Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/35

RV 15 submitted to the public on the subject of Japanese art. Chamberlain can scarcely conceal his contempt for it: he finds that it "stops at the small, the petty, the isolated, the vignette," and that the chief lesson it has taught the world is "the charm of irregularity." Fenollosa, on the other hand, talks of Motonobu as "scaling the heavens and battling with Titans;" of "the depth and intensity which startle us like the voices of the Gods from the mellow-toned sheets of Shiubun, Noami, Jasoku, and Masanobu;" of "the draught of immortality that all late artists have sought to drink from the well of Sesshiu's irrepressible vigour," and of "Yeitoku, whose heart burns with the internal fire lit from the torch of the Sung genius." It is impossible that two men of very much more than average intelligence can speak of the same thing with voices so dissentient. The truth is that their verdicts are based on different evidence.

The remarks made above with reference to the decorative limitations of Japanese art apply with clearer truth to secular than to religious paintings. In the latter field work is occasionally found that does not suggest any consideration for the plane of its display or the nature of its environment. Some of the earliest masters are known chiefly, if not entirely, by the pictures that they painted for Buddhist temples or Buddhist priests, and these pictures would deservedly rank high in any country. They show loftiness of conception, massiveness of treatment, and vigour of method that rival the achievements of the Italian mediæval celebrities. Yet they cannot be cited as witnesses against the general theory enunciated above, for they are without either linear perspective or cast shadows.