Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/170

 Japanese art, where the naturalistic modelling is always duly subordinated to the decorative design.

In connection with the name of Okazaki Sessei, a special kind of casting should be mentioned. The tomb of Iyeyasu, first Tokugawa Shōgun, at the Shiba mausolea is approached by a magnificent bronze gate the doors of which are solid castings with large medallion ornaments moulded in relief in a field of delicately traced diapers. This grand specimen of bronze-casting is known in Japan as Chōsen Karakanemon (the Korean bronze gate), in recognition of the fact that the panels were brought from Korea among the spoils taken by the Taikō's troops. No panels of comparable magnitude are found in any other mausoleum of the Tokugawa, and the plain inference, supported by traditions and endorsed by modern bronze-workers, is that a casting of the kind was beyond the capacity of Japanese experts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Okazaki Sessei enjoys the distinction of being the first to accomplish such work. In 1890 he cast two magnificent door-panels, their height 7.2 feet, their width 4.5 feet, and their decorative designs ascending and descending dragons (agari-riu and kudari-riu) modelled in high relief, the former rising from waves, the latter emerging from clouds. The casting of such large panels is regarded as a most difficult tour-de-force. Many other beautiful works in bronze have emerged from Sessei's hands,—an eagle in the act of alighting, its outspread wings measuring seven feet across; a figure (8.7 feet high) of one of the Heavenly Kings trampling on a dragon, and other fine conceptions. He is now engaged on a colossal figure, thirty-three feet high, of the great Buddhist teacher, Nichiren, which is to