SPECIAL SUBJECTS
In a great majority of cases the Japanese art-artisan deemed it essential that he should go through a course of pictorial training in the studio of some famous artist; that he should study the composition of poems, and that he should be versed in the cult of the tea-clubs as well as in the science of flower-arranging and incense-judging. The possession of these accomplishments did not, however, interfere with his discharge of the rougher duties of his craft. It will often be found that a man working daily as a common carpenter or joiner can not only design and execute, but also sketch with accuracy and grace, an elaborate decorative composition.
As to the source from which the Japanese sculptor obtained designs, it is probably correct to say that, as a general rule, he relied on the pictorial artist. This statement does not apply, of course, to all the great masters of early, mediæval or modern times. It is recorded that Takahashi Kinai fell into disgrace because he sold a hen supplied as a model by the feudal chief of Echizen; that the same artist refused to chisel a centipede on a sword-guard because he had already committed the sin of killing dozens of these insects for the purposes of a previous carving; that Kogitsune sat for ten days and nights in the open air at Mukuni in order to see a dragon in a whirlwind; that Natsuo placed a peony in his garden as a study but found no inclination to chisel a copy of the flower until he chanced to see it, one day, tossed by the wind. These and many other instances showed that renowned experts often went direct to nature for models. On the other hand it is recorded with at least equal frequency that recourse was had to contemporary painters even by the greatest masters, and
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