Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/179

 the time were employed to construct a mortuary chapel at the dedication of which, in 1617, an Imperial Envoy presided and the Sutra of the Lotus of the Law was recited ten thousand times by a multitude of priests. This mausoleum, together with the chapel in memory of the third Tokugawa Shōgun, Iyemitsu, also at Nikkō, and the mausolea of the other potentates of the same line at Shiba and Uyeno in Tokyo [sic], are certainly among the most wonderful efforts of decorative art that the world possesses. Words are quite inadequate to convey a just idea of the combined glory and elegance of the structures, both externally and internally. Innumerable motives are represented, in painting, in sculpture, in lacquer and in metal work, and though the details are so varied and multitudinous that their description would fill a large volume, the arrangements and congruity are so perfect that no sense of confusion or bewilderment is ever suggested. Every available spot or space has some feature of beauty—coffered ceiling, embossed column, sculptured surface, carved bracket and beam, silver-capped pendant, gold-sheathed pillar-neck and beam-crossing, gilded roof-crest and terminal, painted mural space, lacquered door, recesses crowded with elaborate carvings, gates rich with sculptured diapers and arabesques and deeply chiselled panels—the catalogue is endless. Sometimes, as in the Haiden of the Tōshō-gu mausoleum at Nikkō, the ceiling is divided into innumerable coffers, each filled with the minutest decoration, the whole forming a collection of choice miniatures in rich frames. Sometimes, as at the temple Nanzen-ji in Kyōtō, a ceiling sixteen hundred square feet in area is painted with one huge dragon in black and gold.