began to draw a group of little boys ‘who stood wonderingly around’. “The child-life is more beautiful here than anywhere else” he continued, “it is so all pervading, so characteristic …’ The charm of these infants lay in the lavish ‘rainbow-coloured silks’ in which they were dressed, for, from birth, they ‘must be exquisite works of art’. Boys, usually ill-behaved, were indulged, while girls were expected to exercise self-control and be self-effacing. Visual skills began to be taught to children by their mothers from the age of three, contributing to the idea that not only was Japan an earthly paradise, but also that its people were innately artistic.