Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/66

RV 44 dency, if not the aim, of whose policy was to cultivate the growth of an effeminate, splendour-loving mood among the aristocratic classes in lieu of the fiercely ambitious temper of mediæval militarism.

The sequence of development arrives now at the Ukiyo-ye Riu, or "Popular school," as it has been generally called by Western critics. The word ukiyo literally signifies "floating world;" that is to say, this transient world, or every-day life. Hence, when a Japanese speaks of ukiyo-ye (ye signifies picture) he means simply genre paintings—representations of persons and things that belong to the ephemeral scenes among which the artist moves. It is generally alleged that the so-called Popular school owed its origin to Iwasa Matahei, a painter who flourished in the second half of the sixteenth century. But the statement is somewhat misleading. A careful reader of what has been written above will see that, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, incidents of national life furnished to the Tosa masters their chief motives, and that, down to the Chinese renaissance in the fifteenth century, artists did not hesitate to seek, subjects for delineation in the daily doings of the plebeian classes. Even the great founders of the Kano school, men whose works support comparison with the masterpieces of Chinese genius, had no fear of degrading their art or alienating aristocratic patronage when they depicted episodes from the kitchen, the stable, the farmyard, and the workshop. The truth is, that in the rise and development of the Popular school must be traced, not a new artistic departure, but simply a reflection of the changes which the civilisation of the era was undergoing. From the end of the sixteenth century, the actor, the