Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/51

Rh by a decorative impulse precisely analogous to that represented by the genesis and growth of the Yamato School. Eitoku and Sanraku introduced this decorative method in the Kano academies at the close of the sixteenth century, just as the internecine wars by which the country had been tortured for five hundred years were drawing to a close, and feudal castles and nobleman’s residences of unprecedented massiveness and magnificence were beginning to be built throughout the empire. Eitoku created, perhaps, the greatest purely decorative style of painting that the East has ever produced. His style accurately reflected the fashions and tendencies of his time, when, under the rule of Hideyoshi, the administrative power began to be associated with displays of imposing magnificence, and æstheticism, officially inspired, found expression in the lavish adornment of castles, temples and palaces and in the construction of beautiful parks. On the walls and sliding-doors of these edifices, Eitoku, Sanraku and their followers produced pictures glowing with gold and rich colour harmonies. The decorative artists that preceded them had used the precious metal sparingly for picking out designs, whereas they employed it to form wide fields on which they painted episodes of war, phases of aristocratic life, or subjects taken from the kingdom of flowers and foliage, the ensemble conveying a suggestion of rich gems clustered in broad areas of mellow gold. Perhaps it should be added here that though the decorative mode represented by the Yamato-Tosa School undoubtedly preceded that of the Kano School, the former began to be strongly conspicuous almost simultaneously with the development of