Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/28

RV 8 been nothing of the kind as yet in the country's art. It is an easily understood corollary that anatomical studies never occupied the artist's attention. That defect in his education often forces itself painfully upon observation, especially in his delineation of hands and feet. Perhaps for the same reason he fails signally in his attempt to draw animals,—horses, oxen, foxes, tigers, elephants, wolves, dogs, and so forth. Strange that the accuracy of his observation, conspicuous in other things, should be so markedly defective in this field. He can limn a fish, a bird, an insect, or even a fluffy little puppy-dog to perfection, but when he has to trace outlines that depend for their correctness on knowledge of the bony and muscular structures beneath, he errs perpetually. Directness of method and power of line are among his chief merits. As to the latter quality, its genesis may be attributed to the use of the ideographic script. The training that every Japanese child receives from a tender age in tracing ideographs, educates a brush-using facility which has become in some degree hereditary. It may be laid down as axiomatic that an intimate relationship exists between Japanese calligraphy and Japanese painting, and that the Japanese eye detects in brush strokes an aesthetic beauty too subtle to appeal to men living outside the ideographic pale. Touch, as has been well said by a great connoisseur of Japanese pictorial art, is not by any means the most important quality in a picture, but it nevertheless contributes largely to the flavour and vitality of an artist's work. When a Japanese speaks of "power of pen" (hitsu-riyoku), there presents itself to his mind a combination of delicate grace, infallible accuracy, and unostentatious verve which every intelligent ob-