Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/221

 took scarcely less pride and pleasure in this feature of the fête. Nothing was more natural than that a maker of hina should turn to the more artistic but somewhat cognate pursuit of netsuke-carving. For the rest, however, nothing can be predicated about the traditional Ri-fu-yo. No specimens of his work are known to have survived, and if he took the elaborate hina as a model, his immediate successors did not follow his example. According to an appendix to the (Treatise on Sword-Furniture), compiled by Michitaku and published in June, 1781, the first carver of netsuke was the well-known painter Tosa Mitsuoki, who died in the year 1691. He had the rank of Hōgen, and his art name was Shūzan. The Sōken Kishō says of him:—

Hōgen Shuzan lived at Shima-no-uchi in Ōsaka. All the netsuke carved by this artist are coloured. Many imitations have been made, but none has the qualities possessed by works from the artistic hands of the skilled painter.

Note by Kinshi Hōzan, son of Shuzan: "My father, who is artistically known as Hōgen Shuzan, was called Mitsuoki, or Tansenso, and enjoyed a high reputation as a painter. He was very fond of carving, and loved to reproduce, with due alterations of enlargement or reduction, the quaintest and most unusual figures shown in the Sankaikyo (shapes from the mountain and the ocean) or the Ressaiden (annals of Rishi). In fact, any figure that he fancied took shape under his chisel. His scheme of colouring was so excellent that ordinary folks can have no conception of it. But as he ceased to carve after reaching middle life, his works are very scarce and of correspondingly high value. Ina Michitaku, a friend of mine, who has been recently engaged compiling the Shōken Kishō, with an appendix on netsuke, has asked my permission to publish some of my father's carvings, together with those of some other artists. I desire to comply with his wishes, but unfortunately these old and