ture, took with enthusiasm to the Chinese style of monochrome landscape painting, often rivaling the skill and depth of feeling of the Chinese masters. The richness of the artistic work of the time is seen in the fact that side by side with this Chinese school of painting existed a vigorous native school specializing in picture scrolls portraying the history of some temple or the incidents of a famous campaign, such as that against the Mongols.
The medieval Zen monks also brought from China three other arts which became so characteristic of Japanese culture that they are now considered to be typically Japanese. One was landscape gardening, which the Japanese developed to a perfection unexcelled in any other land. The second was flower arrangement, which started with the placing of floral offerings before representations of Buddhist deities but eventually became a fine art which is now part of the training of every well-bred Japanese girl. The third was the tea ceremony, an aesthetic spiritual ritual in which a beautiful but simple setting, a few fine pieces of old pottery, a slow, formalized, extremely graceful ritual for preparing and serving the tea, and a spirit of complete tranquillity all combine to express the love of beauty, the devotion to simplicity, and the search for spiritual calm which characterize the best in Zen.
Increased trade contacts with the continent, which had brought many new cultural impulses from China, also served as an impetus to an unprecedented and rapid expansion of Japanese trade and industry. Another impetus may have been the decline and disappearance of the estates. As long as these had existed, they tended to