Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/101

 short, everywhere, it is employed with charming effect. But it is not a Japanese conception. There is a painting by a Chinese artist of the early Ming period (circa 1400), in which a girl is represented carrying in her hand a basket of peonies which might have been the original of at least half of the Japanese Hana-uago designs. In truth, so soon as the potters of Arita set themselves to produce highly decorated porcelains, they found a wealth of designs already elaborated and classified by the weavers, lacquer-makers, embroiderers, and metal-workers of their country. It is doubtful whether the artists of any nation ever carried the decorative art farther than the Japanese have carried it. In diapers alone they have devised some four hundred, each bearing a name by which it is immediately known among native experts. The Dutch, in 1660, had only to say that they wished for pieces highly ornamented. There was no need to supply designs. The potters simply took as a model the brilliant and innumerable combinations of diapers, scrolls, floral subjects, and mythical conceits painted on the lacquers or woven in the brocades of their country. The new ware naturally received the name Nishiki-de (brocade pattern). Figure subjects were very rarely chosen. The Japanese artist has never appreciated the contours of the human figure; and that for a very simple reason. From the oldest times, to expose any part of the person, except the face and hands, has always been deemed in Japan a gross breach of etiquette. The aristocrat loved to cover his body with deftly folded garments of rich stuffs, and to move amid the graceful sweep of flowing drapery. Studies from the nude would have shocked the sense, not of decency, but of refinement. When the Japanese artist sets