Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/14



In the Ashikaga age (1335–1573) the best Japanese artists, like Sesshu and his disciples, for instance, true revolutionists in art, not mere rebels, whose Japanese simplicity was strengthened and clarified by Chinese suggestion, were in the truest meaning of the word Buddhist priests, who sat before the inextinguishable lamp of faith, and sought their salvation by the road of silence; their studios were in the Buddhist temple, east of the forests and west of the hills, dark without, and luminous within with the symbols of all beauty of nature and heaven. And their artistic work was a sort of prayer-making, to satisfy their own imagination, not a thing to show to a critic whose attempt at arguing and denying is only a nuisance in the world of higher art; they drew pictures to create absolute beauty and grandeur, that made their own human world look almost trifling, and directly joined themselves with eternity. Art for them was not a question of mere reality in expression, but the question of Faith. Therefore they never troubled their minds with the matter of subjects or the size of the canvas; indeed, the Rh