Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/117

RV 95 are mere suggestions. Eloquence of form did not enter into the thought of the humble mason that hewed them, nor, indeed, did their purpose or their surroundings usually encourage any fine effort of art.

The perception of the Japanese is nothing if not congruous. He has an instinctive sense of the fitness of things within his own range of experience, and it would seem to him a solecism to erect a delicately chiselled, elaborately ornamented image among the mosses and shadows of a forest or the dust and contamination of a roadside. When, however, a stone carving was destined to form part of the entourage of an important temple or mausoleum, greater care was bestowed on its modelling. It then usually took the form of the Kara-shishi (Chinese lion, i.e. Dog of Fo), to which the Japanese sculptor often succeeds in imparting an aspect of much vigour and vitality.

The Emperor Gotoba, in the year 1187, had a pair of stone shishi chiselled to stand inside the inner gate of the temple Todai-ji at Nara, and effigies of two Bodhisattvas and the four Heavenly Kings, also in stone, to stand within the building. It is recorded that he entrusted the execution of this work to a Chinese sculptor, Lo Ku, who was assisted by three Japanese. Lo pointed out that the stone procurable in Japan was not fitted for the purpose of fine sculpture, and the Emperor caused stone to be imported from China at a cost of about £3,000.

There are preserved in a cave at the back of the temple Nippon-ji, in Awa province, fifty-three stone erfigies of Buddhas, said to have been sculptured in the days of the Emperors Shomu (724–748 ) and Heizei (806–809 ), and these were supplemented, in