Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/66

54 Some of the anecdotes about Japanese artistic notabilities ring curiously familiar to Western ears. Thus, there is the story of the painter Kanaoka, whose horses were so life-like that at night, quitting the screen which they adorned, they trotted off into a neighbouring garden and munched the shrubs, till some ingenious person hit on the plan of adding a rope to the picture in order to tether these lively steeds. The cats of another artist actually caught live rats, much to the relief of the priests inhabiting a temple infested by those vermin. In a third tale it was painted rats that started into life, and scampered off when the rector of the temple came to see what was the matter. We seem to hear an echo of the stories told of Zeuxis and Parrhasios. It is, by the way, somewhat odd that horses and cats should have been selected by the anecdote-mongers; for it is precisely in the portraiture of quadrupeds that Japanese art fails most conspicuously to express anatomical truth. Did they tell us of painted carp or gold-fish swimming away, or of painted mantises biting, we should perhaps lend a more willing ear.

Japanese art-motives form a fascinating study, which the visitor to Japan and the stay-at-home collector may alike master little by little on every scroll, coloured print, picture-book, netsuke, sword-hilt that he bargains for, even on penny fans and twopenny towels; for in the Japanese view of life the tritest articles of daily use should, if possible, rejoice the eye and feed the mind. Odds and ends are not combined merely because they will look pretty, as in the handiwork of our own modern decorators. The art-motives all have a rationale, either in actual reason, as when the pine-tree and bamboo, as evergreens, appropriately symbolise long life, to which is added the plum-blossom for beauty, making a lucky triad; or in idea, such as that which constantly associates the lion and peony, because the former is the king of beasts, the latter the king of flowers; or else in history or legend, or in unalterable convention. Thus, the sparrow and the bamboo go