Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/228

 parture from established canons must be traced to the influence of the short-lived academy of Italian art established by the Japanese Government in 1874. In the forefront of the new movement are to be found men like Yoneharu Unkai and Shinkai Takejiro, the former of whom chiselled a figure of Jenner for the Medical Association of Japan when they celebrated the centenary of the great physician, and the latter has carved life-size likeness effigies of Princes Arisugawa and Kitashirakawa who lost their lives in the war of 1894-1895. The artists of the Kōun school, however, do much work which appeals to emotions in general rather than to individual memories. Thus Arakawa Reiun, one of Kōun's most brilliant pupils, recently exhibited a figure of a swordsman in the act of driving home a furious thrust. The weapon is not shown. Reiun sculptured simply a man poised on the toes of one foot, the other foot raised, the arm extended, and the body straining forward in strong yet elastic muscular effort. This carving emphasises the advantage of not working from a model. A posed figure could not possibly suggest the alert vitality and high muscular tension of the swordsman. A more imaginative work by the same artist is a figure of a farmer who has just shot an eagle that swooped upon his grandson. The old man holds his bow still raised. Some of the eagle's feathers, blown to his side, suggest the death of the bird; at his feet lies the corpse of the little boy, and the horror, grief, and anger that such a tragedy would inspire are depicted with striking realism in the farmer's face. Work of that nature has close affinities with Occidental conceptions. Its chief distinguishing feature is that the glyptic character is preserved at the ex-