Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 7/Chapter 4
Chapter IV
BRONZE-CASTING, ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTURE AND DECORATION, ETC.
It is evident from what has been written above that up to the middle of the sixteenth century the resources of applied art were employed almost entirely for religious purposes,—the modelling or casting of sacred images, the lacquering and inlaying of pillars and beams, the pictorial decoration of door panels or ceiling coffers, and the chiselling of ornamental metal mountings and temple accessories. But from the days of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi the services of applied art began to be enlisted for secular purposes even more largely than for sacred. The prime cause of this change was foreign intercourse. Contact with the Dutch and the Portuguese suggested the substitution of large solidly constructed castles for the flimsy wooden edifices that had previously served as military strongholds, and it soon became difficult to reconcile the simplicity of old-time domestic interiors with the lives of the lords of such massive structures. Hideyoshi's tastes greatly promoted this sequence of ideas. Though the scenes and struggles of his career were not at all calculated to develop artistic proclivities, he was found to be an impassioned lover of the beautiful and the refined when he rose to power, and he not only encouraged art effort in every form, but also converted the once simple tea-ceremony into a vehicle for promoting the collection of costly objects of virtu. It was undoubtedly in this respect that he produced the greatest and most permanent effect on his country; for whereas the unvarying habit of the nation, even in the days of Fujiwara magnificence, had been to cultivate beauty without display, Hideyoshi introduced the custom of associating beauty with display. He may be said to have extended the range of decorative art from accessories to principals, and to have made splendour the perpetual accompaniment of life, not merely a feature of its occasional incidents. It thus becomes necessary to speak henceforth of applied art according to the fields of its employment, not, as hitherto, in connection with religion alone.
Up to the thirteenth century the Japanese did not use iron caldrons for boiling rice. They employed a vessel of baked clay, sinking it in a hole in the ground and applying heat from above. The manufacture of iron vessels for such purposes commenced under circumstances of which no record exists, but it is known to have been inaugurated by Shichirozayemon, a descendant of the second son of the Hōjō Regent Yoshitoki. Had it not been for the skill of this man and his descendants as iron-casters, the tea-clubs established under the auspices of Yoshimasa, at the close of the fifteenth century, might have found difficulty in obtaining urns adapted to their taste. But Nagoshi Yashichiro, great-grandson of Shichirozayemon, was able to meet the novel demand. The term "urn" is somewhat misleading in this context, for the cha-gama of Japan partakes rather of the nature of a caldron. Roughly described, it is a spherical vessel encircled by a broad flange, so that while the lower hemisphere is sunk into a charcoal furnace, the upper, supported on the flange, remains above the level of the matted floor. But that is indeed a rough description, for the cha-gama engrossed the skill of the best artisans, and designs for its shape and ornamentation were furnished by the greatest artists. Yashichiro's models were sketched by the painters that helped Yoshimasa to elaborate the details and utensils of the tea ceremonial, and a metal-caster himself had the honour to be appointed metal-caster and sculptor to the Imperial Household, the Ise Shrine, and the Shōgun's family. He received the art name "Miami," and from his time the iron tea-urn occupied a place of great importance. Japanese connoisseurs recognise and appreciate infinitesimally small differences in shape, in quality of metal, and in surface decoration, and though the foreign amateur can scarcely emulate such discrimination, he finds no difficulty in admiring the refined taste, the ingenuity of form and design, and the elaboration of nomenclature that are lavished in Japan on utensils which, in other parts of the world, would be regarded as little better than kitchen furniture. Sesshiu, the celebrated painter, furnished designs for cha-gama in the fifteenth century, and when the tea ceremonial, under the patronage of rulers like Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, assumed national dimensions, the manufacture of iron urns became a branch of high art, and continued to have that rank throughout the whole of the Yedo epoch. The cha-gama, however, has no honour outside Japan. Being inseparable from the purpose it serves, it has never commended itself to the European or American collector, nor has any writer undertaken to compare the relative merits of the amida-do, the maru-gama, the dai-unryō, the sho-unryō, the shiri-hari, and a multitude of other shapes esteemed by the tea-clubs. But there is interest in knowing that the manufacture of the tea-urn gave impetus to metal work in general, and that the kama-shi (urn-maker), though proud to be so called, did not by any means confine himself to the production of kama. His work extended to all kinds of metal utensils for the use of the tea-clubs or the furniture of temples, and he cast not only bells and pedestal lamps but even cannon. The Nagoshi family attained the highest reputation as kama-shi. In the sixteenth century the representatives of the sixth, seventh, and eighth generations, Jōyu, Zenshō, and Sanshō (known also by his art name, Jomi), as well as the latter's brother (Sanehisa or Ittan), were conspicuously famous. Sanshō cast a great bell for the temple of the Kyōtō Dai-Butsu, and received the title of Echizen no Shōjō; and Sanehisa manufactured a bronze image sixteen feet high for the same temple. These artists, having enjoyed the patronage of the Taikō and received from him the honorific appellation of Tenka Ichi (first under the sun), refrained from serving the Tokugawa Shōguns. But Sanehisa's younger brother, Iyemasa (or Zuiyetsu), was not influenced by such scruples. The Yedo Government conferred on him the title of Etchu no Shōjō, and in conjunction with his pupils, Onishi, Jōsei, and Jōhō, he founded a school of artists who executed many beautiful works in bronze and iron during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, were munificently supported by the Tokugawa Shōguns, and had titles of rank bestowed on them; a point not unworthy of note, since European writers have denied that Japanese artfounders ever rose above the grade of common artisans.
