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PORTRAIT OF PRINCE SHO TOKU 
 BY KANAWOKA 
 
EPOCHS of CHINESE 
 JAPANESE ART 
 
 AN OUTLINE HISTORr OF 
 EAST ASIATIC DESIGN. 
 
 By 
 
 ERNEST F. FENOLLOSA, 
 
 Formerly Professor of Philosophy in the Imperial University 
 of Tokio , Commissioner of Fine Arts to the Japanese 
 Government , Etc. 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 

 
 Printed in England. 
 
FOREWORD . 
 
 By the EDITOR. 
 
 T J TITH the publication of this book three years of continuous work 
 Wf u P on a most com pti ca t e d and difficult manuscript comes to an 
 end . I have had assistance from scholars all over the world. 
 Many months have been spent in Japan , where invaluable aid was given 
 by artists and scholars who had been associated , several of them since the 
 year 1880, with the archceological researches and the study of Chinese 
 and ' Japanese Art to which , shortly after his arrival in “Japan, Ernest 
 Fenollosa determined to devote his life. The original manuscript of this 
 book , left as it was in hasty pencil writing , was little more than a rough 
 draft of the finished work he intended to make of it. Many historical 
 dates , the names of temples , Sanskrit and Chinese names , and even the 
 full names of artists were often left a blank. Especially in the choice of 
 illustrations has the work seemed , at times , beyond the grasp of any 
 intelligence less than his. A full list of these was made out , but often 
 the description consisted of a single word of identif cation known only to the 
 writer. From the beginning I knew that there were certain omissions* 
 which could never be filled , and certain mistakes which inevitably I must 
 
 * E.G. — In the first volume , on page 159 , a copy by Sumiyoshi of a painting by 
 Kanawoka should figure ; in Volume II., on page 87 , a passage is supposed to be shown of 
 o?ie of Sotan’s great landscape screens ; and on page 96 there is a reference to the 7 -epro- 
 duction of a panel of Motonobu which could not be found. Again, 071 page 136 the reader 
 will miss the head of one of the figures from a screen of the Korin School ; on page 156 
 the Professor refers to his photograph of a Shang bronze which we cannot produce ; the 
 same must be said of a photograph mentioned on the next page of certain porcelains in a 
 Pekin collection ; and on page 199 a landscape by Toyokuni is mentioned as being given, but 
 710 photograph could be sufficiently identified to be here reproduced . — (Publisher’s Note.) 
 
VI 
 
 FOREWORD. 
 
 make. Yet it was the writer s personal charge to me to bring out his 
 book in the best way I could, and this represents my best. All deficiencies 
 and errors must be charged to me alone. Even as the work now stands 
 it could never have been accomplished but for the encouragement and 
 assistance of Mr. Charles L. Freer , of Detroit , Professor Ariga Nagao 
 and the artist Kano Tomonobu, of ‘Japan, Mr. Laurence Bitty on , of 
 London , Professor Arthur W. Dow , of Columbia University, New York , 
 and others too numerous to be mentioned , but to whom I owe deep grati- 
 tude. A special word of thanks too must be given to those kind friends 
 as well as publishers, Mr. Heinemann, of London , and Mr. Frederick 
 A. Stokes, of New York City, also to The Secretary of State for India 
 in Council for permission to reproduce four of the illustrations that 
 appeared in “ Ancient Khotan 
 
 MARY FENOLLOSA. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I N the earlier years of our marriage, during our residence in Tokio, 
 Ernest Fenollosa would, from time to time, fall into a mood not 
 unfamiliar to any of us as we grow older, that of finding a certain 
 delicate pleasure in speaking of his early childhood. His parentage 
 was unusual ; his whole intellectual and temperamental child-life, so to 
 speak, just a little above the normal. His first memory (and he must 
 have been little more than an infant at the time) was of lying in the 
 sun on a floor near a window, and hearing his parents, his mother at 
 the piano, his father with a violin, playing what he afterwards learned 
 to recognize as Beethoven’s Sonata Appassionata. His father was a 
 professional musician in Salem, and all the early years of his son’s life 
 seem to have been involved and interwoven with strains and themes 
 from the great composers. 
 
 Once, in Tokio, during such a mood of reminiscence, 1 suggested 
 that he let me get a note-book and pencil and take the impressions 
 down in order. He agreed, and in a few moments more I was ready, 
 and had inscribed a new note-book with the words, “Notes on Ernest’s 
 Childhood.” The following pages are those written at his dictation. 
 
 “ My father’s full baptismal name was Manuel Francisco Ciriaco 
 Fenollosa del Pino del Gil del Alvarez, the names Francisco and 
 Ciriaco standing for the two patron saints, according to Spanish custom. 
 Pino was the family name of his mother and Gil and Alvarez of his 
 two grandmothers. The Alvarez he supposed to be a modified form 
 of the family name Alvarado, so famous in Spanish History, not 
 impossibly the direct descendants of Alvarado, the Lieutenant of Cortez 
 in Mexico, who married the daughter of the King of the Tlascalans. 
 His descendants by her are said to have founded families in Spain. 
 The name Fenollosa is also an historic one, and is doubtless the same 
 as that of the Penalosa, another companion of Cortez, who made the 
 first exploring expedition up through Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. 
 The ‘ F ’ and ‘ 11 of the name as pronounced in Spanish can be 
 given many kinds of English spelling. Thus, hardened, the ‘ F ’ 
 
 VOL. i. B 
 
PREFACE 
 
 viii 
 
 would become a ‘ P ’ ; softened, it would become an ‘ H.’ The 
 liquid sound of the ‘ 11 ’ may easily be transformed into the sound 
 of the English ‘ Y,’ or even ‘J.’ Thus actually rose a great many 
 ways of spelling the name, and I recall seeing in my youth an old 
 Spanish illumination belonging to my father’s sister, Mrs. Emilio, in 
 which the name was written ‘ Hinajosa.’ The Fenollosa family was 
 from ancient days settled in the old Roman city of Valencia. 1 knew 
 from my father this one fact only, and that his father, also Manuel 
 Fenollosa, was born there. But from a Spanish sculptor in New York, 
 Fernando Miranda, I learned that several branches of the family were 
 still living in Valencia, that there is a street named after the family, 
 and that one Fenollosa is a priest in the cathedral of Santes Juanes. 
 At my request Mr. Miranda wrote to this priest and got a most 
 courteous reply, saying that he would gladly look up anything for me 
 in Valencia if I would tell him what was desired. Unfortunately 
 I have never yet taken advantage ot this opportunity. 
 
 “ I remember also hearing my father say that he had two cousins, 
 unmarried ladies, living in Madrid, but that was about 1870. My r 
 grandfather, Manuel Fenollosa, must have been born somewhere about 
 1785 or 1790, and left Valencia as a young man to join in the wars 
 which troubled Spain in the early part of the nineteenth century, 
 presumably the wars with Napoleon. He was a musician by profession, 
 but I did not know whether he entered the army as a member of a 
 military band, or as an ordinary soldier. After leaving the army he 
 settled down as a musician in Malaga, where he married Ysobel del 
 Pino of the neighbouring town, Canillas de Aceytuno. My father was 
 born on one of the last few days of December in 1818 or 1819. 
 
