Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/172

 true art), crouching beasts of prey,—all the stereotyped styles are reproduced. The imitation is excellent. That is all that can yet be said, though some of these works suggest that Japanese artists will by-and-by attain distinction in the new field.

The reader will not have failed to observe that whereas, in speaking of the early developments of sculpture in Japan, it has not been possible to draw a clear line between the carver of wood and the caster of bronze, the latter has chiefly figured in subsequent pages of the story. It is, in truth, often difficult to distinguish them so far as their place in the records of sculpture is concerned. The bronze-caster sometimes made his own models in wax, sometimes chiselled them in wood, and sometimes had recourse to the aid of the wood-carver. So, too, in modern times, the best wood-sculptors of the era—as Mitsuboshi Riuun and Takamura Kōun—lend their chisels to carve models for metal-casters, just as pictorial artists like Hashimoto Gahō, Kawabata Giyokushō, and Nomura Bunkyo, paint subjects to be copied by gold-smiths and enamellers. These interactions are sometimes recorded, sometimes ignored by the Japanese themselves, who appear to have always attached more importance to the result than to the processes by which it was reached. There is, however, a certain field of work where the wood-carver stands alone, namely, architectural decoration for interiors.

The Buddhist temple buildings of Japan in ancient times, though their architectural outlines were graceful and imposing, had nothing of the elaborate decoration which characterises the sacred edifices of subsequent centuries. Thus the temple Hōriu-ji, reconstructed in the eighth century, while in many