The Tokugawa era (1620-1850) is justly regarded as the golden period of the bronze-caster's art in Japan. It was marked, not by any specially conspicuous achievements like the founding of the colossal Buddhas at Nara and Kamakura, but rather by a long series of beautiful works executed for the mausolea of the Tokugawa in Yedo and Nikkō, and for other temples and shrines throughout the Empire. These works consisted of thupas, pedestal and hanging lamps, vases, pricket-candlesticks, censers, pagodas, reliquaries, gates, fonts, figures of mythological animals, images of deities and saints, pillar-caps and other objects of an architectural character. The thupas were never highly ornamented: they depended chiefly on chaste simplicity of outline and graces of form. The same remark applies in part to the vases, censers, and pricket-candlesticks placed before altars and tombs.[1] These showed continual fidelity to traditional models. The vase had the familiar "beaker" shape of China, and its ornamentation consisted only of vertical bands scalloped in high relief and of medallions enclosing Paullownia leaves. The censers, too, had plain surfaces broken by two, or at most three, similar medallions, their lids surmounted by a Dog of Fo and their feet modelled to represent the head of that animal. The pricket-candlestick invariably took the form of a stork standing on a tortoise, or on a lotus calyx, supporting with its beak a leaf of lotus which formed the pricket-receptacle. These objects, though finely modelled and skilfully cast, lose much of their interest owing to their wearisome uniformity. It is in the casting of pedestal lamps (tōrō) that greatest progress was made. Here much beauty of form is found with elaborate decoration, both incised and in relief. The pedestal lamp had long been an essential article of temple paraphernalia, and from a celebrated octagonal lantern preserved at the temple Tōdai-ji it is learned that, already in the twelfth century, Japanese artists had conceived, or received, the idea of castings à jour with high-relief decoration suspended in the network. But the splendid series of tōrō (pedestal lamp) cast from the beginning to the end of the Yedo era show a remarkable development of artistic and technical skill, every variety of decoration being used successfully for their ornamentation—decoration in sunken panels, decoration in high, low, and medium relief, and decoration incised. It is commonly asserted that this kind of work was suggested by Korean examples. Certainly there is a broad difference between the methods of the Chinese and the Korean metal-caster: the former confined himself entirely to scrolls and arabesques in low relief; the latter preferred high-relief effects and modelling in accordance with natural forms. But it is impossible to accept the theory that bronzes brought from Korea to Japan by the Taikō's forces at the close of the sixteenth century were the first specimens of that nature ever seen by Japanese artists, for in the temple Hokke-ji there are preserved two bronzes of the year 1325, copied accurately from a well-known form of Chinese céladon vase having peony scrolls in relief. These make it clear that although the fashion of bronze-casting in Japan may have derived a marked impulse from contact with examples of Korean workmanship in the time of the Taikō, an entirely new style was not suggested by that event. Associated with the fine castings then made is the name of Jiyemon Yasuteru of the Nakaya family, who is commonly but erroneously supposed to have been the first in Japan to decorate bronzes with designs in high relief, taking for motives flowers, birds, figure-subjects, dragons, etc. The Taikō bestowed on him the art distinction of tenka ichi (first under the sun), exempted him from taxation and gave him the title, Dewa no Daijō. It is to the experts of this family that Japan owes the beautiful bronzes of the Tokugawa mortuary shrines in Yedo (Tōkyō) and Nikkō. Jiyemon Yasuteru's great-grandson, Jiyemon Iyetsugu, cast the bronzes for the mausoleum of Iyemitsu, the third Tokugawa Shōgun in 1651, as his father, Jiyemon Yasuiye, had cast those for the shrine of Iyeyasu, and every representative of the family down to Kameyama Yasutomo, whose son is now working in Kyōtō, was honoured with an official title, whether Dewa no Daijō or Ise no Daijō or Yamato no Daijō. Some of the choicest work of these experts is seen in reliquaries, and a better idea of their skill may be gathered from the accompanying plates than from any verbal description. Two features may be mentioned, however, since no picture can do more than suggest them; namely, the fine texture of the metal and the beautiful patina it develops in the course of years. This question of patina will be referred to in future pages.
