Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/318

 landscapes with a praying mantis and tufts of Eularia japonica in the foreground. His son, Masachika, became a pupil of Jōi in the latter's old age, and took the art name of Jōwa. He did not reach the high level of either his teacher or his father, but he was undoubtedly a grand expert. Nara Masanobu (1750) had the art names of Kikuju-sai and Kiko. His works are greatly prized by Japanese connoisseurs, but as his specialty was the carving of the amariyo (the rain-dragon), he does not appeal strongly to foreign taste.

At the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, Nagasaki's experts were brought into prominence by Kizayemon, artistically known as Jakushi. Nagasaki, from time immemorial, had been permeated by Chinese influences, being the centre of trade and intercourse between Japan and the neighbouring empire. Hence its chisellers of sword-mounts affected designs generally called kwanto-gata, or Canton style, many examples of which may be seen throughout the whole field of Japanese decorative art. The familiar "willow-pattern" is the worst specimen of this type. Its features are stiff figures of Chinese warriors, court ladies, mandarins or historical personages, set in a stereotyped garden with architectural accompaniment; or little children—the well-known kara-ko (Chinese children)—with tonsured heads, playing various out-door games; or dragons of more or less conventionalised shape. Jakushi carved dragons, but he also chiselled landscapes, bamboos tossed by the wind and other designs of flowers and foliage, and his skill was so conspicuous that in Nagasaki people learned to use the term Jakushi-bori as generally distinctive of beautiful work.