Few Europeans, perhaps, would have cared to perpetrate a self-portrait like one painted by the potter Kinsei, which was sold me one day as an amusing tour de force by a facetious picture-dealer.

It is a composite picture of a new kind, a Japanese variety of type face.

The great potter, who was also apparently no mean painter, has combined three aspects of himself in a single representation.

At first sight the portrait appears to be simply a full front view of a somewhat moon-faced citizen; but as you continue to gaze, it suddenly dawns on you that there are two other individuals, one on either side, hob-nobbing in profile with the first, the lines of the features being ingeniously made to do double duty; and when this aspect of the thing has once struck you, you cannot look at the picture without seeing all three citizens simultaneously.

The result is doubtless more effective as a composition than flattering as a likeness.
Far Eastern sculpture, by its secondary importance among Far Eastern arts, witnesses again to the secondary importance assigned to man at our mental antipodes.