colored picture which he proudly displayed. "It's a picture of a ghost," he explained. I was startled. That instant, as I could not help feeling in later years, determined my path of escape. I knew what Takeichi was showing me. I knew that it was only the familiar self-portrait of van Gogh. When we were children the French Impressionist School was very popular in Japan, and our first introduction to an appreciation of Western painting most often began with such works. The paintings of van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Renoir were familiar even to students at country schools, mainly through photographic reproductions. I myself had seen quite a few colored photographs of van Gogh's paintings. His
brushwork and the vividness of his colors had intrigued me, but I had never imagined his pictures to be of ghosts. I took from my bookshelf a volume of Modigliani reproductions, and showed Takeichi the familiar nudes with akin the color of burnished copper. "How about these? Do you suppose they're ghosts too?" "They're terrific." Takeichi widened his eyes in admiration. "This one looks like a horse out of hell." "They really are ghosts then, aren't they?" "I wish I could paint pictures of ghosts like that," said Takeichi. There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are —the quicker to take fright—the more violent they pray that every storm will be . . . Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human
