Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/32

16 place in the vista of our retrospect. While accepting the indisputable truth that the art of Japan in its greatest phases is but a reflection of the art of China—a reflection frequently vying with its original in vigour and vitality, but more frequently displaying the weaknesses incidental to imitations in general—we must avoid the inference that the native genius of the Chinese artist was wholly responsible for his successes. The fact is that in both countries pictorial art drew its best inspiration from the same fount, Buddhism, and in both derived some of its most striking technical features from the same source, caligraphy. The Chinese doubtless had pictures long before the days of Apelles and Zeuxis, but their artists failed to attract any national attention until Buddhism, coming in the third century of the Christian era, brought to them Græco-Indian suggestions which soon raised to the dignity of an art what had hitherto been nothing more than a branch of caligraphy. By a slow process of evolution this reformed art gradually attained, in the eighth century, a culminating point at which stands the figure of Wu Tao-tsz. Speaking broadly, the painters of his epoch—the Tang Dynasty (618–907 )—are believed to have been the most powerful and original their country has produced, but it is difficult to determine how much that verdict owes to Oriental reverence for the antique. If the works of Wu Tao-tsz, Wong Wei (Japanese O-i), and Han Kan (Japanese Kan-Kan) served as splendid models to the first Japanese painters of note—Kose no Kanaokoa and his immediate successors,—the pictures of the Sung (969–1205 ) masters were even more esteemed and copied by subsequent Japanese artists, and continuously in later eras the influence of the various Chinese Schools made itself felt in the neighbouring empire. Turning to the general characteristics of the art, the first point to be noted is that strength, directness, decision, and delicacy of stroke ranked above all other qualities. Outlines were frequently traced, the fact that they do not exist in nature being deliberately ignored. Doubtless for the same reason, accuracy of drawing was often sacrificed to conventionalised beauties of curve and contour, and nature’s effects were translated into the language of decorative mannerisms. Linear perspective was either absent altogether, or present in a form that violated European canons. Cast shadows did not appear. Colours were used very sparingly in the earlier eras, the best works being in black and white, pure monochrome, or pale tints relieved by an occasional touch of brighter hue. No subject was too trivial for representation, but if pictures were often produced which, so far as concerns the objects depicted, would rank only as studies in the Occident, their narrowness of range was redeemed by remarkable subtlety of suggestion, and in the case of landscapes there was a really noble power of representing space