Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/14

Warrior (from line drawing by Hokusai). be found among Japanese chefs d’œuvre. But what, after all, was Japanese art? Must it be regarded as simply decorative, or might it also be considered representative? That question pressed importunately for an answer. People were unwilling to admit that a new star of the first magnitude had really risen on the horizon. They found something slight, something trivial, in Japanese pictures; a lack of emotion-inspiring motive; an absence of massiveness and breadth of treatment. It could easily be detected that the range of the painter’s fancy was limited by a logical canon; that he forbade himself to transfer to his canvas any scene too extensive to be revealed by a single glance of the eye; that, in short, just as Japanese poetry never rose to the dignity of an ode but stopped short at a couplet, so Japanese pictures, instead of telling a complete story, merely suggested an incident. But that they displayed extraordinary directness of method and strength of line; that the artist knew exactly what he wanted to draw and drew it with unerring fidelity and force; that the very outlines of the picture were in themselves a picture, and that the whole was pervaded by an atmosphere of tenderness and grace indicating a refined conception of everything beautiful in nature,—these were facts that forced themselves upon the attention of every close observer. What, then, was the fundamental difference between this art and the art of the Occident? It seems a little strange that the question should have remained unanswered for any length of time, inasmuch as a visit to a Japanese dwelling should have immediately suggested the reply. A Japanese picture is not painted simply for the sake of representative effect: it is part of a decorative scheme. There is no such thing in Japan, there never could have been any such thing, as a picture gallery—a place whither people repair to look at pictures merely for the sake of pictures. The painter, so far as concerned the ultimate uses of his work, ranked with the joiner, the plasterer, and the paper-hanger. His object was to beautify some part of the domestic interior. He had three fields for the exercise of his genius: first, screens—from the broad-faced tsuitate that stood in the vestibule, with its boldly limned design such as a passing glance could appreciate, to the little two-leaved