 “He used to tell me many stories of his life as a boy. There was 
 a great rocky height on which the Moors, driven from Granada, had 
 their last fortress and palace in Spain. About its ruins he used to 
 love to clamber, and once fell down a steep part of the slope, cutting 
 his forehead deeply. The scar of this was large, and was visible to 
 the day of his death. He was a musical prodigy, and remembered 
 that, at the age ot five or six years, he was made to stand on a table 
 in the midst of a crowded hall and sing, in a child’s soprano voice, 
 leading arias from Italian operas. By this time also he was quite 
 proficient on the piano and on the violin, and by the age of ten was 
 playing in public. He took great delight in being leader of the boys’ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 choir in the cathedral of Malaga, and used to laugh with joy as he 
 told of the pranks that he and a comrade used to play in that ancient 
 edifice, climbing up under the tower, exploring long-forgotten lofts, 
 and once lying in hiding so that they might break the rules against 
 staying in the church all night. He had love affairs, too, in his boyish 
 days, and used to speak of a little black-eyed aristocrat for singing 
 serenades under whose balcony he was punished by his father. He had 
 no brothers, and but one sister, Ysobel, who was born in 1820, and 
 of whom he was very fond. When he was about fourteen, some war, 
 one of the Carlists’, I believe, broke out in Spain, and there was fear 
 that all the young men might be drafted into the army. The war was 
 very unpopular in Malaga, certainly among my father’s friends and 
 associates, for the songs of this period that he sometimes would sing 
 me were all about constitutions, liberty and denunciation of tyranny. 
 A man some years older than he, Don Manuel Emilio, also a musician, 
 was engaged to marry his sister Ysobel, and at this time was leader 
 of a celebrated military band. At this moment there happened to be 
 a frigate of the U.S. Navy in the port of Malaga, and its commander 
 made a proposition to take this band to America as the naval band of 
 the ship. The fear of having him drafted into the army prompted 
 Manuel’s parents and Mr. Emilio to try to get him a chance to escape 
 to America with this band. It was found that there was but one 
 vacancy, that of the French horn, an instrument which he had never 
 touched. The ship was to sail next morning, and Mr. Emilio said, 
 
 ‘ Manuel, if you will spend the whole night practising the French horn 
 it may be possible for you to pass the examination in the morning. 
 At any rate, I will announce you now, publicly, as a candidate.’ The 
 night was so passed, the examination successful, and he went off on 
 the ship that day. Before reaching America the frigate was to touch at 
 the Balearic Isles, whither she was conveying an old gentleman, the new 
 Spanish Governor of the Isles. This old Don, as it chanced, became 
 interested in and really attached to the boy Manuel. When they arrived 
 at Majorca there was already great excitement about the war ; the rules 
 were imperative that no one should leave Spain without a passport. 
 It had been too late to procure one at Malaga, and the authorities 
 were about to refuse to let young Fenollosa proceed. At this crisis 
 the Governor was appealed to, and through his influence he was allowed 
 to continue his voyage. 
 
 b 2 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 “ The Spanish band was soon discharged from the frigate, but for 
 several years held together as an American organization. Railroads were 
 almost non-existent in those days and the great cities along the Atlantic 
 coast much more isolated. But there was already a growing love for 
 music, and this band every winter had immense success, giving series 
 of concerts and travelling overland in coaches and by boat from 
 Washington to Portland, Maine. Mr. Emilio was always the leader. 
 He was a great performer on the violin. In a musical criticism or, 
 rather, reminiscence in a New York paper as late as 1892, I read a 
 notice of these concerts, in which the writer spoke of the modern 
 
 virtuosi who have come from Europe to America during the last fifty 
 years, but that to one who had heard Emilio play in the Spanish band 
 in the eighteen thirties all later performances seemed to lack heart and 
 genius. I have heard my father often refer to these journeys and tell 
 
 how, as a boy still in his teens, he played sometimes the violin, some- 
 
 times a wind-instrument — often in solos. He was always placed at 
 the very front of the stage, and was the pet of the band. In all cities 
 where they visited the musicians were royally entertained. The sort 
 of music they played was the best Italian, generally from operas, but 
 they also introduced something of the new German school, Mozart, 
 
 Beethoven, Meyerbeer, etc., etc. 
 
 “ At last the band broke up, and its members settled down as pro- 
 fessional musicians in one or another city. Salem, Massachusetts, had 
 been one of the leading centres of refinement and of love for music. 
 The commerce of its merchants extended to all parts of the earth, and 
 its aristocratic families were the rivals of Boston in wealth, education 
 and the advantages of foreign travel. Among such wealthy patrons of 
 culture there was one especially, Mr. George Peabody, who was a fine 
 amateur painter as well as musician. He had a collection of old 
 European masterpieces both of paintings and of musical instruments, 
 such as violins, lutes, etc. He was himself an excellent performer on 
 the ’cello. He had often entertained the Spanish band at his house, 
 perhaps the finest of the old colonial mansions in Salem. When the 
 band broke up it was to his urgent solicitations especially that Mr. Emilio 
 and my father yielded in deciding to make Salem their future home. 
 In those days the two Spaniards spent most of their evenings and many 
 afternoons playing with Mr. Peabody in his studio. The latter outlived 
 them both, not dying until 1890, or thereabouts, at a very advanced age. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xi 
 
 “Before long my father’s sister, Ysobel, came over from Spain to 
 be married to Mr. Emilio, and my father took up his residence with 
 them. My father is said to have been a great social favourite, and as 
 music teacher visited at most of the leading houses. He also played 
 in orchestras at Boston. In the early days of the railroad between 
 Salem and Boston there were few evening trains, and he used to relate 
 to me with pride how many and many a time he had walked back from 
 Boston to Salem, sixteen miles through the snow, his violin slung across 
 his back, reaching home in time for breakfast. He must, in these 
 days, have possessed a very strong constitution, but an accident, that 
 of losing his foothold upon one of the bridges and falling through 
 into icy water, checked for ever all such adventures, and brought on a 
 temporary haemorrhage of the lungs. 
 
 “ The family kept up constant communication with the old people 
 in Malaga, and somewhere about 1 845 they induced the old Manuel 
 and Ysobel Fenollosa to come over and live with them in Salem. The 
 old man was not at all contented. He could not appreciate the advance 
 of science, free thought and republican institutions, for all of which 
 Salem was a leading centre, and the young Spaniards leading advocates. 
 In less than a year old Manuel returned to Spain alone, where he died 
 not long after. My grandmother remained with her children for nearly 
 three years, but she, too, was discontented, especially with the changes 
 in religious matters. The children had, of course, in Spain been 
 
 baptized Roman Catholics, but had already become Episcopalian 
 Protestants. The mother resented this apostasy, and for herself, 
 
 though most assiduous in her devotions at the cathedral in Salem, could 
 not feel at home with alien priests, and a congregation composed, for 
 the most part, of immigrant Irish. So before 1850 she too had returned 
 to Malaga, and there lived in religious retirement until her death. 
 
 Communication with her in Malaga was of course kept up, but at 
 
 longer and longer intervals. I remember as a child having casks of 
 wine and boxes of raisins sent to our home directly from Malaga. 
 
 “ Among my father’s pupils in Salem were many aristocratic young 
 ladies, among whom my mother was one of his favourite pupils on the 
 piano. I must now go back and say something of her family. My 
 mother’s name was Mary Silsbee, and she was the daughter of William 
 Silsbee and Mary Hodges, both descendants of old Salem families whose 
 ancestors had migrated from England in the early days of the Salem 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xii 
 
 colony. The Hodges family had always been known in Salem, but the 
 Silsbee family was somewhat obscure before the rise to wealth of the three 
 brothers, of whom my grandfather was one. These brothers, Nathaniel, 
 Zachary and William, were, in the years succeeding the Revolution, 
 among that considerable number of Salem ship-owners and ship-captains 
 who made the commerce of the Atlantic colonies and the coasts of India, 
 Java, the Straits and the Philippines. I think they operated in partner- 
 ship. They sent out cargoes in their strong, New England-built barks, 
 and these, alter a two years’ voyage, would return bringing the treasures 
 of the East up to the Derby Street wharves. The brothers were all 
 highly educated men, graduates of Harvard. Of them, Zachary was the 
 most devoted to commerce, but Nathaniel became United States senator 
 from Massachusetts during Washington’s and other early Administrations. 
 William, who was my grandfather, was the most scholarly and 
 philosophical. It is said that many unpublished letters ot him to his 
 brother, the senator, still exist, and that these show a profound and 
 original grasp of the political problems then agitating the young states. 
 He was a tall, thin, dark-eyed man of aristocratic presence. 
 
 “ My grandmother, Mary Hodges, was a very beautiful woman, with 
 light hair and blue eyes, and an expression of great benevolence and 
 sweetness. It was remarked as strange that such a handsome couple 
 should have a lot of comparatively homely children. These children, 
 of whom my mother was one, numbered seven. All but one lived to 
 a somewhat advanced age. My mother was born at Salem in the 
 
 year, I think, of 1 8 1 6. Although still a child when she died, I can 
 remember hearing some of her impressions of her early r youth from 
 her own lips. She lived in the big colonial house still standing on 
 the lower part of Essex Street. It is but a stone’s throw trom 
 Hawthorne’s house on Union Street, and hardly more than that from 
 Hawthorne’s Custom House. The long slope ol hill on the water- 
 
 side, now completely built up, was in her childhood one great, 
 beautiful, old-fashioned garden, full of hedges, arbors, fruit trees, box- 
 bordered paths, and wide flower beds. It reached quite down to 
 Derby Street, on the opposite side of which were the wharves ; and 
 my mother remembered hearing the gun fired which announced the 
 return, after long voyaging, of one of her father’s ships ; and watching 
 from the house windows the unlading of the wharves below and 
 the long lines of men bringing up precious burdens of tea, silks, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xm 
 
 porcelains, lacquer and Polynesian curiosities, through the garden paths. 
 From the front windows of their home the children could look down 
 upon Essex Street, then the chief thoroughfare, and listen to their 
 mother tell how she, in her childhood, had watched through half- 
 closed blinds the British red-coats as they marched up the street. 
 
