in connection with Buddhist pictures only are Kanaoka, Hirotaka, and Meicho (commonly called Cho Densu). But the reader must always remember that Japan’s best artists in all ages contributed their quota to the pictorial treasures of the temples, and that not until after the twelfth century did the secular picture rise to a place of at least equal importance with the sacred.[1]
The river boat (Hokusai).
The divergence of the Japanese secular artist’s brush from Chinese lines—spoken of above as having commenced simultaneously with a political break between the two empires at the beginning of the tenth century—gradually became so marked that, a hundred years later, the public recognised the existence of a native school, and called it the Yamato Riu, or Wa-gwa Riu (synonyms for “Japanese style”). The reputed founder of the School was Kasuga Motomitsu,[2] but the truth is that, like Kanaoka, his genius represented, not
- ↑ It is essential that any student of the religious paintings of Japan should make himself acquainted with their motives. These are exhaustively discussed in the British Museum’s “Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Pictures” by Dr. W. Anderson.
- ↑ Hence the “Kasuga School” is often spoken of as a subdivision of the “Yamato.” Some students carry the beginnings of the Yamato School back to the days (950 A.D.) of Takuma Tame-uji, who founded the Takuma School. This is a point of unpractical subtlety.
