Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/135

 unparalleled devotion to art in every form, his building of the Silver Pavilion, his intimate association with great painters, his elaboration of the tea ceremonial, his extension of the incense cult, his love of landscape gardening, and his passion for objects of virtu, is to say that he responded to the remarkable movement taking place contemporaneously in China. He became Shōgun fifteen years after the conclusion of the Shun-tieh era (1426–1436), which, together with the previous era of Yung-lo (1403–1425), must be regarded as one of the greatest epochs of Chinese art,—an epoch when the manufacture of porcelain first became a really skilled achievement, and when the grand painters, Lü Ki, Liu Tsun, Bien Kingchao, and Liu Liang rivalled the renown of the immortal Sung masters. Japan would certainly have felt that remarkable movement, even though she had not been ruled by a man so singularly receptive of art influence as Yoshimasa; but the coincidence that her affairs happened to be administered by such a magnificent dilettante just at the moment when her neighbour was entering a brilliant period of art achievement, which lasted, almost without interruption, for nearly four centuries, undoubtedly helped to push her towards her destiny of æsthetic greatness. Her painters did not, it is true, immediately adopt the brilliant colouring and delicate finish of the Ming masters; they preferred the broad, bold style of the Sung artists. But had