Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/333

 and supernatural beings, they saw nothing higher than Chinese types. They preserved, indeed, a closer touch with the Chinese school than with any other, for each scion of the family and each student in its ateliers commenced his education by learning how to carve a dragon, and in every Japanese collection of Goto masterpieces the shishi, the kirin, and the ho-o repeat themselves persistently. But even Yūjō himself did not recognise any limit to his range of motives, and, as has been already seen, he and his descendants must undoubtedly be credited with having opened a new vista to their art. The Nara school was the next link in the chain of evolution. Faithful to the fashions of the era in which it had its birth, it made a still wider departure from the classical style than the Goto experts had attempted, and drew its inspiration from the Kano and the Tosa schools only, combining the strength, realism, and softness of the former with the decorative splendour of the latter. The Yokoya masters went a step farther. It is true that they may be said to have revived the Chinese spirit, since linear force, directness, and vitality became, in their hands, paramount elements of glyptic skill. But in that respect they stand to their own branch of art as the Kano painters stood to theirs; if they followed the technical methods of the Chinese school, they derived their motives chiefly from Japanese life and annals. Side by side with the Yokoya masters, and in many respects closely connected with them, the Yanagawa, Kikuoka, Kikuchi, Yoshioka, and Kikugawa families produced works which correspond with the pictures of the naturalistic school of Kyōtō, the Shijo academy, which had its greatest representative in Maruyama Okio. Then finally came the four families forming