Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/180

 The fertility of the minds that designed these decorations, the skill of the hands that executed them, will be as memorable a thousand years hence as they are to-day. It has sometimes been alleged that the designer and the sculptor were generally two, the former being the pictorial artist, the latter a mere artisan, ranking little higher than a common carpenter. There are no means of determining how far that dictum may be trusted. In the Occident the name of every one connected with such works would be handed down for respectful remembrance by succeeding generations; but in Japan the art-artisan has always been self-effacing and the nation has quietly acquiesced in his effacement. His work lives: that is deemed sufficient.

Among the sculptors engaged upon the splendid mausolea of the Tokugawa Shōguns and other architectural achievements of the seventeenth century, which was certainly the golden era of decorative carving, not half a dozen names have been preserved. At their head stands Hidari Jingoro (left-handed Jingoro). His very appellation indicates the scanty consideration extended to him. It is as though an artist in America or England should be generally spoken of as "Left-handed Bill" or "Wall-eyed Tom." There is nevertheless an element of justice in the measure of esteem extended to Jingoro and his fellow-sculptors, for although as carvers of flowers, foliage, and birds, they have no superiors in other lands, it is certain that their representations of figure subjects and animals would not have won for them in Western countries greater renown than they received in Japan.

Among the carvings that decorate the mausoleum