Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/29

RV 9 server is expected to recognise. He himself, if he has any pretensions to be a connoisseur, is familiar with sixteen different styles of touch for painting scenery, thirty-six for painting foliage, and nineteen for painting drapery, which constitute the classics of the brush, each having its own distinctive name and clearly established characteristics. To Western intelligence these facts suggest mannerism and formalism. Such analytical elaboration seems incongruous with the spirit of true art. Yet tricks of brush-manipulation are not allowed to impair the expression of the pictorial motive in Japan. These peculiar strokes, when traced by the hand of a master, do not obtrude themselves at the expense of congruity. They may, of course, be exaggerated so as to become startlingly obtrusive. Hokusai's work often shows that fault. His use of the "swift-wave," otherwise called the "holly-leaf," style in drawing drapery sometimes degenerates into an impertinent mannerism, whereas outlines of the same class appear natural and appropriate when traced by the brush of Utanosuke or Shiutoku. But the point to which attention may be directed is not the merits or defects of such styles for pictorial purposes so much as the fact of their accurate differentiation and faithful employment by Japanese experts. The observer is thus carried into a field practically unexplored by European and American artists who associate with the best line drawing no qualities other than strength, delicacy, and directness.

Passing from the calligraphic training of the hand to the hand itself, it is seen that nature has endowed the Japanese people with hands singularly supple and sensitive. Manual dexterity ought to characterise