Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/43

RV 23 studies in the Occident, their narrowness of range was redeemed by remarkable subtlety of suggestion, and in the case of landscapes there was a really noble power of representing space and atmosphere. These remarks apply to secular rather than to religious paintings. In the latter, figure subjects predominate, and are treated not only with grandeur of conception but sometimes also with gorgeous wealth of decorative detail. The religious pictures of China and Japan are scarcely distinguishable. That is not strange when the identity of their motives and calligraphic methods is remembered, as well as the fact that in early days the Middle Kingdom stood towards the island empire in nearly the same relation as that occupied by Italy towards western Europe in mediæval and modern times. China was the bourne of the Japanese art student as well as of the Japanese litterateur, and to have sat at the feet of the Tang, Sung, or Yuan masters or philosophers was counted the highest possible education, whether æsthetic or scholastic. Representing the same subjects and inspired by the same devotional instincts, the Buddhist paintings of the two countries might well resemble each other to the point of identity. But it is strange to find among the secular works of Chinese artists exact prototypes of drawings that hang in the alcoves of thousands of Japanese houses, or form the decorative bases of innumerable Japanese objects of virtu. The perched hawks and roosting pigeons of Hwei Tsung; the swooping cranes and curling waves of Mih Yuen-chang; the beetling cliffs, dashing waterfalls, and rugged trees of Wu Tao-tsz; the ferocious dragons of Ch'en So-ung; the marvellously bold and vital sketches of Muh Ki, herons flying from the silk and