Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/29

Rh influence on the artistic features of their respective epochs. To Buddhism also are due the Grecian affinities distinctly traceable in Japanese art, for the conquests of Alexander brought Grecian civilization to northern India, whence Buddhism set out for China, Korea, and Japan.

Concerning the history of Japanese art, the best authorities refer its genesis to the reign of the Empress Suiko (563–567 ) when Chinese court fashions, literature, and etiquette were introduced, and with them came applied art for decorating the Buddhist temples then beginning to be built.

We need not insist upon the accuracy of this date, for the evidence is traditional; but certainly the seventh century bequeathed to posterity a few specimens which show that the casting and chiselling of metal, and the manufacture of lacquer were already practised with considerable skill; that fine examples of embroidery had been imported from China, if not produced in Japan, and that painting, though still crude and elementary, had made some progress. A great deal of ingenuity and close research have been devoted to tracing fine lines of division between the periods of Japanese development in these early days, but the resulting differentiation is too subtle to be practical. The problem of real interest is to separate foreign inspiration from native originality; to determine whether this art, which has so greatly moved the world in modern times, is a mere by-product of inspiration emanating in the first place from Greece, and becoming more and more deflected from the line of identity as it passed through the refracting media of Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese assimilations, or whether any part of it may be regarded as the unmixed offspring of Japanese genius. With that object in view it would certainly be