 “ The three brothers had all married, and each had a group of 
 children living within a stone’s throw of one another. Of these, the 
 boys, as they came of age, went to Harvard, as their fathers had done 
 before them. The girls were educated at a fashionable private school 
 in Salem amid a crowd of brilliant and beautiful belles who, at that 
 time, attracted the attention of all the Boston youth. In fact, it was 
 said to be the choicest delight of the Bostonian to be invited down at 
 the height of the Salem season to spend several days as guest at one 
 of her many high-ceiled mansions. On Saturday nights the boys 
 brought down their friends from Cambridge, and there were few parties 
 in Boston as gay as the Salem assemblies. At this period the wealth 
 and shipping of Salem exceeded those of Boston.” 
 
 At this point the dictation stops and, because of a multitude of newer 
 interests, was never resumed. 
 
 H is childhood was spent among these young cousins, and should 
 have been a happy one ; but apparently this was not the case. He 
 was, by nature, a shrinking and sensitive child, easily rebuffed, and 
 imagining slights where none were intended. The death of his mother 
 when he was about eleven years of age threw over him a still deeper cast 
 of melancholy. He attended the Hacker Grammar School in Salem, 
 and was fitted at the High School of that city for Harvard, entering 
 the school in the year 1866, with the rank of number one in the 
 preliminary examinations. At college he soon became known as a 
 student of unusual qualities, but socially he still remained sensitive 
 and reserved, and did not make friends easily. He was a member of 
 the College Glee Club, and sang in the chorus of the Handel and 
 Hayden Society. Intellectually his deepest interest was soon fixed 
 upon philosophy, and the influence of Hegel especially remained with 
 him a vital and constructive factor throughout his life. Just at the 
 beginning he was greatly influenced by the writings of Herbert 
 Spencer, and was active in forming the Herbert Spencer Club, 
 to which Mr. Louis Dyer, Mr. Samuel Clarke and a few other 
 devotees belonged. 
 
XIV 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 From time to time he had contributed verses, some of them 
 farcical, to the College periodicals, but the real quality of his poetic gift 
 was not suspected until his reading of the “class poem” in 1874. In 
 this, his graduate year, also he took the first prize in the University 
 Boylston Competition for Elocution. He graduated first in a class of 
 one hundred and fifty men, with a senior year average of ninety-nine 
 per cent., and received “ Higher Honours ” in philosophy. He had 
 won the “ Parker Fellowship.” but instead of going abroad decided to 
 take the residence course for a degree in philosophy. The problems 
 of religion and philosophy were, at this time of life, of primary im- 
 portance. He entered the Divinity School at Cambridge, but did not 
 remain long, being attracted to the new “ Art Movement ” awakening 
 under the auspices of the Art School at the Boston Museum. Here, 
 under Professor Grundmann, he began a course in drawing and painting. 
 
 In 1878, through the influence of Professor Morse, of Salem, he 
 was called to the University of Tokio, then just opening its doors 
 to foreign instruction. He was appointed Professor of Political 
 
 Economy and Philosophy. Thus he entered a veritable wonderland of 
 new thought, new influences and new inspiration. From the first 
 moment he felt himself at one with the Japanese spirit. Many of his 
 students were men older than he. In his great earnestness, when 
 striving to demonstrate some difficult point of logic, he would step 
 
 down from the platform, and go among his “boys,” as he affection- 
 ately called them, putting an arm about their shoulders, and by the 
 
 power of sheer magnetism and intellect enforce his meaning. I, who 
 never knew him in those early days, have loved to talk with those 
 who did. Among his first graduate class rank many of the leading 
 statesmen of modern Japan, and because of this fact, a beautiful title 
 is often attached to his name. He is spoken of, even now, as “ Daijin 
 Sensei,' or “The Teacher of Great Men.” From 1878 until 1886 
 he was, every recurrent two years, re-appointed to his Chair in the 
 University “ Professor of Logic,” and, later on, “ Professor of 
 ^Esthetics,” were added to his official titles. From the first year he 
 had become deeply interested in an art new to him, the art of Old 
 Japan, and, it must be added, of Old China, too, for in Japan the 
 one cannot be studied without the other. 
 
 Just at this moment the Japanese themselves were turning from 
 all their old traditions and indulging in an orgy of foreignism. Italian 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xv 
 
 sculptors and painters were imported. Foreign teachers, missionaries and 
 adventurers flocked in from all parts of the world. European costumes 
 and customs began to be adopted. In the break up of the feudal system 
 many of the proudest old Lords or “ Daimyo ” had been reduced to poverty. 
 Their retainers suffered a similar fate. Collections of paintings, porcelains, 
 lacquers, bronzes and prints were scattered, and treasures that are now 
 almost priceless could at that time be bought for a few yen. It is even 
 said that among the extreme foreignists some of these collections were 
 burned as rubbish. The abolition of Buddhism as a national religion, so to 
 speak, came with the downfall of feudalism, and, as a consequence, the 
 treasures of the temples fared only a little less badly than those of private 
 homes and castles. 
 
 It is a strange thing that at such a crisis it should have been the keen 
 eye and prophetic mind of a young American who first realized the 
 threatened tragedy, and that to his energy and effort, more than to any 
 other cause, was due a swift reaction. This statement which, at first read- 
 ing, may sound a little boastful and exaggerated, will be verified bv every 
 Japanese who is familiar with the history of those turbulent days ; and is 
 further borne out by the diplomas given, at successive intervals, by the 
 Japanese Emperor when bestowing some new order or decoration upon the 
 zealous worker for the preservation of Japanese Art. 
 
 At first it was only during the summer months of vacation that he 
 really studied the art, or could find time to travel to the more remote pro- 
 vinces, and visit temples where certain treasures of sculpture or painting 
 were said to exist. The government became more and more generous in 
 giving him authority during such expeditions, finally incurring all expenses, 
 and furnishing him with able secretaries and interpreters. It was during 
 these temple sojourns that his interest in Buddhism, both as a religion and 
 a constructive philosophy, was aroused. Mediaeval art in Japan and China 
 is as much involved with Buddhism as is Mediaeval European Art with 
 Christianity. 
 
 In 1 88 i he established a little artists’ club called “ Kangwakai,” renting 
 a hall for a meeting place and afterwards for exhibitions, taking upon him- 
 self all incidental expenses, and presiding at all gatherings. In this effort 
 his chief inspirer and fellow-worker was the artist Kano Hogai, already 
 well into middle age, a splendid and rebellious spirit, and the last of the 
 really great artists of old Japan. This man, proud of his name and 
 traditions, for he was a direct descendant of the long line of Kano painters, 
 
XVI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 had been one of the very few to hold scornfully aloof from the invasion of 
 foreign ideas. But in spite ot this, the genius, earnestness and purpose of 
 the young American finally won him over, and they became not only 
 colleagues, but the closest of personal triends, each believing in and supple- 
 menting the other, and each working with heart and soul to save Japanese 
 Art to Japan. 
 
 Already, by the next year, 1882, there had begun a sort of reaction 
 among the nobles, and Ernest Fenollosa was asked to assist in organizing 
 the “ Bijitsu-kwai ” or “ Art Club of Nobles.” At the first meeting, largely 
 attended, for by this time his name was spoken everywhere, he opened 
 proceedings with a fearless and inflammatory speech denouncing a race who 
 would see their greatest birthright slipping through their fingers and make 
 no effort to retain it. He deplored the then prevailing system of teaching 
 American-style pencil drawing in the public schools, and of studying oil- 
 painting and modern marble sculpture under Italian instructors. From out 
 of the great gasp that followed the end of this speech — so more than one 
 Japanese has told me — came the rebirth of national pride and interest in 
 Japanese Art. No wonder they call him the “ Boddhisattva of Art.” 
 
