Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/61

Rh birds. Both these great artists died early in the century. They were succeeded by Mitsunobu, the best painter of the Tosa School, and by Sesshū, Shubun, and Kanō Masanobu, all of whom were founders of independent schools. The first Kanō's son, Kanō Motonobu, was more eminent than his father. He handed down the tradition to his own sons and grandsons, and the Kanō school continues to be, even at the present day, the chief stronghold of classicism in Japan. By "classicism" we mean partly a peculiar technique, partly an adherence to Chinese methods, models, and subjects, such as portraits of Chinese sages and delineations of Chinese landscapes, which are represented, of course, not from nature but at second-hand.

The synthetic power, the quiet harmonious colouring, and the free vigorous touch of these Japanese "old masters" have justly excited the admiration of succeeding generations of their country men. But the circle of ideas within which the Sesshūs, the Shūbuns, the Kanōs, and the other classical Japanese painters move, is too narrow and peculiar for their productions to be ever likely to gain much hold on the esteem of Europe. European collectors—such men as Gonse, for instance—have been looked down on by certain enthusiasts in Japan for the preference which they evince for Hokusai and the modern Popular School (Ukiyo-e Ryū) generally. It is very bold of us to venture to express an opinion on such a matter; but we think that the instinct which led Gonse and others to Hokusai led them aright,—that Japanese art was itself led to Hokusai by a legitimate and most fortunate process of development, that it was led out of the close atmosphere of academical conventionality into the fresh air of heaven.

To say this is not necessarily to deny to the old masters superiority of another order. Chō Densu manifests a spirituality, Sesshū a genius for idealising Chinese scenes, Kanō Tan-yū a power to evoke beauty out of a few chaotic blotches, all these and scores of their followers a certain aristocratic distinction, to which the members of the Popular School can lay no claim.