JAPAN
may be synthesised into a statement that their works had one of three objects,—to promote religious purposes, to decorate the interiors of temples or mansions, and to illustrate scrolls or illuminate missals. The picture for its own sake did not yet exist.
In the twelfth century was born a style of art entirely independent of foreign inspiration. It consisted of humorous sketches, in which not merely the motives but also the drawing was burlesqued. The Japanese have never been notably skilful caricaturists. Even in modern times their attempts to produce comic publications after the fashion of Punch or Life are not successful, owing to their persistent inability to preserve a likeness while distorting it. In the Toba-ye, as humorous pictures were called after their originator—the Priest of the Toba Monastery (Toba Sōjō), otherwise Minamoto no Kakuyu—particular emotions were emphasised by exaggerating the part of the body affected by them, so that accuracy of drawing, in the Occidental sense of the term, became a secondary consideration. Kakuyu, though generally remembered only as the father of this school, distinguished himself highly as a painter of religious and secular (Yamato) pictures, and the authenticated specimens, a very few rolls, of his comic drawings that have been handed down to posterity, show much power of brush and play of fancy. He had a host of successors in every age, the majority immeasurably inferior, some even greater than himself, and many whose style differed so essentially from his that they had nothing in common with him except a keen sense of humour. To appreciate the work of this school, it is necessary to have an intimate knowledge of Japanese legends, folk-lore, proverbs, history, and
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