Towards the middle of the seventeenth century another new departure was made: bronze-casters turned their attention to objects for use in private houses. Hitherto they have been seen devoting their best efforts to work of a religious character; they now began to cast alcove-ornaments, flower-vases, and censers for the tea-clubs as well as for the public in general. Such objects were not manufactured for the first time at so late a date as the seventeenth century. Splendid examples in iron, in silver, and in other metals had been chiselled in previous eras by sculptors of sword-furniture. But the works referred to here are bronze. Not until a comparatively recent date did the art of casting that metal become so refined and delicate that its products began to rank with the forged and chiselled works of silversmiths and chisellers of sword-furniture (to be spoken of presently). Some authorities maintain that "parlour bronzes" were first manufactured by Nakayama Shōyeki, popularly called Yōjuro, an armourer of Takata in Echigo, who settled in Kyōtō in 1573, and was equally successful in chiselling iron and in casting bronze. Certainly Shoyeki's descendants were highly skilled bronze-casters. But no authenticated casting of his survives, and it is consequently usual to speak of a female expert, Kame, of Nagasaki (1661 to 1690), as the pioneer of this kind of work. By some authorities, generally well informed, the great error has been committed of attributing to Kame the first use of the cire-perdue process, which, as the reader knows, had been commonly employed by Japanese metal-casters for many centuries before her time. The fact is that the excellence of Kame's modelling,—she was especially noted for censers in the form of a quail,—the fine surface of her bronze and the clean sharpness of her casting, attracted so much attention that her methods were regarded as a new departure. Another common error is to say that Kame's era was immediately antecedent to that of Seimin, a bronze-caster whose name is known to all Western collectors. Seimin's date was fully a century subsequent to that of Kame. He was born in Nagasaki in 1769, and though, before he moved to Yedo in 1805, he doubtless studied the methods which Kame and her father, Tokuye, practised so successfully in Genya-machi in Nagasaki, it does not appear that he gained any distinction until, having undergone a course of training in the workshop of an urn-caster in Yedo, he settled in the Kameido suburb and devoted himself to producing flower-vases, censers, and alcove-ornaments. Seimin had five pupils, Tōun, Masatsune, Teijō, Somin, and Keisai, and by this group of artists many brilliant works were turned out, their general features being that the motives were naturalistic, that the quality of the metal was exceptionally fine, that modelling in high relief was most successfully employed, and that, in addition to beautifully clean castings obtained by highly skilled use of the cera-perduta process, the chisel was employed to impart delicacy and finish to the design. Seimin preferred the golden coloured bronze, Sentoku, to all other alloys, and his specialty was the modelling of tortoises, just as Kame's reputation rests chiefly on her censers in the shape of quails, and Tōun is regarded as one of the greatest casters of dragons that Japan ever possessed. Seimin did not work for the general market: he aimed at producing chefs-d'œuvres only, whereas the most renowned of his pupils showed more of the mercantile instinct. Masatsune, a slow and infinitely painstaking artist, shared Seimin's exclusive views, as did also Keisai and Sōmin; but Teijō, though much of his work is not inferior to that of Masatsune, often aimed at quantity rather than quality. These six men gave exceptional éclat to the first half of the present century. Not less expert were their contemporaries Suwara Yasugoro (art name Zenriusai Gido), Takusai, and Hotokusai. Gido excelled in casting alcove-ornaments in the form of the Dog of Fo (skishi), figures of Hotei, the Genius Gama, and such things. Takusai, who worked in Sado, produced only small objects, chiefly paper-weights, pen-rests and other desk-furniture, imparting to them a beautiful patina; and Hotokusai affected designs in medium relief which he cast and chiselled admirably.
It is often said that after the era of the above ten masters, the last of whom, Somin, ceased to work in 1871, no bronzes comparable with theirs were cast. That is an error. Between 1875 and 1879, some of the finest bronzes—probably the very finest of their kind—ever produced in Japan were turned out by a group of experts working in combination under the firm-name "Sansei-sha." Started by two brothers, Oshima Katsujiro (art name Jōun) and Oshima Yasutaro (art name Shokaku) in 1875, this association secured the services of a number of skilled chisellers of sword-furniture who had lost their métier owing to the abolition of the sword-wearing custom. Nothing could surpass the delicacy of the works executed in the Sansei-sha's atelier at Kobinata in the Ushigome quarter of Tōkyō. Unfortunately such productions were above the standard of the customers for whom they were intended. Foreign buyers, who alone stood in the market at that time, failed to distinguish the fine and costly bronzes of Joun, Shokaku, and their colleagues from cheap imitations that soon began to compete with them, so that ultimately the Sansei-sha had to be closed. This page in the modern history of Japan's bronzes needs little alteration to become true of her applied art in general. Foreign demand showed so little discrimination that experts, finding it impossible to obtain adequate remuneration for high-class work, were obliged to abandon the field altogether or to lower their standard to the level of common appreciation, or to have recourse to forgeries. Joun has produced, and is thoroughly capable of producing, bronzes at least equal to the best of Seimin's masterpieces, yet he has often been induced to put Seimin's name on objects for the sake of attracting buyers that attach more value to cachet than to quality. Even in the manufacture of the beautiful golden-patina bronze (ki-sentoku) for which Seimin was famous, Joun shows no inferiority. His vases are generally of medium size with decoration in high relief,—carp swimming in water, sprays of flowers, mythological beings, and so on. His pupil Nogami Yataro (art name Riuki) is a scarcely less skilled caster, especially clever in modelling insects and tortoises in Seimin's style.
