Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/54

RV 34 cipal representative of the academy at that time having been honoured with the title of Tosa Gon-no-kumi. Thenceforth through every era the successive artists of the school bore the family name "Tosa." Japanese connoisseurs maintain that for a time the styles of the Kasuga and the Tosa could be clearly differentiated, the former being distinguished by its fine and flowing brush-work, the latter by the boldness, firmness, and directness of its touch. But these differences soon became imperceptible, and that they had ever existed was forgotten by all except the keenest critics. The characteristics of the Tosa masters were magnificent combinations of colours and remarkable skill of composition. They may be called decorators and illustrators rather than painters of pictures as the term is generally understood, for their best work is found on screens, sliding doors, and historical or legendary scrolls. Indeed, as historical illustrators they are quite peerless, for in no other country can be found pictorial annals such as those with which they enriched Japan during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the first half of the fourteenth. A long list of illustrious names belongs to that era, culminating in the fourteenth century with Takashima Takekane, of whom his countrymen allege that among all the crowded scenes of court, camp, and domestic life depicted on his scrolls, no two show the same grouping.

Although the records indicate that Kose no Kanaoka followed Kawanari in popularising secular, or Japanese, pictures, the Kose school subsequently came to be regarded as representing the Chinese style, the works of its masters being in marked accord with what were known as classical canons. Several of those