as the traditional forms and attributes of the Brahmanic and Buddhist divinities were mutable only within narrow limits, the subjects seldom afforded scope for originality of design or observation of nature. The principal Buddhist painters down to the 14th century were members of the Kosé, Takuma and Kasuga lines, the first descended from Kanaoka, the second from Takuma Taméuji (ending 10th century), and the third from Fujiwara no Motomitsu (11th century). The last and greatest master of the school was a priest named Meicho, better known as Chō Densu, the Japanese Fra Angelico. It is to him that Japan owes the possession of some of the most stately and most original works in her art, sublime in conception, line and colour, and deeply instinct with the religious spirit. He died in 1427, at the age of seventy-six, in the seclusion of the temple where he had passed the whole of his days.
The native style, Yamato or Wa-gwa-ryū, was an adaptation of Chinese art canons to motives drawn from the court life, poetry and stories of old Japan. It was undoubtedly practised by the Kose line, and perhaps by their predecessors, but it did not take shape as a school until the Native Style.beginning of the 11th century under Fujiwara no Motomitsu, who was a pupil of Kose no Kinmochi; it then became known as Yamato-ryū, a title which two centuries later was changed to that of Tosa, on the occasion of one of its masters, Fujiwara no Tsunetaka, assuming that appellation as a family name. The Yamato-Tosa artists painted in all styles, but that which was the speciality of the school, to be found in nearly all the historical rolls bequeathed to us by their leaders, was a lightly-touched outline filled in with flat and bright body-colours, in which verdigris-green played a great part. The originality of the motive did not prevent the adoption of all the Chinese conventions, and of some new ones of the artist’s own. The curious expedient of spiriting away the roof of any building of which the artist wished to show the interior was one of the most remarkable of these. Amongst the foremost names of the school are those of Montomitsu (11th century), Nobuzane (13th century), Tsunetaka (13th century), Mitsunobu (15th and 16th centuries), his son Mitsushige, and Mitsuōki (17th century). The struggle between the Taira and Minamoto clans for the power that had long been practically abandoned by the Imperial line lasted through the 11th and the greater part of the 12th centuries, ending only with the rise of Yoritomo to the shōgunate in 1185. These internecine disturbances had been unfavourable to any new departure in art, except in matters appertaining to arms and armour, and the strife between two puppet emperors for a shadow of authority in the 14th century brought another distracting element. It was not until the triumph of the northern dynasty was achieved through the prowess of an interested champion of the Ashikaga clan that the culture of ancient Japan revived. The palace of the Ashikaga shōguns then replaced the Imperial court as the centre of patronage of art and literature and established a new era in art history.
Towards the close of the Ashikaga shōgunate painting entered on a new phase. Talented representatives of the Kose, Takuma and Tosa lines maintained the reputation of the native and Buddhist schools, and the long-neglected Chinese school was destined to undergo a vigorous Third Period.revival. The initiation of the new movement is attributed to a priest named Jôsetsu, who lived in the early part of the 15th century, and of whom little else is known. It is not even certain whether he was of Chinese or Japanese birth; he is, however, believed by some authorities to have been the teacher of three great artists—Shūbun, Sesshū and Kano Masanobu—who became the leaders of three schools: Shūbun, that of the pure Chinese art of the Sung and Yuan dynasties (10th and 13th centuries); Sesshū, that of a modified school bearing his name; and Masanobu, of the great Kano school, which has reached to the present day. The qualities of the new Chinese schools were essentially those of the older dynasties: breadth, simplicity, a daringly calligraphic play of brush that strongly recalled the accomplishments of the famous scribes, and a colouring that varied between sparing washes of flat local tints and a strength and brilliancy of decorative effort that rivalled even that of the Buddhist pictures. The motives remained almost identical with those of the Chinese masters, and so imbued with the foreign spirit were many of the Japanese disciples that it is said they found it difficult to avoid introducing Chinese accessories even into pictures of native scenery.
