Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/104

 commencement in 1576 attained such a degree of development in 1585. As to the Hongwan temple itself, magnificent masterpieces of carving are to be seen in its ventilating panels (ramma), the subjects being tree peonies, angels, wild geese, phnixes, cranes, flying squirrels, and grapes. The celebrated mausolea of the Tokugawa nobles in Tōkyō and Nikkō show greater profusion of glyptic ornamentation, but have nothing of finer quality than the chiselling of the ramma in the Kyōtō temple. Thus the Oda Nobunaga theory involves the conclusion that in the short space of sixteen years the application of glyptic art to interior decoration was carried from its genesis to its zenith. Naturally the disposition is to reject such a theory; but then a second difficulty is encountered, namely, that certainly no specimen of such work is known to have existed prior to the construction of the Azuchi Castle. It appears, therefore, that there is here another case of the extraordinarily rapid development already noticed with regard to military architecture. In forty years the Japanese passed from flimsy wooden edifices to solid stone structures of colossal dimensions, and in twenty they added to their scheme of interior decoration an application of glyptic art which has never been surpassed anywhere. There can be no question of a historical lacuna in the case of military architecture, since the cause of the new departure can be fixed with absolute accuracy, and there is no reason to sus-