THE PAINTER OF CAMELLIAS.
History records that the first great native painter of Japan, was the courtier Kose-no-Kanaoka, whose activity and fame were in flower at the end of the ninth and in the first half of the tenth century, and of whose works very few are extant. But history often makes mistakes, and therefore we must not be surprised that not with a single word does it mention Kose-no-Kanaoka’s predecessor, who was without doubt the contemporary of the great Buddhist saint Kobo Daishi, and who, in an age when Chinese and Korean art held complete sway in Nippon, first began to look at the world around him with his own eyes, Japanese eyes, and to paint with his own brush, a Japanese brush. He it was who first had the idea to paint pictures on sliding screens, and thus ingeniously prevented a thing meant to conceal from reminding offensively of its original purpose; for then the screen at the same time disclosed views into the conceptions of refined minds, it opened a magic window into an imaginary world, and allowed him who stood or sat before it to forget that there was something or other behind it which was hidden to his sight and should remain untouched by his imagination as well. At least this much is registered by unreliable history: that at the emperor’s court painting on screens was practiced in the ninth century, and that in the eleventh century Motomitsu founded the first native school of painting Yamato-ryu. In reality, however, the precursor if not the actual founder of the “Japanese school” was that forerunner of Motomitsu and Kose-no-Kanaoka, whose fate was sadder than that of the latter; for not only was no piece of his work preserved for posterity, but also his very name and memory fell into the absolute oblivion that so often is the lot of those who have the courage first to swim against the current.
Notwithstanding, he whose name is unknown to us bothered his head neither with thoughts as to how his contemporaries judged
