In art, as in other human fields, history has been made by the mavericks. Last week Manhattan's Asia Institute was showing a pair of kakemonos (long vertical paintings) by one of Japan's great 19th Century painters: Kawanabe Kyosai, who knew exactly why he was kicking over the traces.
One kakemono is stylized—painted strictly according to Japanese convention. It represents a wind god with animal horns, ears, tusks and claws, plunging headlong, pop-eyed with fright, after his bag of wind.
The other kakemono is realistic, and proves that Kyosai was a sharp-eyed son of Japan's feudal age, which was, like Europe's, an age...
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