 In this same year a minor study, of which something must be said later 
 on, was taken up. This was of the sacred drama called “ No,” sometimes 
 spelled in France and England “Noh.” He found in it most interesting 
 analogies with early morality plays ot Europe, and especially with earliest 
 forms of Greek drama. His teacher was Umewaka Minoru, who, before 
 the great break-up of 1868, was court actor to the Shogun. 
 
 Bv the year 1883 the Artist’s Club, Kangwa-kwai, was on a self-sup- 
 porting basis, and dear old Kano Hogai getting more commissions than he 
 could fulfil. Of him, writing elsewhere, Ernest Fenollosa has said, “ Kano 
 Hogai, the great central genius of Meiji, may be regarded as clearly 
 striking a last note on the great instrument which Godoshi first sounded.” 
 The name next in importance to that of Hogai, was that of Hashimoto 
 Gaho, also one of the original founders of the Kangwa-kwai, and a fine artist. 
 He died but a few years ago. The Japanese prize his work very highly. 
 
 In 1885, a special Art Commission, after five months’ sitting, reported 
 favourably upon Professor Fenollosa’s recommendation that purely 
 Japanese art, with the use of Japanese ink, brush and paper, should be 
 re-introduced into all schools. A preliminary office of a new central Art 
 School, with leading artists from the Kangwa-kwai as instructors, under the 
 supervision of Professor Fenollosa, was instituted, and plans for a 
 
PREFACE 
 
 XVII 
 
 national Art Museum begun. In the next year the Kangwa-kwai held 
 a public exhibition of all its best work done since i 8 8 I . To the Tokio 
 public, and to the Government, this proved a revelation of creative power. 
 
 In June, 1886, he was, for the fifth time, reappointed to the Chair 
 of Philosophy in the University, but in the very next month, July, 
 was transferred from the University to a Commissionership of Fine Arts, 
 to be held under the joint authority of the Educational Department 
 (for schools) and the Imperial Household Department (for museums). 
 This included the offices and titles “ Manager of the Fine Arts 
 Academy,” “ Manager of the Art Department of the Imperial 
 Museum,” and “ Professor of Aesthetics and the History of Art in the 
 Fine Arts Academy.” Later in the year he was sent abroad, with two 
 Japanese colleagues, as a special Commissioner to report on European 
 methods of Art Administration and Education. This Commission 
 visited all the great centres in Europe, and purchased, for use in 
 Japan, large quantities of photographs and books. 
 
 In the next year, 1887, the Commission returned, and the Normal 
 Art School of Tokio was formally opened. Professor Fenollosa was now 
 given, as assistants, nine Japanese experts in archaeology and art ; and 
 was entrusted with the task of registering all the art treasures of the 
 country, particularly those of temples. This work included the drawing 
 up of laws concerning repairs, subsidies, export, etc., etc. These years, 
 from 1886 to 1889, may justly be considered as marking the height 
 and climax of his personal influence in Japan. He had been already 
 thrice decorated by the Emperor, held a definite rank at Court, and was 
 the recipient of countless social and official honours. But by this time, 
 some of the Japanese with whom he had been working, and whom 
 he had inspired, began to take a more individual interest in this great 
 national movement, for such it had become. During his absence in 
 Europe, these active spirits had, of necessity, greater control, and 
 Professor Fenollosa found, upon his return, that no longer would his 
 be the single mind to direct affairs of art. It was characteristic of him 
 that no bitterness or resentment came with this realization. Other 
 foreigners placed, on a very much smaller scale, in similar positions, 
 have written whole books to denounce the Japanese as a nation of 
 ingrates, of treacherous underminers, that sapped knowledge and experience 
 from their foreign teachers, and then threw the husk aside. But Professor 
 Fenollosa had no such conception of the situation. Rather he rejoiced 
 
xviii PREFACE 
 
 in the courage and intelligence of the Japanese spirit that could so quickly 
 adapt and assimilate new thoughts, and begin weaving them into the 
 very fibres of a new national growth. Honours were still piled thickly 
 enough upon him. He held his various offices and titles undisturbed, 
 but he felt, intuitively, that the time had come when the Japanese had 
 better manage their own art affairs. 
 
 A few years before, in 1886, he had sold his collection of Japanese 
 paintings to Dr. G. C. Weld of Boston, under the conditions that it 
 was to remain permanently in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and 
 have the name Fenollosa attached to it. In 18 go he received a pro- 
 position from this Museum to become Curator of the newly-established 
 Department of Oriental Art ; and decided at once to accept. On the 
 eve of his departure from Japan the Emperor granted a personal 
 audience, bestowing with his own hand a fourth decoration. This was 
 called “ The Order of the Sacred Mirror,” and, up to the time of its 
 presentment, I have been told, no such exalted order had been given to 
 a foreigner. Its special significance is that the recipient has given 
 personal service to the Emperor. 
 
 It must have been a wonderful sight, the Court in full regalia, 
 grave Japanese nobles and statesmen standing silently about, all eyes 
 directed to the one foreigner in the great hall, an American, still 
 young, kneeling to receive the highest personal order yet bestowed, and 
 to hear words spoken by the Emperor’s own lips, “ You have taught 
 my people to know their own art ; in going back to your great country, 
 I charge you, teach them also.” 
 
 For five years he remained in Boston, re-arranging the treasures so 
 many of which had once been his ; cataloguing by number the whole 
 collection, and writing special catalogues for the various exhibitions. 
 Some of these were loan exhibits, brought over directly from Japan, 
 others were made from portions of the great collection now housed 
 within the Museum walls. But this alone was not enough to fill the 
 brilliant and ever-reaching mind of such a man. He began to take 
 deep interest in “ Problems of Art Education in America.” His recent 
 experiences in Japan, supplemented by European research, could not fail 
 to give him a new and vital point of view. One fundamental thought 
 which has since been widely quoted, is as follows : — The tentative effort 
 of art-expression in childhood and in primitive races has been, in all 
 ages and in all lands, practically the same, and its keynote is '■'•spacing." 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xix 
 
 The hard pencil drawing, copying of shaded cubes, pyramids and balls, 
 still in use in most public schools, were, in his opinion, fatal to real 
 development. Scarcely less pernicious was the enforced drawing from 
 plaster casts — “ tracing the shadow of a shadow,” he called it. Life, 
 motion, colour, impression, composition, spacing — above all, spacing, — 
 these formed, in his creed, the only true lines of growth. 
 
 In this book of his, “ Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art,” re- 
 presenting his latest and most mature thought, it will be seen that he 
 continues to place the quality of spacing, as the key not only of design, 
 but of all the visual arts. It must be kept in mind that at the time 
 of his bold arraignment against drawing from the cast, the thought 
 was a new and revolutionary one. He was attacked on all sides. 
 
 While in the first enthusiastic stages of his work for a better system 
 of Art Education in America, a new and very precious friendship was 
 formed. This was with Mr. Arthur Wesley Dow, 11 of Ipswich, 
 Massachusetts, a young artist who had just returned from Paris. 
 Literally from the first moment in which he met Professor Fenollosa 
 and was shown some of the great examples of Japanese Art, these two 
 influences became clear factors in his life. On the other hand Professor 
 Fenollosa found in this ardent and receptive young spirit the inspiration 
 and encouragement for which he had been longing. The two friends 
 worked together, sometimes in the same school, as at Pratt Institute at 
 Brooklyn, sometimes at great distances, but always in perfect sympathy, 
 in the years that were to follow. And if the name, the methods and 
 the vital truths imparted to American Art by Professor Fenollosa are 
 to persist in the consciousness ot the American people, it will be due 
 chiefly to the untiring efforts and splendid loyalty of Professor Dow. 
 
