Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/397



—Lit., a "placed thing;" that is to say, an object of art, such as a vase or statue, serving merely for ornamental purposes.  —Pronounced "Go Dashi," according to the Japanese sound of the same characters.  —The greatest of these men whose names are household words in Japan, were Li Lung-yen (Japanese Ri Riumin), Ma Yuen (Japanese Bayen), Muh Ki (Japanese Mokkei), Hia Kwei (Japanese Ka-Kei), and Ngan Hwai (Japanese Ganki).  —For detailed lists of Chinese artists of the Yuan (1260–1367), Min (1368–1646), and later eras the reader is recommended to consult Dr. Anderson's "Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum."  —The prelate Kukai is recorded to have carried from China in the year 806 no less than thirty-six paintings of supernatural scenes as well as portraits of patriarchs, and other priests enriched their country to an almost equal extent in the same century.  —Every collector knows these maki-mono, or pictorial scrolls. Sometimes the long series of pictures told their own tale, but generally the drawings served only to illustrate a chapter of history or legend written in their intervals or on their margins.  —It will be observed that this record assigns to wood-engraving in Japan an antiquity nearly six hundred years greater than that attributable to the beginning of the art in Europe.  —Dr. Anderson assigns 1700 as the time when colour-printing began in Japan, and Mr. S. Tuke has fixed the date at 1710. But the most exhaustive researches assign it to about 1740. <section end="Note 8" /> <section begin="Note 9" />—Literally "brocade picture," but the term nishiki (brocade) had long been used in Japan in the sense simply of "many-coloured." Another term originally applied to these pictures was suri-mono (print), but the name subsequently came to designate little single-sheet chromo-xylographs which were sent to friends at the New Year, and also black-and-white prints. Sheets in sequence—two, three, five, seven, or even twelve—which were first introduced by <section end="Note 9" />