Grant the ideals of old Japan, grant Buddhism and Chinese conventions, and you must grant the claims of the worshippers of the old masters. But the world does not grant these things. Chinese history and conventions, even Buddhism itself, lie outside the main current of the world's development, whereas the motives and manner of the Popular School appeal to all times and places. Hence, the world being large and Japan being small, and influence on civilisation in general being more important than an isolated perfection incapable of transformation or assimilation, there can be little doubt that the Popular School will retain its exceptional place in European favour.
The beginning of the movement may be traced as far back as the end of the sixteenth century in the person of Iwasa Matahei, originally a pupil of the Tosa school and originator of the droll sketches known as Ōtsu-e. But a whole century elapsed before Hishigawa Moronobu began to devote himself to the illustration of books in colours and in popular realistic style. Then, towards the close of the eighteenth century, came Ōkyo, the founder of the style known as the Shijo Ryū, from the street in Kyōto where the master resided. Ōkyo made a genuine effort to copy nature, instead of only talking about doing so, as had been the habit of the older schools. His astonishingly correct representations of fowls and fishes, his pupil Sosen's portraitures of monkeys, and other striking triumphs of detail were the result. But none of the members of Ōkyo's school succeeded in disembarrassing themselves altogether from the immemorial conventionalities of their nation, when combining various details into a larger composition. Their naturalism, however, gave an immense impulse to the popularisation of art. A whole cloud of artisan-artists arose,—no longer the representatives of privileged ancient families, but commoners who drew pictures of the life around them to suit the genuine taste of the public of their own time and class. Art was released from its mediæval Chinese swaddling-clothes, and allowed to mix in the society of living men and women. And what a quaint, picturesque society it was, that of the time, say, between 1750 and 1850,—the