Among modern bronze-casters the names of Suzuki Chōkichi, Okazaki Sessei, Hasegawa Kumazo, Kanaya Gorosaburo, and Tomi Yeisuke, in conjunction with those mentioned above, take rank as masters of their art and perpetuate its best traditions. Suzuki Chokichi has the title of Gigei-in, or expert to the Imperial Court. He has emerged from the days of false standards when he manufactured some pieces remembered by him to-day with shame—notably a huge censer now in the possession of the South Kensington Museum, a type of the meretricious confused style often adopted by Japanese artists in obedience to their mistaken conception of Western taste—and he now casts bronzes that comply with the pure canons of Japanese art, where the naturalistic modelling is always duly subordinated to the decorative design.
In connection with the name of Okazaki Sessei, a special kind of casting should be mentioned. The tomb of Iyeyasu, first Tokugawa Shōgun, at the Shiba mausolea is approached by a magnificent bronze gate the doors of which are solid castings with large medallion ornaments moulded in relief in a field of delicately traced diapers. This grand specimen of bronze-casting is known in Japan as Chōsen Karakanemon (the Korean bronze gate), in recognition of the fact that the panels were brought from Korea among the spoils taken by the Taikō's troops. No panels of comparable magnitude are found in any other mausoleum of the Tokugawa, and the plain inference, supported by traditions and endorsed by modern bronze-workers, is that a casting of the kind was beyond the capacity of Japanese experts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Okazaki Sessei enjoys the distinction of being the first to accomplish such work. In 1890 he cast two magnificent door-panels, their height 7.2 feet, their width 4.5 feet, and their decorative designs ascending and descending dragons (agari-riu and kudari-riu) modelled in high relief, the former rising from waves, the latter emerging from clouds. The casting of such large panels is regarded as a most difficult tour-de-force. Many other beautiful works in bronze have emerged from Sessei's hands,—an eagle in the act of alighting, its outspread wings measuring seven feet across; a figure (8.7 feet high) of one of the Heavenly Kings trampling on a dragon, and other fine conceptions. He is now engaged on a colossal figure, thirty-three feet high, of the great Buddhist teacher, Nichiren, which is to be set up in a temple at Hakata. Of Hasegawa Kumazo there is not much to be said. He follows the fashions of Seimin and Tōun, and many of his pieces are not at all inferior to the best works of those artists, but he has never been induced to forge the cachet of any of the old masters.
Occidental influence has been felt, of course, in the field of modern Japanese bronze-casting. At a School of Art officially established in Tōkyō in 1873 under the direction of Italian teachers,—a school which owed its signal failure partly to the incompetence and intemperate behaviour of some of the foreign professors, partly to a strong renaissance of pure Japanese classicism,—one of the few accomplishments successfully taught was that of modelling in plaster and chiselling in marble after Occidental methods.[2] Marble statues are out of place in the wooden buildings as well as in the parks of Japan, and even plaster busts or groups, though less incongruous, have not yet found favour. Hence the skill undoubtedly possessed by several graduates of the defunct Art School—notably by Mr. Ogura Sōjiro—has to be devoted chiefly to a subordinate purpose, namely, the fashioning of models for metal-casters. To this combination of modellers in European style and metal-workers of such force as Suzuki Chōkichi and Okazaki Sessei, Japan owes various memorial bronzes and likeness effigies which are gradually finding a place in her parks, her museums, her shrines, or her private houses. There is here little departure from the well-trodden paths of Europe. Studies in drapery, prancing steeds, ideal poses, heads with fragments of torsos attached (in extreme violation of true art), crouching beasts of prey,—all the stereotyped styles are reproduced. The imitation is excellent. That is all that can yet be said, though some of these works suggest that Japanese artists will by-and-by attain distinction in the new field.
The reader will not have failed to observe that whereas, in speaking of the early developments of sculpture in Japan, it has not been possible to draw a clear line between the carver of wood and the caster of bronze, the latter has chiefly figured in subsequent pages of the story. It is, in truth, often difficult to distinguish them so far as their place in the records of sculpture is concerned. The bronze-caster sometimes made his own models in wax, sometimes chiselled them in wood, and sometimes had recourse to the aid of the wood-carver. So, too, in modern times, the best wood-sculptors of the era—as Mitsuboshi Riuun and Takamura Kōun—lend their chisels to carve models for metal-casters, just as pictorial artists like Hashimoto Gahō, Kawabata Giyokushō, and Nomura Bunkyo, paint subjects to be copied by gold-smiths and enamellers. These interactions are sometimes recorded, sometimes ignored by the Japanese themselves, who appear to have always attached more importance to the result than to the processes by which it was reached. There is, however, a certain field of work where the wood-carver stands alone, namely, architectural decoration for interiors.
