Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/148

RV 124 esque vices. In the field of minor sculpture—netsuke and sword-furniture—he drew from a large repertoire of motives; from the pages of history, of legend, of folk-lore, and of every-day life. But such work dates from a comparatively late period. In all his early and mediæval sculpture the types were few, and his treatment of them ultimately became conventional and uninteresting. This requires a word of explanation. At first sight it seems as though the large population of the Buddhist and Shintō pantheons should have furnished practically unlimited motives. The Indian creed with its broad liberality of eclecticism, and Taoism with its numerous excursions into elf-land and gnome-kingdom, appear to offer a mine sufficiently rich for any artist. But religion made from these a strict selection, and prescribed almost invariable methods of treatment. The Nine Phases of Amitabha, for example, a formula suggesting varied developments, signifies, after all, nothing more than nine images distinguished solely by the positions of their hands and fingers. The legion of genii that exercise supernatural power in mystic regions of space appear to invite an endless play of poetic and artistic fancy. But their orthodox representatives, whether in painting or sculpture, are generally paltry in conception and disappointingly deficient in the dignity of apotheosis. It fared with the sculptors of Japan as it had fared with those of Byzantium. Bound by conventions which religion, not art, dictated, and which superstition enforced, they did not venture to follow ideals of their own, or to introduce strongly subjective elements into their work.

It will further be observed that the cardinal point of difference between Japanese and Grecian methods