BRONZE-CASTING, ETC.
of Iyeyasu at Nikkō, for example, a sleeping cat and two elephants are shown as remarkable specimens of Jingoro's skill. He must not be held responsible for the grotesquely false shapes and proportions of the elephants: no Japanese artist has ever drawn an elephant that resembled the real animal, and Jingoro merely followed designs by the celebrated painter Kano Tanyu. But if neither Tanyu nor Jingoro ever saw a live elephant or had any opportunity of studying its true shape, that excuse cannot be pleaded in the case of the cat, and it must be frankly stated that Jingoro's celebrated cat would never attract admiring attention were it removed from the panel where it has slept for nearly three centuries in a bower of buds and leaves.
Another much belauded work from Jingoro's chisel is the Chokushi-mon (Gate of the Imperial Envoy) at the Nishi-Hongwan temple in Kyōtō. On the outer panels the sculptor has depicted figures of Taoist Rishi; on the inner, the Chinese sage who washed his ear because it had been polluted by a proposal that he should ascend the throne of his country, and the equally austere cowherd who quarrelled with the sage for thus defiling a river. These figures are not fine sculptures: the most benevolent critic cannot be blind to their defects. Yet on the panels of a gate every part of which has its place in a general scheme of decoration, the carvings are admirable objects. That is the first point to be noted about all the sculptured work in the decoration of Japanese temples and mausolea. Sometimes the realistic illusion is complete. Peonies glow with lusty life in a coffer; chrysanthemums raise slender tendrils from a cornice; cranes, wild fowl, or phœnixes actually fly
157
