JAPAN
and the borders are decorated with dragons, swans, phoenixes, tortoises, serpents, and vine-scrolls. The Sun and Moon effigies stand on either side. They measure 3.94 metres with the lotus flowers that form their pedestals. There is no question about the essentially Grecian type of the faces of this group; and the spirit and vigour of the work show that the wave of Occidental culture which flowed into China during the period of the Six Dynasties reached Japan also and found there more faithful interpreters than those of China herself. A popular fallacy, endorsed by more than one writer, describes the materials of these figures as shakudo,—an ebony-like compound peculiar to Japan,—but shakudo had not yet been invented; the images are of dark bronze.
The statues of this period are no longer composed of two repoussé plates fastened together at the edges: they are cast by the cire-perdue process. In the preceding epoch earthen moulds were used, but the Japanese had now become acquainted with the incomparably more effective method of a wax shell. That alone constitutes a remarkable advance in technical knowledge,—an advance made, doubtless, under Chinese instruction,—and the statues described above show further that the users of the chisel had become very skilled, all the details of the figures themselves, of the drapery, and of the accessories being worked out forcibly and with artistic feeling.
The only sculptors of this period whose names are remembered are Oguchi, Kimara, Yakushi, and Kanashi, but as none of their works has been identified, little interest attaches to the names.
Early Japanese sculpture reached its first culminating period in the eighth century; that is to say, the
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