Sesshū (1421–1507) was a priest who visited China and studied painting there for several years, at length returning in 1469, disappointed with the living Chinese artists, and resolved to strike out a style of his own, based upon that of the old masters. He was the boldest and most original of Japanese landscape artists, leaving powerful and poetic records of the scenery of his own land as well as that of China, and trusting more to the sure and sweeping stroke of the brush than to colour. Shūbun was an artist of little less power, but he followed more closely his exemplars, the Chinese masters of the 12th and 13th centuries; while Kano Masanobū (1424–1520), trained in the love of Chinese art, departed little from the canons he had learned from Jōsetsu or Oguri Sōtan. It was left to his more famous son, Motonobu, to establish the school which bears the family name. Kano Motonobu (1477–1559) was one of the greatest Japanese painters, an eclectic of genius, who excelled in every style and every branch of his art. His variety was inexhaustible, and he remains to this day a model whom the most distinguished artists are proud to imitate. The names of the celebrated members of this long line are too many to quote here, but the most accomplished of his descendants was Tanyū, who died in 1674, at the age of seventy-three. The close of this long period brought a new style of art, that of the Kōrin school. Ogata Kōrin (1653–1716) is claimed by both the Tosa and Kano schools, but his work bears more resemblance to that of an erratic offshoot of the Kano line named Sōtatsu than to the typical work of the academies. He was an artist of eccentric originality, who achieved wonders in bold decorative effects in spite of a studied contempt for detail. As a lacquer painter he left a strong mark upon the work of his contemporaries and successors. His brother and pupil, Kenzan, adopted his style, and left a reputation as a decorator of pottery hardly less brilliant than Kōrin’s in that of lacquer; and a later follower, Hōitsu (1762–1828), greatly excelled the master in delicacy and refinement, although inferior to him in vigour and invention. Down to the end of this era painting was entirely in the hands of a patrician caste—courtiers, priests, feudal nobles and their military retainers, all men of high education and gentle birth, living in a polished circle. It was practised more as a phase of aesthetic culture than with any utilitarian views. It was a labour of loving service, untouched by the spirit of material gain, conferring upon the work of the older masters a dignity and poetic feeling which we vainly seek in much of the later work. Unhappily, but almost inevitably, over-culture led to a gradual falling-off from the old virility. The strength of Meichō, Sesshū, Motonobu and Tanyū gave place to a more or less slavish imitation of the old Japanese painters and their Chinese exemplars, till the heirs to the splendid traditions of the great masters preserved little more than their conventions and shortcomings. It was time for a new departure, but there seemed to be no sufficient strength left within the charmed circle of the orthodox schools, and the new movement was fated to come from the masses, whose voice had hitherto been silent in the art world.
A new era in art began in the latter half of the 17th century with the establishment of a popular school under an embroiderer’s draughtsman named Hishigawa Moronobu (c. 1646–1713). Perhaps no great change is ever entirely a novelty. The old painters of the Yamato-Tosa line Fourth Period: Popular School.had frequently shown something of the daily life around them, and one of the later scions of the school, named Iwasa Matahei, had even made a speciality of this class of motive; but so little is known of Matahei and his work that even his period is a matter of dispute, and the few pictures attributed to his pencil are open to question on grounds of authenticity. He probably worked some two generations before the time of Moronobu, but there is no reason to believe that his labours had any material share in determining the creation and trend of the new school.
Moronobu was a consummate artist, with all the delicacy and calligraphic force of the best of the Tosa masters, whom he undoubtedly strove to emulate in style; and his pictures are not only the most beautiful but also the most trustworthy records of the life of his time. It was not to his paintings, however, that he owed his greatest influence, but to the powerful impulse he gave to the illustration of books and broadsides by wood-engravings. It is true that illustrated books were known as early as 1608, if not before, but they were few and unattractive, and did little to inaugurate the great stream of ehon, or picture books, that were to take so large a share in the education of his own class. It is to Moronobu that Japan owes the popularization of artistic wood-engravings, for nothing before his series of xylographic albums approached his best work in strength and beauty, and nothing since has surpassed it. Later there came abundant aid to the cause of popular art, partly from pupils of the Kano and Tosa schools, but mainly from the artisan class. Most of these artists were designers for books and broadsides by calling, painters only on occasion, but a few of them did nothing for the engravers. Throughout the whole of this period, embracing about a hundred years, there still continued to work, altogether apart from the men who were making the success of popular art, a large number of able painters of the Kano, Tosa and Chinese schools, who multiplied pictures that had every merit except that of originality. These men, living in the past, paid little attention to the great popular movement, which seemed to be quite outside their social and artistic sphere and scarcely worthy of