The Buddhist temple buildings of Japan in ancient times, though their architectural outlines were graceful and imposing, had nothing of the elaborate decoration which characterises the sacred edifices of subsequent centuries. Thus the temple Hōriu-ji, reconstructed in the eighth century, while in many respects a beautiful model, was without sculptured decoration in the interior, the only features that relieved its simplicity being dragons coiled round the four pillars supporting the eaves of the third storey, and mural paintings. This comparatively plain structure offers a marked contrast to the wealth of decorative work which, in such buildings as the mausolea of Nikkō and Shiba, the later temple of Kyōtō and many of the mediæval castles, astonishes and delights foreign visitors, and will always be classed among the most attractive achievements of artistic conception and technical skill that the world possesses. It is with these specimens of wood-carving that Japanese sculpture is chiefly associated in the mind of Occidental students, and there would be much interest in determining the exact date and nature of the impulse that led architects to depart from the comparatively austere precedents of early eras. Buddhism itself does not supply an explanation. It is true that from the first day of its advent in Japan, Buddhism imparted to religious observances many elements of splendour and richness which were entirely absent from the Shintō ceremonial. The gorgeous vestments of the priests; the glowing radiance of the altar and its furniture; the elaborate beauty of the temple utensils; the impressive majesty of the monster images and the glory of the multitudinous smaller idols with their mysterious attributes and varied aspect; the mystic incomprehensibleness of the sutras, and the sensuous solemnity of the services of chaunted litany and floating incense,—all these things stood in sharp contrast to the ascetic simplicity and unbending severity of the Shintō cult. But the Buddhist temple itself, though its architects had free recourse to the artist's brush for painting door panels, ceiling coffers, and even walls, and to the lacquerer's hand for decorating pillars and beams with golden hues and glowing mother-of-pearl, did not at first excel the Shintō shrine in the matter of ornamentation so much as it was itself excelled by the temples and mausolea of the seventeenth century. In these a profuse wealth of architectural decoration gave almost boundless scope to the genius of the painter, the sculptor, the lacquerer, and the worker in metals. The middle of the sixteenth century is generally regarded as the approximate date of this new departure, and undoubtedly the taste for grandeur and magnificence fostered by Hideyoshi, the Taikō, was largely responsible. Japanese annalists, indeed, attribute to Nobunaga, Hideyoshi's captain, the first idea of employing sculpture for the architectural decoration of interiors, and are even so precise as to fix the very incident that marked the innovation, namely, Nobunaga's employment of two wood-carvers, Mataemon and Yuzayemon, to chisel dragons upon the pillars of a pagoda erected by him. But when it is considered that within a very few years of Nobunaga's death (1582), the magnificent ornamentation of the temple Nishi-Hongwanji in Kyōtō was completed, and that of the mausoleum of Iyeyasu at Nikkō was commenced, and when it is further considered that nothing in the whole range of Japanese decorative art reaches a higher level of beautiful and skilled elaboration than the pictorial and sculptured work of these buildings, strong doubts are suggested whether an idea which had its birth in the second half of the sixteenth century could have ripened to full maturity by the beginning of the seventeenth. It seems more reasonable to conclude that the great carver Hidari Jingoro (left-handed Jingoro), who flourished from about 1590 to 1634, and who is counted the prince of Japanese decorative sculptors (miya-shi or miyabori-shi, as distinguished from busshi, the sculptor of images), stood, in the natural order of evolution, at the head of a line of artists whose work, though for lack of opportunity it made no memorable display, helped to educate a taste for architectural decoration and to prepare the way for enterprises which gave full scope to the genius of Jingoro and his successors. There is, however, no certainty about these matters. Broad limits only can be fixed. Thus, while it is known that the celebrated Silver Pavilion (Ginkaku-ji), built by Yoshimasa in 1479, and the even more renowned Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji) of Yoshimitsu (constructed in 1397) were entirely without sculptured decoration, it is also known that the temple Nishi-Hongwan-ji, erected in 1592, and the mausoleum of Iyeyasu at Nikkō (commenced in 1616) have an unrivalled richness of such ornamentation. It should be explained clearly, again, that reference is not made here to architectural applications of pictorial art. From very early times the services of the painter had been placed at the disposal of the architect. Indeed, the reader will have learned from what has already been written of Japanese pictorial art, that the painter, whether his picture was to hang in an alcove or to find its place on the walls, sliding doors, or screens of an interior, always regarded his work as the decoration of a panel, and was careful to observe the limitations as to chiaroscuro and linear perspective that separate applied art from realistic. The oldest surviving example of pictorial art employed for decorative purposes which dates from the eighth century may be seen in the ancient temple Horu-ji at Nara, where the walls of the principal hall have distemper paintings, described as follows by the late Dr. Anderson in one of the official catalogues of the British Museum:—
The central figure represents a Buddha seated upon a lotus-throne which is supported by a number of crouching dwarfs. The aspect of the Divinity and the position of the hands (right hand raised, both palms directed forwards) are in accordance with the image of Amitâbha described in a well-known Japanese work, "Nichi-gwatsu Tō-myō-Butsu." On each side of the Buddha stands a Bōdhisattva with hands clasped in prayer. In the foreground are two martial figures of Dêva Kings, and between them two conventional lions. Four other persons appear behind the Trinity, two of them having the aspect of Dêva Kings, and two that of Arharts, but the details have become so indistinct from the effects of time and exposure that identification is very difficult. . . . The half-obliterated remains still manifest the touch of a practised hand, and in colouring and composition bear no small resemblance to the works of the old Italian masters. The painting is probably the oldest specimen of Buddhist or other pictorial art extant in Japan, and has, moreover, a special interest as being one of the very rare examples of the application of a coloured design directly to the surface of the plaster wall (the ordinary mural decoration being usually executed on paper which is afterwards affixed to the wall by paste). It is not, however, a true fresco.
