The remarks made above with reference to the decorative limitations of Japanese art apply with clearer truth to secular than to religious paintings. In the latter field we occasionally find work that does not suggest any consideration for the plane of its display or the nature of its environment. Some of the earliest masters are known to us chiefly, if not entirely, by the pictures that they painted for Buddhist temples or Buddhist priests, and these pictures would deservedly rank high in any country. They show loftiness of conception, massiveness of treatment, and vigour of method that rival the achievements of the Italian mediæval celebrities. Yet they can not be cited as witnesses against the general theory we have enunciated, for they are without either linear perspective or cast shadows.
Japanese pictorial art is permeated with Chinese affinities. The one is indeed the child of the other, and traces of this close relationship are nearly always present in greater or less degree. To discern the marks of consanguinity is, however, a difficult task at times, not because of their actual obscurity, but because our means of identification are defective. Imperfect as is our knowledge of Japanese pictorial art, it compares favourably with our knowledge of Chinese. Of the latter virtually nothing was known by Western connoisseurs until they were introduced to it through the medium of the former; for, strange as the fact may seem, fine Chinese pictures are very much more accessible in Japan than in China. Japan is perfectly frank in acknowledging the debt she owes to the neighbouring empire. She does not pretend for a moment that her own painters have ever surpassed their models, the great masters of the Tang, the Sung, the Yuan, and the Ming dynasties, and she treasures the latter’s works with all the reverent love that an Occidental virtuoso feels for the gems of Rubens, of Angelo, of Titian, or of Holbein. It may, indeed, be fairly claimed for the Japanese that in some branches of painting their modifications deserve to be regarded as efforts of original genius, and that, speaking generally, their work is superior to that of the Chinese in tenderness, grace, and, above all, humour. But, for the rest, they sit at China’s feet. Korea should also be included among their masters, for there is evidence that Korean influence preceded Chinese. But the earliest really great Japanese artist—Kose no Kanaoka—is an unalloyed product of Chinese inspiration, and stands at the crest of a flood of Chinese influence that inundated his country in the eighth and ninth centuries. Three hundred years before his time (850–880 A.D.), Buddhism had become established in Japan, and the best efforts of her artists were soon devoted to the service of the new faith. Thus the most ancient painting now extant is a mural decoration in the temple Horiu-ji near Nara, which is believed to date from the opening years of the seventh century, and it may be stated at once that in no country has the spirit of art been more closely connected with religion than in Japan. Not merely did painting, architecture, and sculpture make their entry in the train of the Indian creed, but close study shows that the development of the various sects may be traced by the latter’s
