Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/99

RV 77 a fine example of mural decoration at the temple Horyu-ji, though such a theory is untenable. History first speaks of Shiba Tori in connection with three images which he carved in wood to order of the Emperor Yomei, in the year 586 ; namely, an effigy of Shaka, sixteen feet high, with two attendant Bodhisattvas of smaller dimensions. These were placed in a temple specially built for their reception at Minabuchi, the temple and the images being an offering to invoke heaven's healing grace for the sick Sovereign. No vestige of these sculptures remains. Shiba Tori is also said to have chiselled many wooden images to order of the Emperor Yomei's son, Prince Shotoku—remembered by posterity as Shotoku Taishi. Shotoku never came to the throne. He filled the post of regent during the reign of the Empress Suiko (563–628). The earliest Japanese historiographer and Buddhist commentator, he left an unequalled reputation for learning, piety, and statesmanship, and among all the factors making for the spread of Buddhism in that era, his influence had probably most efficacy. Many sculptures in wood, said to be from his chisel, are preserved at various places in Japan, but there is reason to think that a majority of them are apocryphal. One, however, is regarded as authentic by connoisseurs. It is a statue of Kwannon, the goddess of mercy, six and a half feet high, its comparatively defective technique redeemed by considerable grace of pose and passionless refinement of feature. Shiba Tori's work, of which fully authenticated examples are preserved in the temple Horiu-ji, betrays greatly inferior development of artistic instinct, his images being squat, ill-proportioned, and deficient in dignity. They are apparently Chinese modifications of Indian