 Another phase of intellectual activity found outlet on the lecture 
 platform. In 1892 he gave his first series of public lectures. These 
 were given in Boston, with the title “Chinese and Japanese History, 
 Literature and Arts.” He was asked to speak before many clubs and 
 private gatherings, on the same topics ; and at Cambridge delivered 
 the Phi Beta Kappa poem “East and West.” In 1893, at the time 
 of the great Columbian Fair at Chicago, he was appointed member of 
 the Fine Arts Jury, especially to represent Japan, since Japan here, 
 for the first time, exhibited her Art classified among the “ Fine Arts,” 
 and not among “ Industries.” From this time onward he began to 
 lecture in all the larger cities of this country, and the demand for his 
 
XX 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 courses grew at such a rate that it was found necessary to employ an 
 assistant curator in the Oriental Department of the Boston Museum. 
 This post was offered to and accepted by Mr. Dow. But in the follow- 
 ing year, 1895, Mr. Dow’s services were acquired by Mr. Frederick 
 W. Pratt, of the Pratt Institute, as instructor in Art, and with the 
 privilege of establishing a new system based upon the universal 
 principles set forth by Professor Fenollosa during the year 1884 and 
 put into practice by the Japanese Art Academy. His partial services 
 as lecturer and art critic were also secured by Mr. Pratt, and thus was 
 taken the first definite, revolutionary step toward establishing, in 
 America, the new art education. 
 
 By this time the work of arranging and cataloguing the Oriental 
 treasures of the Boston Art Museum was practically complete. Professor 
 Fenollosa saw no future there except as a sort of showman and personal 
 demonstrator, and as writer of sporadic catalogues. More serious 
 
 writing and lecturing appeared now to be the best means of carrying 
 forward his teaching and his thoughts. Above all, he felt the need 
 of travel, to get into touch once more with the art centres of Europe, 
 and to visit, after several years’ absence, the ever-changing Japan. He 
 sailed for Europe in the spring of 1896, spent several months there 
 in study, and continued around by the Eastern route to Japan. Late 
 summer there and early autumn were spent in a Japanese villa beside 
 the river Kamo which flows through the sacred capital of Kyoto. Life 
 was carried on in purely a Japanese way. There were no other 
 foreigners except Mrs. Fenollosa (myself), and the menage consisted 
 of two Japanese servants, a student-interpreter, and one of the Professors 
 of Chinese Poetry from the University of Tokio. Japanese artists, 
 priests and poets began to frequent the place. There were many 
 visits, on our part, to the homes of these, and also to temples, chiefly 
 to the patriarch Chiman Ajari, a great teacher, now passed into the 
 Beyond, and, over the shoulder of one of the great Kyoto boundary 
 hills to Miidera, on the shores of Omi (called by foreigners Lake Biwa). 
 It was at this temple, the great stronghold of the leading esoteric sect, 
 that Professor Fenollosa first seriously studied Buddhism. The Arch- 
 bishop was then Sakurai Ajari, who had since died. Under his 
 successor, Keiyen Ajari, we both now studied. 
 
 All the depth, the wonder and the romance of Japanese thought 
 seemed to return to Ernest Fenollosa in an overwhelming wave. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xxi 
 
 There was no other course for him than to go back to America, 
 settle his affairs as best he could, and return for an indefinite stay 
 in Japan. This was done, and in the years following, from 1897 
 
 to 1900, he lived in Tokio, though travelling often to Kyoto, Nara, 
 Nikko and places less well known. Always he was studying, 
 acquiring, reaching forward. Now it was not alone art that he 
 pursued, but religion, sociology, the No drama, and Chinese and 
 Japanese poetry. He delivered many lectures in the various Tokio 
 schools, and before art clubs and institutions, wrote articles for 
 Japanese, English and American publications, and began a clear 
 mapping out of this work, “Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art.” 
 
 But in 1900 the demand for American lectures had become so 
 insistent that he decided to return for at least a season. He began on 
 the Pacific coast, lecturing before Universities, Art Clubs and Women’s 
 Clubs in San Francisco and other large cities, travelled slowly eastward, 
 stopping at the larger cities on the wav, and finally reached New 
 York, which he decided to make his headquarters. Mr. Dow’s 
 appointment in 1904 as Professor of Art in Teacher’s College, 
 
 Columbia, he had welcomed as a great triumph. 
 
 During this year, too, he was deeply stirred by the splendid 
 struggle of Japan in her war with Russia. Ten years before, at the 
 close of the Japan-China war, when the just rewards of victory were 
 withheld by the so-called Triple Alliance, he had said publicly, and 
 had written, in printed articles, these words, “Japan will yet hold 
 Port Arthur, but she will reach it through seas of blood.” 
 
 The years 1905-6-7-8 brought him ever wider and more apprecia- 
 tive audiences. There is no need to dwell upon the many courses 
 of lectures given, or to enumerate the various universities, art 
 museums, clubs, private schools and drawing-rooms in which they 
 were delivered. It is enough to state that these were years of in- 
 creasing triumphs. Professor Dow at Columbia was carrying forward 
 the work of Art Education with splendid effect. Already the classes 
 which had graduated at Pratt Institute under the Fenollosa-Dow 
 system, as it is often called, were applying its principles in smaller 
 towns all over the union. There could be no doubt, now, of success. 
 But the most vital and important happening of these years occurred 
 in the summer of 1906, when Professor Fenollosa, deliberately can- 
 celling a series of Chatauquan lecture engagements, remained in his 
 
XXII 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 New York apartments, and in one magnificent effort, completed, in 
 three months, a rough pencil draft of this book, “ Epochs of Chinese 
 and Japanese Art.” 
 
 After the month of October, 1906, it was never touched. 
 November brought new lecture courses, and during the summer of 
 
 1907, a long Western lecture tour was made. At times, when I 
 
 urged him to take up the work on the manuscript, he would say, 
 “1 cannot finish it until another visit to Japan. 1 must see Mr. 
 Ariga, and old Kano Tomonobu, and some of the others who have 
 worked with me for Japanese art. There are corrections to be made, 
 dates to be filled in, certain historical facts to be verified, and all 
 
 these can be done in Japan only.” 
 
 He died, quite suddenly, in London, just on the eve of sailing 
 for home after a summer spent in study abroad, on September 21st, 
 
 1908. In the spring of 1910, after having completed the long and 
 
 difficult task of putting into type-written form the scattered, pencilled 
 pages, I took the original and the typed manuscripts to Japan. For 
 two months Mr. Ariga and old Kano Tomonobu worked with me 
 upon it. There were others also who gave assistance, but to these 
 two is chiefly due the fact that practically all omissions were filled, 
 all dates verified. Mr. Ariga (Dr. Ariga Nagao, to give his full 
 name) is a noted scholar in Chinese and Japanese history, and in 
 
 Chinese poetry, as well as a great statesman and diplomat. Without 
 his personal interest and co-operation this book could never have been 
 brought to light. 
 
 His, too, was a moving spirit in the unique and beautiful tribute 
 paid to Professor Fenollosa by the Japanese Government in the 
 
 removal of his ashes from Highgate, London, to a permanent home in 
 the temple grounds of Miidera, overlooking Omi. This was Professor 
 Fenollosa’s own desire, and a more fitting resting-place was never 
 given. 
 
 His ashes lie at Miidera, but his far-reaching thoughts and the 
 
 ideals which he kindled cannot die. They will, it is my belief, 
 continue to burn for many years, and, brightest of all, in the pages 
 of this book. 
 
 The Introduction which opens this book has been put together by me 
 from notes left by Ernest Fenollosa. 
 
 Mary Fenollosa. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 T HE purpose of this book is to contribute first-hand material 
 toward a real history of East Asiatic Art, yet in an interesting 
 way that may appeal, not only to scholars, but to art collectors, 
 general readers on Oriental topics, and travellers in Asia. Its treat- 
 ment of the subject is novel in several respects. Heretofore most 
 books on Japanese Art have dealt rather with the technique of industries 
 than with the aesthetic motive in schools of design, thus producing a false 
 classification by materials instead of by creative periods. This book 
 conceives of the art of each epoch as a peculiar beauty of line, spacing, 
 and colour which could have been produced at no other time, and which 
 permeates all the industries of its day. Thus painting and sculpture, 
 instead of being relegated to separate subordinate chapters, along with 
 “ceramics,” “textiles,” “metal work,” “lacquer,” “sword guards,” 
 etc., etc., are shown to have created at each epoch a great national 
 school of design that underlay the whole round of the industrial arts. 
 vol. I. c 
 
XXIV 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Again, what has hitherto been written of Chinese Art is rather a 
 study of literary sources than of art itself. It is a “ history of the 
 history,” but hardly an effort to classify creative works by their 
 aesthetic qualities. The writer wishes to break down the old fallacy 
 of regarding Chinese civilisation as standing for thousands of years at 
 a dead level, by openly exhibiting the special environing culture and 
 the special structural beauties which have rendered the art of each 
 period unique. 
 
