Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/282

270 cases mysterious, in others clearly traceable to the residence of kakke patients, who, having been sent to the hills for change of air, have left a legacy of their disease to the inhabitants.

 Kakemono. The kakemono, or hanging scroll, is the form in which Japanese paintings are usually mounted. It takes the place of the framed picture of Europe; but the number of kakemonos displayed in any single room is limited to one, a pair, or a set of three. Custom has moreover fixed on the tokonoma, or alcove, as the only part of the room in which these scrolls shall be hung, and prescribes rigid rules for the dimensions and other details of the mounting.

The invention of this method of showing off pictures and preserving them—for when not displayed, the kakemono is always tightly rolled up and stored away—goes back to very early Chinese days. Sometimes the kakemono contains, instead of a picture, some valued specimen of calligraphy. For Far-Eastern painting is a sort of writing, and the writing a sort of painting, and calligraphic skill is no less esteemed than skill in the painter's art.

The gaku is another Japanese method of mounting pictures, which more closely resembles the framed picture of Europe, but occupies quite a subsidiary place.

 Lacquer. It is acknowledged by all connoisseurs that in the art of lacquer the Japanese far surpass their teachers, the Chinese. This may be partly because the lacquer-tree, though also apparently introduced from China, finds in Japan a more congenial climate; but we shall scarcely err in attributing the superiority chiefly to the finer esthetic instincts of the Japanese. So exactly