Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/279

 part of the monster, and elaborated for himself exact rules as to the shape and dimensions of the claws, the horns, the scales, the teeth, the ears, and the armature. There are points here which probably lie beyond the appreciation of a foreign connoisseur, who regards the dragon as on the whole an ugly reptile, and can scarcely accept it as an agreeable element of any decorative scheme. But to a Japanese artist or lover of art the dragon, with its fierce vitality and mysterious suggestions, is a creature of the highest interest. The painter and the sculptor alike understood the immense difficulty of depicting or chiselling it so that it should have the semblance of ferocious vigour and implacable malignity, not the appearance of a limp, fantastic worm. All the Goto masters made a close study of the dragon. They showed it in various shapes and positions, and in chiselling it they acquired certain mannerisms from which skilled connoisseurs in later ages constructed an alphabet of identification. Thus, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was published a two-volume book (Kinko Kantei Hiketsu, or the secrets of judging works in gold), containing minute analyses of what are known as the hiden (secret formulas) of the first fifteen Goto masters. It is a compilation of interest, as showing the lovingly appreciative attention bestowed upon such objects by Japanese connoisseurs. But almost everything is based upon the dragon, and certainly an exceptional instinct is required for undertaking a careful study of that fabulous and repellent monster, from the contours of his curves and the angles of his claws to the length of his antenn, the set of his ears, and the section of his horns. If an estimate of the Goto family's work were derived from