Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/440

 the illustrious dead. The greatest painters in Japan were never permitted to be wholly original; it was essential that at some time or other they should walk in the footprints of their predecessors. An unwritten but practically recognised canon required that, in order to qualify for orthodox recognition, whatever they might accomplish in their own genre, they should show themselves familiar with and even competent to reproduce the methods and conceptions of the old masters. The tea-clubs were the great patrons and preservers of this conservative orthodoxy. They carried their severe idealism to a point entirely beyond the range of ordinary intelligence. Their æsthetic affectation became a mystery unfathomable even by themselves. Yet their influence survives even now, and has left its mark upon every branch of art, especially the keramic. The rude homely potteries of Bizen, of Karatsu, of Shinto, of Iga, and many another kiln, when placed side by side with the exquisite porcelains of Hirado and Nabeshima, or the beautiful faiences of Satsuma and Kyōtō, show how often Japan did violence to her own natural genius in deference to the dictates of an artificial and perverse dilettanteism. If foreign influence threatened at first to vitiate her taste, it will probably atone for this crime by finally discrediting the cramping canons of the Chano-ru cult.