It was through Buddhism, then, that the Japanese learned the use of applied pictorial art for purposes of architectural decoration, and they employed it freely though not in the sense of fresco-painting, for they never understood the art of mural painting upon freshly laid plaster lime with colour capable of resisting the caustic action of the lime. They attained much proficiency in the preparation and application of wall plaster, colouring it with delicate taste, employing many dexterous devices to vary its surface, and moulding it into diapers, arabesques, and other designs of much beauty. But painting with colour mixed with lime remained unknown to them, and when it is remembered that this method was in use in Egypt from the very remotest era of that country's monumental history, that it passed thence to Italy and Greece, that its extraordinary durability was understood as early as the days of Vitruvius, and that traces of Grecian influence are plainly discernible in Japanese art, the fact that such an aid to architectural decoration did not become familiar to the peoples of the Far East is certainly curious. It would seem, too, that the distemper painting at Horiu-ji was an exotic method which never took root in Japan, for only two other examples of similar work are known to exist.
The Golden and Silver Pavilions alluded to above offer good illustrations of the point to which interior decoration had been carried before the sixteenth century. The former had three storeys. The lowest was quite plain, its milk-white timbers and unadorned walls forming a chaste setting for gilt statuettes of deities and an effigy of Yoshimitsu himself, which formed its only furniture. The ceiling of the second storey was painted with angels (tennin) encircled by a border of floral scroll. The third storey was completely gilt, walls, floor, ceiling, and balcony being covered with gold foil.[3] The Silver Pavilion, or, to speak more correctly, one of its associated buildings, showed a partial approach to the decorative style of later eras. The walls had Indian-ink sketches— painted not direct on the plaster but on its paper covering—and the sliding doors were decorated with figure subjects, landscapes, river-scenes, and birds. But there was no sculpture, whereas the State apartments of the great temple Nishi Hongwan-ji in Kyōtō, built at the close of the sixteenth century, show a stage of architectural decoration almost on a level with that reached by the designers of the mausolea at Nikkō and Shiba (Tōkyō), and show also that there devolved on the sculptor of that era duties scarcely less important than those of the painter. Each room is an independent study, all details subordinated to a general design. Thus in one chamber the sliding doors and the lower mural spaces are covered with paintings of peacocks and cherry-trees in bloom, while the upper mural spaces are occupied by massive wooden panels (ramma), boldly carved in open-work designs of phœnixes and wild camellia, which stand out with realistic effect against the dimly transmitted light of adjoining chambers or corridors. In another room the pictorial decoration takes the form of Chinese landscapes on a gold ground, and the upper parts of the walls have panels carved in a design of wistaria. The fashion of the decoration may be sufficiently inferred from these descriptions—pictorial below, sculptured above. If to these details a coffered ceiling be added, each coffer enclosing a painted or carved panel, a general idea is obtained of the architectural decoration of the sixteenth century as applied to interiors.
