always too talkative; and when he talked on himself, no greater bore than he could be found in all literature West or East. Ina word he is often unbearable to our Japanese mind. I think it is safe to say from the Japanese view-point that the real artist and true aesthete will never talk so much about his art and aetheticism; although he meant to bring the creative possibility of general men of letters to a higher plane by sheer force of cleverness, his unavailing service proved that not cleverness in any form, but the magic of humanity and love itself alone have such a power. We have a Japanese word kusai which, though it is too commonplace a word, will be used of art or whiting; kusai means “It smells too strong.” Indeed Wilde’s work, whether good or bad, altogether smells too strong perhaps through his lack of reflective modesty or through having too much audacity; and let me say that he often smelled bad; that is why I failed to make my Japanese mind interested in him before. I read somewhere in “De Profundis”: “The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social