 The treatment of Chinese and Japanese Art together, as of a 
 single esthetic movement, is a third innovation. It is shown that not 
 only were they, as wholes, almost as closely inter-related as Greek 
 Art and Roman, but that the ever-varying phases interlock into a 
 sort of mosaic pattern, or, rather, unfold in a single dramatic movement. 
 
 We are approaching the time when the art work of all the world 
 of man may be looked upon as one, as infinite variations in a single 
 kind of mental and social effort. Formerly, and even recently, artists 
 and writers seem to have taken their point of view through partisan- 
 ship. Classicists and Goths flew at each other’s throats. We hold to 
 the shibboleth of a “ style.” So Oriental Art has been excluded from 
 most serious art history because of the supposition that its law and 
 form were incommensurate with established European classes. But if 
 we come to see that classification is only a convenience, valuable 
 chiefly for chronological grouping, and that the real variations are as- 
 infinite as the human spirit, though educed by social and spiritual 
 changes, we come to grasp the real and larger unity of effort that 
 underlies the vast number of technical varieties. A universal scheme 
 or logic of art unfolds, which as easily subsumes all forms of 
 Asiatic and of savage art and the efforts of children as it does accepted 
 European schools. We find that all art is harmonious spacing, under 
 special technical conditions that vary. The spaces must have bounds, 
 hence the union of harmonious shape with proportion. The eye 
 follows the bounds, and the hand executes them ; hence line, which 
 thus becomes the primary medium for representation. The relative 
 quantities of light which they reflect to the eye become another 
 differentiation in the spaces, and the harmonious arrangement of these 
 values involves a new kind of beauty {notan) and a new faculty to 
 create ideas in term of it. Lastly comes quality of light or colour, 
 which, at the hands of one born with the faculty, is capable of 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 XXV 
 
 endless differentiation and creative grouping. So much all the visual 
 arts may and do possess and work out through varied material, but 
 all pictorial art and representative design come to use their elements 
 with a vaster wealth of combination and suggestion due to subject. 
 Delineation and its possible instruments restablish wide ranges of 
 quality; the significance of notan for modelling, for rendering planes 
 of distance, and for local tone, is as vital as its decorative beauty ; 
 colour also may relate to hosts of physical facts. There are millions 
 of ways of combining these many kinds of beauty and these many 
 species of suggestion ; the history of art records the ways heretofore 
 tried. But in all these efforts we find some sort of order, due to 
 the similarity of effort in the human spirit and in the incidence of 
 the social environment. So Gothic passes out of Classic and into it 
 again, and Greek methods are carried across Asia also. In this book, 
 too, the similarity of the great Chinese methods of delineation with 
 the brush to our methods of drawing and etching is first perceived. 
 Also the relation of Oriental notan on the one hand to Greek notan „ 
 then to Venetian notan , then to the not an of Rembrandt and Velasquez, 
 lastly to the notan of modern French movements, is a conspicuous 
 fact. There are great points of resemblance in mediaeval colour, too, 
 in both hemispheres. The chief differences lie in methods of repre- 
 sentation, and this resemblance seems to increase as we approach the 
 present day. In the main there is a sort of convergence of the 
 two separate continental lines of advance in art. Since 1853 the 
 two have been partially intermingled, and from now on this must be 
 more and more the case. Whistler is in some sense the common 
 nodule. It is thus of vital, practical concern that the points of 
 
 unity should be emphasized, and a history of Oriental Art written 
 from a universal point of view. 
 
 The English writers, such as Dr. Anderson, have almost invariably 
 criticised Chinese and Japanese art from the point of view of what they 
 call realism. Thus, to their eyes, all Chinese art is distortion and 
 affectation. Japanese art culminates with Okio and Hokusai because these 
 artists seem nearer to the European. The French have a truer view, yet 
 even they would like to maintain a barrier between pictorial and decorative 
 art, and relegate Oriental to the latter category. The present volume is 
 written from the point of view of principles of criticism which could be 
 applied to the history of European art as well. Qualities of line, notan , 
 
XXVI 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and colour, and the use of these in expressing great ideas, are made the 
 basis of classification and of appreciation. 
 
 As far as I know this is the first time that a treatment of so vast a 
 subject as a whole has been attempted. However partial the result such 
 treatment must give an impression of social forces caught together in a 
 splendid single sweep. And though the character, the individuality, so 
 to speak, of the different epochs may seem unlike, the parts belong together, 
 and will interlock. In the minds of present writers, Japanese and Chinese 
 civilizations are too often opposed, or else the Japanese is regarded as a 
 mere copy of the Chinese culture. Neither of these views is correct. It is 
 one great working of the human mind under wide variations, like that of 
 early classic art in Europe, Asia and Africa, when the three came closest at 
 the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 If this book is to have permanent value one phase, perhaps the most 
 important, must lie in its unity and brevity. It is, indeed, a single personal 
 life-impression, and I desire to have this thought of it, in the minds of 
 readers, an ever-present one. Being such, it needs to aim at no encyclo- 
 paedic completeness, and I shall at my own discretion subordinate small 
 facts to large. Some readers will surely complain that too much is left 
 out. To these I would suggest that the omissions are, themselves, of 
 great significance. My constant effort must be to keep the parts in 
 just proportion, and to do this nothing but my own sense of proportion 
 can be consulted. 
 
 Nor do 1 attempt to treat all forms and phases of Art, but only 
 
 imaginative or creative Art. Art may be looked upon as a con- 
 
 tinuous effort, a solid material manufacture that persists through the 
 ages, and that never languishes ; but this sort of Art is, for the most 
 
 part, classical and uncreative, and will be found to borrow all its 
 
 motives and its forms from rare creative epochs. My intention, and 
 one which I believe will render an important historical service, is to 
 treat the creative periods only. In this way we see the separate shining 
 planes of movement of the human spirit. With this thought it seems 
 to me neither unjust nor improper to ignore all minor movements. It 
 becomes a study of relative importances. It may be called, by others, 
 a mere personal appreciation, but has there ever been, or can there be, 
 a synthesis that is not personal ? 
 
 Most writers upon Oriental Art have, as I said, preferred to classify 
 by the technique of industries. Separate chanters or whole books deal 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 XXV11 
 
 with the material arts ; but while this may be satisfactory for technique 
 or for material, it is, if the subject be indeed Art, a false classification, 
 full of repetitions, cross lines, and anachronisms. Art is the power of 
 the imagination to transform materials — to transfigure them — and the 
 history of Art should be the history of this power rather than the 
 
 history of the materials through which it works. At creative periods 
 
 all forms of Art will be found to interact. From the building of a 
 great temple to the outline of a bowl which the potter turns upon his 
 wheel, all effort is transfused with a single style. Thus classification 
 should be epochal, and in attempting thus to treat it for the first 
 
 time it becomes possible partially to trace style back to its social and 
 
 spiritual roots. The former method may be called that of the curio- 
 collector, the latter, of the student of sociology. 
 
 With another class of writers who treat of Art its history becomes a 
 history of documents, or, as I have already called it, a “ history of a 
 history.” This is specially true of Oriental Art. No one denies the 
 importance of documents, but, on the other hand, no one can assert 
 that documents are Art. Documents may sometimes be falsified; Art, 
 in a certain sense, cannot. Art should be judged by universal standards, 
 and in Oriental criticism waves of opinion, often contradictory, may be 
 traced. Chinese Art is far from being a single manifestation. It is formed 
 of many, with many battling moods ; and often the conservative Chinese 
 scholars have misunderstood and belittled the really creative movements. 
 Also, they have failed at times to realize that it is a dangerous tendency 
 to mistake interest in inscriptions for interest in significant Art qualities. 
 Here the antiquarian and the critic must necessarily diverge. Indeed so 
 entirely does the critic rely on his intuitive and, so to speak, creative 
 faculties, that “ scholarship ” in art seems almost a contradiction. 
 