Twenty-five years later, the mausoleum of Iyeyasu, the first Tokugawa Shōgun, was erected. There, in memory of this "Orient-illuminating Prince" (Toshō-gu), all the decorative and architectural resources of the time were employed to construct a mortuary chapel at the dedication of which, in 1617, an Imperial Envoy presided and the Sutra of the Lotus of the Law was recited ten thousand times by a multitude of priests. This mausoleum, together with the chapel in memory of the third Tokugawa Shōgun, Iyemitsu, also at Nikkō, and the mausolea of the other potentates of the same line at Shiba and Uyeno in Tokyo, are certainly among the most wonderful efforts of decorative art that the world possesses. Words are quite inadequate to convey a just idea of the combined glory and elegance of the structures, both externally and internally. Innumerable motives are represented, in painting, in sculpture, in lacquer and in metal work, and though the details are so varied and multitudinous that their description would fill a large volume, the arrangements and congruity are so perfect that no sense of confusion or bewilderment is ever suggested. Every available spot or space has some feature of beauty—coffered ceiling, embossed column, sculptured surface, carved bracket and beam, silver-capped pendant, gold-sheathed pillar-neck and beam-crossing, gilded roof-crest and terminal, painted mural space, lacquered door, recesses crowded with elaborate carvings, gates rich with sculptured diapers and arabesques and deeply chiselled panels—the catalogue is endless. Sometimes, as in the Haiden of the Tōshō-gu mausoleum at Nikkō, the ceiling is divided into innumerable coffers, each filled with the minutest decoration, the whole forming a collection of choice miniatures in rich frames. Sometimes, as at the temple Nanzen-ji in Kyōtō, a ceiling sixteen hundred square feet in area is painted with one huge dragon in black and gold.
The fertility of the minds that designed these decorations, the skill of the hands that executed them, will be as memorable a thousand years hence as they are to-day. It has sometimes been alleged that the designer and the sculptor were generally two, the former being the pictorial artist, the latter a mere artisan, ranking little higher than a common carpenter. There are no means of determining how far that dictum may be trusted. In the Occident the name of every one connected with such works would be handed down for respectful remembrance by succeeding generations; but in Japan the art-artisan has always been self-effacing and the nation has quietly acquiesced in his effacement. His work lives: that is deemed sufficient.
Among the sculptors engaged upon the splendid mausolea of the Tokugawa Shōguns and other architectural achievements of the seventeenth century, which was certainly the golden era of decorative carving, not half a dozen names have been preserved. At their head stands Hidari Jingoro (left-handed Jingoro). His very appellation indicates the scanty consideration extended to him. It is as though an artist in America or England should be generally spoken of as "Left-handed Bill" or "Wall-eyed Tom." There is nevertheless an element of justice in the measure of esteem extended to Jingoro and his fellow-sculptors, for although as carvers of flowers, foliage, and birds, they have no superiors in other lands, it is certain that their representations of figure subjects and animals would not have won for them in Western countries greater renown than they received in Japan.
Among the carvings that decorate the mausoleum of Iyeyasu at Nikkō, for example, a sleeping cat and two elephants are shown as remarkable specimens of Jingoro's skill. He must not be held responsible for the grotesquely false shapes and proportions of the elephants: no Japanese artist has ever drawn an elephant that resembled the real animal, and Jingoro merely followed designs by the celebrated painter Kano Tanyu. But if neither Tanyu nor Jingoro ever saw a live elephant or had any opportunity of studying its true shape, that excuse cannot be pleaded in the case of the cat, and it must be frankly stated that Jingoro's celebrated cat would never attract admiring attention were it removed from the panel where it has slept for nearly three centuries in a bower of buds and leaves.
Another much belauded work from Jingoro's chisel is the Chokushi-mon (Gate of the Imperial Envoy) at the Nishi-Hongwan temple in Kyōtō. On the outer panels the sculptor has depicted figures of Taoist Rishi; on the inner, the Chinese sage who washed his ear because it had been polluted by a proposal that he should ascend the throne of his country, and the equally austere cowherd who quarrelled with the sage for thus defiling a river. These figures are not fine sculptures: the most benevolent critic cannot be blind to their defects. Yet on the panels of a gate every part of which has its place in a general scheme of decoration, the carvings are admirable objects. That is the first point to be noted about all the sculptured work in the decoration of Japanese temples and mausolea. Sometimes the realistic illusion is complete. Peonies glow with lusty life in a coffer; chrysanthemums raise slender tendrils from a cornice; cranes, wild fowl, or phœnixes actually fly from their wooden niches, and plum-trees seem to grow on a panel. But the general rule is that the sculptures do not gain by independent scrutiny. It is in their subordinate rôle that they command charmed enthusiasm. The statement is in itself a high tribute to the decorative genius of the Japanese, but it involves also the conclusion that the subjective element had to be almost entirely abolished from the work of the sculptor, and that his highest success was achieved when his efforts showed least individuality.
