JAPAN
ever an Inaba noble held that office, the Yoshioka artists were precluded from putting Inaba-no-suke on their works. The restriction happened to be inoperative in the days of Shigehiro (called also Morotsugu, and, in art circles, Sōtoku) and Shigetsugu (art name, Sōju), the latter of whom is commonly spoken of, with reference to his carvings, as Inaba-no-suke. His forte was extreme delicacy and fineness. Among the heirlooms of his family is a peach-stone carved by him after an elaborate drawing of a Japanese festival. The preparation of the stone reduced it to about two-thirds of its natural size, and on the scanty surface that remained Shigetsugu carved eight boats each carrying an elaborate festival-car, and each manned by thirty-three monkeys. Beside the water on which the boats floated there stood a grove of pine-trees, and under their shadows mandarin ducks sailed, as emblems of love and constancy. Another well-known example of his skill may be seen at the temple Zōjō-ji, in the Shiba Park (Tōkyō). It is a carving on stone, representing the Nirvana of Buddha (Nehan-ko), and it was executed immediately after the death of the second Tokugawa Shōgun (posthumous name, Tai-toku-in-den), when Shigetsugu was in his seventy-third year. The Yoshioka family have continued to work in Yedo through successive generations down to the present day, and a branch was founded in Sendai in the middle of the seventeenth century by Kiyotsugu. No novel features are presented by the Yoshioka carvings: they combine the styles of all the schools.
The Isono family, which came into note in the days of Jochiku (1630), commonly called Masuya Bunyemon, ranked with the Yoshioka masters for minute and delicate chiselling, but were distinguished
284
