Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/41

RV 21 has been said above of painting applies with equal truth to sculpture. In both alike the impress of Japanese genius shows itself chiefly in tenderness, grace, and, above all, humour. It is doubtful whether the Japanese pictorial artist ever scaled the heights on which the greatest of the Chinese masters stood. It is virtually certain that the converse is true in the case of sculpture. But these are mere differences of degree. Not until the characteristics of humour, tenderness, and grace are considered does the distinction become radical.

A few words may be said here about Chinese art, since it occupies such an important place in the vista of the retrospect. While accepting the indisputable truth that the art of Japan in its greatest phases is but a reflection of the art of China—a reflection frequently vying with its original in vigour and vitality, but more frequently displaying the weaknesses incidental to imitations in general—it is necessary to avoid the inference that the native genius of the Chinese artist was wholly responsible for his successes. The fact is that in both countries pictorial art drew its best inspiration from the same fount, Buddhism, and in both derived some of its most striking technical features from the same source, calligraphy. The Chinese doubtless had pictures long before the days of Apelles and Zeuxis, but their artists failed to attract any national attention until Buddhism, coming in the third century of the Christian era, brought to them Græco-Indian suggestions which soon raised to the dignity of an art what had hitherto been nothing more than a branch of calligraphy. By a slow process of evolution this reformed art gradually attained, in the eighth century, a culminating point at which stands the figure