As to the general character of the designs chosen by painters and sculptors for the adornment of these temples and mausolea, an excellent criticism is contained in the introduction to Mr. J. Conder's unpublished work on Japanese architecture:—
Behind the general impression of harmony produced by the decorated architecture as it existed and still exists in the best examples of the Buddhist style, there is revealed, upon careful analysis, a combination of curiously incongruous elements. The weird and the grotesque are blended with the severe and the natural. Archaic forms, which one must follow back to Indian creeds for their original meaning, are quaintly combined with free and flowing natural forms. Demons, monsters, and crude conventional representations of foreign or imaginary animals are painted side by side with the birds, flowers, and landscapes of the changing seasons. The subtle elements of wind, cloud, water, and spray are in one place represented in definite conventional lines which convey but a vague idea of their respective force and motive, and in another place by soft dreamy touches and blurred effects. There is everywhere to be traced the influence upon an artistic Oriental mind of the beautiful forms and colours of the mundane universe, combined with the external influence upon his imagination of the Buddhist religion, dictating awe-inspiring shapes and mysterious symbols which he accepted and depicted as a portion of his superstitious belief and homage. Decoration was developed in buildings of different type in accordance with a system by which it was divided into three or four degrees of elaboration, the highest degree of richness being reserved for the temples and mausolea. The painter's art appears in the delicate forms and soft tints of birds and blossoms cushioned in the white wood-work of princes' chambers, and it may be seen also in deeper bolder tones, amid a pandemonium of saints and demons, sacred monsters, celestial flowers and symbols, set in gilded and lacquered framing, adorning the gloomy interior of religious shrines.
Colours were freely used in these decorative schemes. Thus, in the sanctuary of the Tōshō-gu mausoleum at Nikkō, wide fields of silver and gold, occupying the lower parts of the walls, underlie beams diapered in vermilion, leaf-back green, cerulean blue, and dead white. Broad frieze spaces in deep rich red are interrupted by oval medallions enclosing delicately chiselled designs of birds and flowers picked out with red, gold, green, blue, and touches of white. Above these and stretching from capital to capital of the pillars, are formal diapers in green, red, and gold, with intervening floral scrolls in gold and green on a chocolate-brown ground; the pillars, whose capitals have belts of fern-fronds in red, green, blue, and white, and fillets of blue and gold, support golden beams, and above the latter rises an arched entablature profusely carved and decorated, and brilliantly coloured in all the hues mentioned above. Finally, this wealth of soft tints and elaborate fancies is separated from the ceiling by a concave cornice uniformly gilt, through which runs horizontally a solid ribbed beam of noir-mat lacquer. The ceiling is coffered with a framework in gold and black. The coffers, of which the ground colour is gold, have a border of cloud scroll in green, white, and red, and the centre of each is occupied by an elliptic medallion in purest cerulean blue, enclosing a golden dragon and having for border two narrow rings of white and chocolate-brown. This is little more than a mere catalogue of colours. It conveys not even a shadowy idea of the beauty and brilliancy of such a decorative masterpiece, glowing and palpitating with luxury of tint and profusion of detail from floor to architrave, until in the ceiling medallions the spectator seems to be gazing into the blue profundity of a sky where glittering monsters sweep through space. But the reader will gather even from such an imperfect description some notion of the profusion with which colours and sculpture were employed in the architectural decoration of interiors. It does not appear that the Japanese artist had any definitely formulated theories about the use of colours. He does not even seem to have explicitly recognised the differences of primary, secondary, or tertiary, or to have possessed any clear rules about chromatic equivalents. Yet it would be possible to deduce from his practice many of the principles that are now regarded as fundamental in the science of Occidental decorative art. Thus his idea of distribution was so just that, in using the primary colours, he limited the areas and quantities of their application by careful consideration of the total space to be decorated, in order that the requisite balance and support might be obtained by proportionately larger masses of secondary and tertiary tints. It may be objected that he neglected this principle in the exterior decoration of some of his sacred edifices, as the pagodas at Nikkō, for example, where a massive,
towering structure is robed from base to summit in 
Eleven-faced Kwannon in Shrine; Fourteenth Century.
(See page 139.)
silenced at once when these edifices are considered with reference to their environment,—a profusion of green foliage, which effectually balances the primary colour of the pagoda. It is found, also, on careful examination of the mausolea at Shiba, Uyeno, and Nikkō, that the primary colours appear on the upper parts of objects, the secondary and tertiary on the lower; that proportion is successfully preserved between the volumes of full and low tones; that the art of separating coloured ornaments from fields of contrasting colour is thoroughly understood; that the solecism of mutually impinging colours is strictly avoided; that the tone of ground colours is in excellent harmony with the quantity of ornament, and that the ensemble presents that neutralised bloom which indicates perfect blending of tones and tints.
As already stated, there are few records of great sculptors connected with architectural or religious carvings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although such remarkable work was accomplished. Hidari Jingoro died in 1635. Among his successors the best remembered are Hidari Eishin (1632–1700), Shōun (1660–1705), Tancho (1630–1695), and Hidari Katsumasa (1670–1727). Other names are included in an appended list, but the recorded number of artists is quite insignificant when compared with the quantity of fine work executed from the beginning of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. The subordination of the individual to achievement is specially marked in the field of decorative carvings for temples and mausolea.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 18.
Note 18.—A vase, a censer, and a pricket-candlestick formed a set, and were collectively called mitsu-gusoku, or "the three articles of furniture."
- ↑ See Appendix, note 19.
Note 19.—The credit of this success belongs to Signor Ragusa.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 20.
Note 20.—The method of applying the gold was to "lay it thickly over varnish composed of hone-powder and lacquer upon hempen cloth." (Satow.)