FINE ARTS (JAPANESE)
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FINE ARTS (JAPANESE)
print, will be treated in an article by itself.
The Buddhistic school produced most of the sculpture of Japan and represents the first attempt at painting. It was exclusively ecclesiastical in character, and was strongly influenced in spirit, treatment and color both by India and China. Its greatest artists were Kanaoka and Hirotaka, both of whom painted temple and palace-decorations. Its colors were rich blues, reds, greens and gold.
The Yamato-Tosa school, though classed as one, was in reality two different movements, the first of which was distinctly Chinese in its origin, while the latter was thoroughly Japanese. Most of its great paintings depict various phases of Japanese feudalism, the life of the court and of the soldier. The paintings of this school and those of the others, too, are almost incomprehensible to the foreigner. The western painter tells what he has to say in such a way that the scene, person or thing represented almost lives before our eyes, their form is so accurately painted. The oriental artist, on the contrary, is not trying to paint things realistically, but is trying to make us feel his poetic emotion by painting the merest suggestion of the form with the most beautiful lines and color at his command. He does not attempt, for instance, to imitate a cherry-blossom that he has plucked from the tree and brought into his studio as a model, but rather the life and spirit of all cherry-blossoms that he has gathered through all his life of loving observation; and so he paints what he considers the life and spirit of the landscapes, human figure and other things.
We frequently find in reproductions of the paintings of this school, the originals "being very rare, the artist painting in such a way that the observer feels himself to be looking from a point above the scene; and where houses are shown, the roofs are left off, so that one looks down into the interior as well as seeing the outside at the same time. Many of the later artists of this school are represented by exquisitely dainty and idealized drawings of flowers, birds and other natural forms.
Among the prominent individuals of the Yamato-Tosa group are those of the members of the Minamoto and Mitsumoto families; and, later, Nobuzane, a great colorist, Mitsunobu, Mitsuoki and Mitsuyoshi. Tosan color was a new development, quite independent of that of the Buddhistic school. The predominating hues were gold, white, red, green, yellow and blue, which were used intensely strong, but so broken up and woven together that the result was not glaring but a rich, softened gray.
The next two schools were nearly contemporary, and their inspiration was Chinese. They were the Kano and Sesshiu schools,
the former of which was founded by Cho Densu who tried to paint in the style of the Buddhistic artists; his successors, however, abandoned this idea and established a new style which was based on the brush line drawing of China. These men were great designers, and worked for many years in black and white exclusively, but later added color in imitation of the TTosa school. The masters of this school excel in technique of the brush as well as in design. They painted panels in which, as themes, they used animals, birds, fish, flowers and trees. Its great masters were Kano Motonobu, Kano Massanobu, Tanyu, Yeitoku and Korin, who is sometimes accounted the founder of an independent school. Korin was a master designer, lacquerer and colorist. Sesshiu was the founder of the school that bears his name. He studied in China, and he and his followers had ideals, and used a technique and subjects, that were similar to those of the Kano school.
The Okio or Shijo school, known as the naturalistic movement, was founded by Okio who aimed at realism in painting and dealt with such subjects as birds, fish, flowers, trees and landscapes. This realism was not the same as that of the western world, which always draws an individual thing in a given moment and light, but was rather a truth to nature that was the result of so thorough a knowledge of nature that it was possible to draw any of her forms without having the thing actually present as a model. Sosen, one of the artists associated with this naturalistic movement, was famous for his paintings of monkeys.
In later years the artists of Japan have been diverted from the development of their national ideals of art by an interest in the art of Europe and of America. There, however, are two men still living in Japan, who have endeavored to maintain in their own painting what is best in the ideals of Japanese art; they are Hashimato Gaho and Ogato Gekko, the former the chief professor in the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts. See W. Anderson: Pictorial Arts of Japan; Lafcadio Hearn: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan; Sadakichi: Japanese Art.
Japanese Color-Prints. Although the Japanese have developed the process of color printing by means of engraved wood-blocks to a point of excellence beyond that attained by any other nation, they themselves do not class them as art, and their creators are considered nothing more than artisans. Perhaps this was because the painting and sculpture were under the direct patronage of the upper classes and dealt with subjects which touched only upon the ideals of culture which were a sealed book to the common people; and because the print-school from the very first sought to portray the life of the people and actors and other classes which were not