 Let me say at once that I make no claim to being a scholar. Chiefly 
 because of this I have hesitated, for many years, to attempt this volume. 
 I cannot pretend to original philologic research in Chinese and Japanese 
 documents, so scholars might well counsel me to keep silent. But the fact 
 of my having had unique opportunities for the study of Far Eastern Art 
 cannot be gainsaid. For many years now my friends have been urging me 
 to put a part, at least, of these experiences into permanent form. If I now 
 yield it is because I believe that I have something to say that is worth 
 saying, and feel moved to do it before I die. My special opportunities 
 for the study of Art in Japan came in a most interesting transitional 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 xxviii 
 
 period. The strongholds of the great feudal lords, or “ Daimyo,” 
 were being broken up and their ancestral treasures scattered. In Boston 
 I had studied Art as a philosopher, and had also attempted the practice 
 of it. Here, in Japan, I became regarded as an antiquarian, an 
 authority, and before many years was appointed a Japanese commissioner 
 for research, administration, and Art education. 
 
 In the performance of these duties I was thrown with all the well- 
 known connoisseurs, visited all important temples, knew the remaining 
 artists, and was in touch with all public and private collections. 
 Besides this, I became personally acquainted with all dealers in Art, 
 and knew their stocks. But specially I became the personal pupil in 
 
 criticism of the remaining Kano and Tosa artists, and, a little later, of 
 the Shijo in Kyoto. I studied intimately their great collections of 
 copies, and was taught their traditions. Probably because in many 
 cases I have chosen to adhere to these inherited traditions the modern 
 school of young Japanese critics, which prides itself upon being radical, 
 is inclined to call me over-conservative. There is no doubt that future 
 study, if seriously carried forward, will change many estimates, but if 
 we waited for this nothing would ever be written. Later generations 
 must build on the earlier, and I believe that my unified impressions, 
 even if defective, must have a value. 
 
 The question of the Roman-letter spelling of the Chinese and 
 Japanese names and of their pronunciation may lead to some confusion. 
 This is especially true of the Chinese. By most European scholars 
 these are written in modern Mandarin. This is, necessarily, a purely 
 modern pronunciation. The Japanese way of pronouncing the names 
 of old Chinese artists is based upon the older Chinese speech, preserved 
 intact by the phonetic nature of the Japanese syllabary. It is thus 
 inevitably much nearer to the old Chinese. This may be further 
 proved by the translations, into the Japanese syllabary, of old East 
 Indian names, which, in their own land, have to-day an unchanged 
 pronunciation, and by rhymes in old Chinese poetryq which is as well 
 known to all educated Japanese as are Homer and Virgil to the 
 English undergraduate. It is perhaps natural that our European and 
 American Sinologues, who have won their mastery of modern Chinese 
 sounds by hard study, should not wish to give them up. But it is 
 also natural that Japanese students, and foreigners who have studied 
 Art in Japan, feeling that they possess the truer sound, and having 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 XXIX 
 
 done a large amount of critical work, and made strong efforts to 
 assist in the preservation of Chinese Art, should hold to theirs. Chinese 
 Art of most periods is still to be studied in Japan, and the Japanese 
 themselves feel that it is their privilege to interpret Chinese Art to 
 the world. Therefore I shall follow, in the main, the use of the Japanese 
 sound of old Chinese, referring in brackets and in the Index to the 
 Mandarin pronunciation. It is no slight matter, too, that the Japanese 
 sound is less harsh and forbidding than the Mandarin, and stays the 
 more easily on the tongue. 
 
 The theory here propounded of elements of change and growth 
 in Chinese culture may seem to some readers quite rash, and perhaps 
 insufficiently insubstantiated. I plead guilty to the charge of being 
 dogmatic. This fact of change and of individual force at all points 
 is so universal a background or medium, like the air we breathe, that 
 I have to assume it without waiting for proof. It is, after all, a 
 much more natural presupposition than the one so generally and so 
 lightly taken, that China has remained at a dead level for hundreds 
 of years. To stop in the course of my impressions and attempt to 
 enforce each minor point that might possibly arouse opposition, would 
 result only in confusion. After all, I am not necessarily writing this book 
 for scholars, but for those who would try to form a clear conception 
 of the essential humanity of these peoples. The idea may be a grand 
 hypothesis ; it surely would never be promulgated by the scholars, 
 but I believe it to be necessary that someone should attempt it. 
 Once granting this point of view it revivifies for us all Chinese insti- 
 tutions, philosophy, art, prose-literature, and poetry. It is sound 
 evolutionary doctrine. I fully confess that my personal contribution 
 to the evidence is a digest of the art itself, the primary document. 
 Art is a sensitive barometer to measure the buoyancy of spirit. 
 
 Beyond this I must rest on the scholarship of my Japanese 
 colleagues. For nearly thirty years I have had the constant and minute 
 assistance, by way of teaching, interpretation and translation, of such 
 men as Dr. Ariga Nagao, Baron Hamao, Viscount Kaneko, Professor 
 Inouye, Mr. Hirai, Mr. Tatsumi, Professor Nemoto (the greatest living 
 authority on the Y-King), and last, but not least, Mori Kainen (the 
 powerful Professor of Chinese Poetry in the Imperial University). 
 Other scholars to whom I owe tribute might be enumerated by the 
 dozens. Marco Polo is surely worth something. 
 
XXX 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In bringing this Introduction to a close I must give one word of 
 warning that may be needed by even an indulgent reader. In 
 attempting to make this a work of social forces as well as of Art it 
 may happen that the social and artistic periods are not quite synchronous 
 with the political names and dates, since the causes group themselves 
 with slightly different incidence. Thus the Tosa movement already 
 begins in late Fujiwara, before the Kamakura Shogunate is established. 
 On the other hand, the Ashikaga form of Chinese Art does not come 
 in strongly until some time after the founding of the dynasty. Moreover, 
 if we are careful, we should see that all these movements overlap, and 
 frequently run parallel. Thus the Zen movement has already begun 
 at Kioto and Kamakura long before its flowering in Ashikaga, and 
 side by side with Tosa genre. Also in Tokugawa, many waves, large 
 and small, over- and inter-lap. So that chronology alone is not the 
 key to classification. It is, of course, the inner flow of real causes 
 that we follow. It will not be found necessary to dwell upon the 
 persistence of old schools through the days of their successors. Even 
 Kose has come down to our day with Shoseki. It is not names but 
 powers that we deal with. Our plan is to take the most creative and 
 dominant work of a period and describe it as the chief affair. 
 
 After all, all classification must be false. History is an individual 
 series of complex manifestations. To label parts of these under universal 
 categories is deceptive. Yet we have to proceed by noting broad 
 differences, and we must not confuse the effect by taking too much 
 time to correct the error by overlaying the broad with a host of minor 
 considerations. It is all a question of proportioning, like Art itself, 
 and I have to decide upon how to produce what I deem just effects. 
 
 Japanese Painting 
 
 Crisri&se Paintin 
 
 
 2000 
 
 b.o. 
 
 r>oo o iooo woo 
 
 E-O. A.D. A.D. A.D 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. Primitive Chinese Art. Pacific Influ- 
 ence ........ i 
 
 II. Chinese Art of the Han Dynasty. 
 
 Mesopotamian Influence ... 17 
 
 III. Early Chinese Buddhist Art. From the 
 
 Han Dynasty to the Tang . . . 28 
 
 IV. 
 
 Early Corean and Japanese Buddhist 
 Art. Suiko Period .... 
 
 45 
 
 V. 
 
 Greco-Buddhist Art in China. 
 Tang ..... 
 
 Early 
 
 73 
 
 VI. 
 
 Greco-Buddhist Art in Japan. 
 Period ..... 
 
 Nara 
 
 90 
 
 VII. 
 
 Mystical Buddhist Art in China. 
 Dynasty ..... 
 
 Tang 
 
 1 1 6 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Mystical Buddhist Art in Japan, 
 wara Period 
 
 F uji- 
 
 143 
 
 IX. 
 
 Feudal Art in Japan. Kamakura Period 
 
 169 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 43, line 27, read “ Seirioji '* /or “ Seiroji.” 
 
 Plate facing page 34, read “ Seirioji " for “ Serioji.” 
 Pages 43, 66, 69, etc., read “ nai for “naive.” 
 Page 76, line 12, read “ Mausolos *' f*r “ Mausolas.** 
 Plate facing page 74, read “ Mausolos ” for “ Mausolas 
 Page 91, line 25, read “ Kanimanji "for “ Kanemanji 
 Page 136, line 25, read “it "for “in.” 
 
