Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/203

 without marked variation of treatment; but the range of conception is so large, the motives display such a wealth of fancy, realistic, conventional, grave, humorous, and grotesque, that the collector perpetually finds some new source of admiration, instruction, or amusement. If Japan had given to the world nothing but the netsuke, there would still be no difficulty in differentiating the bright versatility of her national genius from the comparatively sombre, mechanic, and unimaginative temperament of the Chinese. These delightful statuettes often represent deities, figures from the myth-land of Taoism, Buddhism, and Brahmanism, demons, gnomes, and other subjects already found in the gallery of familiar sculptures. But they also represent scenes from the homely, every-day life of the people, so simply and realistically treated that they play in glyptic art the same rôle as genre painting does in pictorial. Their carvers drew further inspiration from the whole range of natural objects. Birds, animals, reptiles, leaves, flowers, fishes, and insects all were reproduced with extraordinary fidelity and artistic taste. The netsuke, the ukiyo-ye, and the chromo-xylograph, which have already been discussed, and the sword-furniture which will be presently described, prove conclusively what a profound sense of beauty and instinct of art must have permeated the whole mass of the Japanese people, and how the best qualities of the decorative artist were educated to such an extent as ultimately to become innate in craftsman and critic alike.

Ivory has been spoken of above as though it were the principal material of the netsuke. But the best work was done in wood—cherry-wood, boxwood, sandalwood (shitan), or ebony (kokutan). Bone, horn