Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/31

Rh artist effaced himself; his employers ignored him, and posterity was probably betrayed into the error of attributing to foreign masters much that Japan had a just title to call her own. The tendency of modern research is to throw doubt upon the foreign provenance of several important works hitherto attributed to Chinese or Korean artists. Men that could conceive and construct the colossal bronze figure of Lochâna Buddha at Nara, and the numerous images preserved in the temples there, can not have experienced much necessity to employ Chinese or Korean hands. The glyptic art, the lacquerer’s art, the inlayer’s art, unquestionably attained a high stage of development in this epoch; but the pictorial art remained in a secondary place, and a careful examination of the Shoso-in collection shows that, even in the field of decorative art, the features which constitute the chief charm, as well as the specialty of Japanese genius in later ages had not yet been evolved. Without exception the decoration seen in the Shoso-in specimens is geometrically distributed. There is no evidence that the Japanese had yet begun to fathom the secret of natural proportion, or to study the lesson they afterwards acquired so perfectly, namely, that to conceal, while preserving, the geometrical relations of part to part, to obtain equilibrium while apparently despising equipoise, is the fundamental axiom of graceful symmetry.

But as sculptors they unquestionably stand at the head of Far-Eastern artists, and, although the degree of their supremacy varied from age to age, the fact could never be questioned. In point of originality, however, little can be claimed for them. They invested their glyptic work with power, vitality, and idealism not to be found in the sculptures of China, Korea, or even India; but their models were derived, not created. What has been said above of painting applies with equal truth to sculpture. In both alike the impress of Japanese genius shows itself chiefly in tenderness, grace, and, above all, humour. It is doubtful whether the Japanese pictorial artist ever scaled the heights on which the greatest of the Chinese masters stood. It is virtually certain that the converse is true in the case of sculpture. But these are mere differences of degree. The distinction becomes radical only when we consider the characteristics of humour, tenderness, and grace.

Let us say a few words here about Chinese art, since it occupies such an important