The couple of reviews written in English of the Hugh Lane Gallery's touring exhibition in Japan, A Century of Irish Painting make fascinating reading. In Japan Times, Arturo Silva writes at length on the exhibition and betrays an almost alarming knowledge of this country's culture. He calls the show, which stretches from the great names of the early century to young painters of today, a "model of its kind".

De Silva calls Louis le Brocquy "one of my favourite artists from any nation", and comments favourably on the contemporary work of Fionnuala Ni Chiosain: "the last work is a beautiful pattern of green brush strokes". But most interesting is his suggestion that in the earlier, Romantic work, there is "a sense of mystery, as if the Irish saw themselves as their own curiosities, as if they were `other' to themselves."

Yomiuri Shimbun, in the Daily Yomuiri, is disappointed that the work seems so heavily influenced by French art. He signs off with a comment which must provoke a shiver of recognition in any journalist - most of us have written sentences about other countries along the lines of: "Still, viewers can find motifs that are uniquely Irish, such as Celtic culture and the movement for independence from Britain."