Eighteen thousand Japanese, buzzing with admiration, visited Tokyo's National Museum last week to see the work of an artist who died 450 years ago. Known by his painter name, "Sesshu" (Snow Boat), he is today rated as Japan's greatest landscape artist; his works are valued at up to $250,000 each, and four are classed as "national treasures." So enthusiastic were the crowds that turned out to inspect the 30 Sesshu masterpieces on view that the museum broke precedent, was open on Mondays for the first time since its opening in 1937.
To Japanese, Sesshu is, as one early critic said, "the open...
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