Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/183



homage. Decoration was developed in buildings of different type in accordance with a system by which it was divided into three or four degrees of elaboration, the highest degree of richness being reserved for the temples and mausolea. The painter's art appears in the delicate forms and soft tints of birds and blossoms cushioned in the white wood-work of princes' chambers, and it may be seen also in deeper bolder tones, amid a pandemonium of saints and demons, sacred monsters, celestial flowers and symbols, set in gilded and lacquered framing, adorning the gloomy interior of religious shrines.

Colours were freely used in these decorative schemes. Thus, in the sanctuary of the Tōshō-gu mausoleum at Nikkō, wide fields of silver and gold, occupying the lower parts of the walls, underlie beams diapered in vermilion, leaf-back green, cerulean blue, and dead white. Broad frieze spaces in deep rich red are interrupted by oval medallions enclosing delicately chiselled designs of birds and flowers picked out with red, gold, green, blue, and touches of white. Above these and stretching from capital to capital of the pillars, are formal diapers in green, red, and gold, with intervening floral scrolls in gold and green on a chocolate-brown ground; the pillars, whose capitals have belts of fern-fronds in red, green, blue, and white, and fillets of blue and gold, support golden beams, and above the latter rises an arched entablature profusely carved and decorated, and brilliantly coloured in all the hues mentioned above. Finally, this wealth of soft tints and elaborate fancies is separated from the ceiling by a concave cornice uniformly gilt, through which runs horizontally a solid ribbed beam of noir-mat lacquer. The ceiling is coffered with a framework in gold and black. The coffers, of which the ground colour is gold, have a border of