 Page 153, line 31, read “ it” for “in.’* 
 
 Page 197, line 4 , read “cite” for “show.” 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 IN COLOUR. 
 
 Portrait of Prince Sho Toku Frontispiece 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 Detail of the Frescoes at Horiuji 45 
 
 Detail of the Frescoes at Horiuji 90 
 
 From the Twenty Rolls called “Miracles of Kasuga ” 168 
 
 Owned- by the Imperial Household of Japan. 
 
 IN MONOCHROME. 
 
 New Zealand House, showing Totem Poles 6 
 
 Ancient Chinese Bronze, showing Slanting Eyes 6 
 
 Long-nosed Wooden Mask, from the Philippines 10 
 
 Ancient Shinto Mask with Long Nose 10 
 
 Clay “Chafing-dishes” from Shell Mounds 10 
 
 Wand, or Double Fan, used by Natives in Dancing 12 
 
 Canoe Ornament 12 
 
 Carved Handle of Lime Spatula 12 
 
 British Museum. 
 
 Alaskan Blanket, with Eyes 12 
 
 Three-legged Chinese Bronze 14 
 
 Old Chinese Bronze 14 
 
 Chinese Bronze with Long-necked Bird 14 
 
 Primitive Forms of the Fish or Marine Monster, the Ancestor of the 
 
 Chinese Dragon 14 
 
 Han Vase with Raised Band of Slender Animal Forms 22 
 
 Mr. Freer. 
 
xxxiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 TO FACE PAGE: 
 
 Clay “Chafing-dish” Design: Forms of Cattle in Full Relief 22 
 
 Han Mirror with Twelve-pointed Star, from Kinseki 22 
 
 Han Jar with Cover representing Mountain Ranges 22 
 
 Five Examples of Stone Carving 26 
 
 Eastern Gate of Sanchi Tope 30 
 
 One of the Buddhist Lotos Thrones, often called “Moon Stones” 32 
 
 From Ceylon. 
 
 Early Statue of Buddha 34 
 
 At Serioji, near Kioto. 
 
 Bronze Figures on a Priest’s Staff-head 40 
 
 The “Five Kokuzo ” 42 
 
 At Toji, Kioto. 
 
 The Famous Corean Tamamushi Shrine at Horiuji 46 
 
 Detail of Painting of Tamamushi Shrine 48 
 
 Horiuji. 
 
 Painting on the Doors of the Tamamushi Shrine 48 
 
 The Corean Standing Kwannon with a Vase 5 ° 
 
 Still on the great altar of the Kondo of Horiuji. Front and profile views. 
 
 The Very Attenuated Bronze Seated Kwannon of Contemplation 50 
 
 At Horiuji. 
 
 Portrait of Shotoku-Taishi and his two Children 52 
 
 By the Corean Prince Asa. 
 
 Kondo Altar Trinity 60 
 
 By Tori Busshi, at Horiuji. 
 
 The Chuguji Kwannon 62 
 
 By Shotoku- Taishi. 
 
 Bronze Statuette, showing clearly the Greek Influence 66 
 
 Temple of Horiuji. 
 
 Bronze Trinity, with Screen 68 
 
 Horiuji, Nara. 
 
 Detail of Screen from the Bronze Trinity at Horiuji 7 ° 
 
 Statue of Mausolos 74 
 
 Statue of Buddha as an Indian Prince 
 
 74 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxxv 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 Group of Heads from the Lahore Museum 76 
 
 Statue of a Scythian Emperor 7g 
 
 Buddhist Carvings from Khotan 80 
 
 Khotan Bodhisattwa, Sum Type 80 
 
 Painting from Khotan, Figure on Horse 80 
 
 Small Statue of Buddha Carved in Stone among Greek Acanthus Leaves 82 
 Clay Head of a Boy Dug Up at Khotan 84 
 
 By permission of Dr. Aurel Stein. 
 
 The Soft Clay Statue of Buddha Seated 86 
 
 At Udzumasa, near Kioto. 
 
 Bronze Buddha at Kanimanji 92 
 
 Detail of Frescoes at the Temple of Horiuji, Nara 94 
 
 Greco-Buddhist Sculptures in Stone 94 
 
 From the Crypt of the almost vanished Temple of Gangoji, in Nara. 
 
 The Bodhisattwa Standing at the Left of the Yakushiji Trinity 96 
 
 From the Black Bronte Trinity at Yakushiji. 
 
 Yakushiji Black Bronze Trinity seen in Profile 98 
 
 The “ Kagenkei,” or Hanging Bronze Drum ioo 
 
 At the Shinto Temple of Kasuga, Nara. 
 
 A Mass of Broken Statues and Interesting Refuse ioo 
 
 Such as was found by Professor Fenollosa in the year 1880, at Shodaiji. 
 
 The Sangetsudo “Mace-thrower” at Todaiji 102 
 
 Large Clay Figure of a Bodhisattwa, sometimes called “Bonten” 102 
 
 Temple of Sangetsudo. 
 
 Seated Lacquer Figure 104 
 
 Now in the Tokio Fine Arts School. 
 
 Three Humorous Imps 106 
 
 At Kofukuji. 
 
 Panel from the Great Bronze Lantern in front of the Dai Butsu 
 
 Temple at Nara io 8 
 
 Painted Designs from Shosoin 
 
 1 10 
 
xxxvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 Designs Painted on Leather from Shosoin iio 
 
 Paintings on the Back of Musical Instruments called “Biwa” 112 
 
 Outline of the Building known as Shosoin II4 
 
 Mirror from Shosoin II4 
 
 Silver Ewer, showing a Design of a Winged Horse 114 
 
 At Horiuji. 
 
 Famous Painting of a Waterfall, said to be an Original 120 
 
 By Omakitsu ( Wans; Wei) . At the Temple of Chishakuin in Kioto. 
 
 Famous Kwannon 122 
 
 By Enriuhon (Yen Li-pen) . Air. Charles L. Freer. 
 
 Standing Kwannon 132 
 
 By Godoshi (Wu Tao-tzu). Collection of Mr. Charles L. Freer. 
 
 Godoshi “Shaka” 134 
 
 Mr. Charles L. Freer. 
 
 The Monju of Tofukuji 136 
 
 By Godoshi ( Wu Tao-Tiu) . 
 
 Rakan Holding Wand 142 
 
 By the priest Zengetsu Daishi (Kuan Chiu). At Kodaiji. 
 
 Portrait of a Priest 144 
 
 By Kobo Daishi. 
 
 Laughing Angel with Biwa (Detail) 146 
 
 By Kobo Daishi. 
 
 Early Chinese Buddhist Painting 148 
 
 Collection of Mr. Charles L. Freer. 
 
 Wooden Image of Fudo 150 
 
 By Kobo Daishi. 
 
 Waterfall 156 
 
 Kanawoka. 
 
 Painting in the Godoshi Style of Kanawoka, of One of the Shi Ten O, 
 
 formerly at Todaiji, Nara 158 
 
 Now in the Fenollosa - Weld Collection, Boston. 
 
 One of the Hell Series, “Emma’s Judgment” 160 
 
 By Hirotaka. Copied by Hi.rotaka, Sumiyoshi. 
 
 A Buddhist Trinity : Amida with attendant Bodhisattwa, Kwannon, 
 
 and Seishi 162 
 
 By Yeishin Sozu, 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxxvil 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 Sunrise Amida *^4 
 
 By Yeishin Sozu. 
 
 Temple of Biodoin 1 ^ 
 
 Battle of the Bulls j 74 
 
 By Toba Sojo. 
 
 Portrait of Yoritomo *7^ 
 
 By Takanobu. 
 
 The Castle of Kumamoto 180 
 
 Detail of the Hell Panorama 182 
 
 By Nobuzanl. 
 
 Detail from Kitano Tenjin Engi ( two prints) i8 4 
 
 By Nobuzanl, 
 
 Detail of Scene at Temple Steps l8( ^ 
 
 Nobuzane, 
 
 The Cock Fight 188 
 
 By Mitsunaga. 
 
 “A Surgical Operation” r 9° 
 
 From one of the rolls of the “ Nenchiu GiogiF By Mitsunaga 
 Fenollosa - Weld Collection, Boston. 
 
 Buddha Descending through Clouds i 9° 
 
 From the Taima Mandara, Keion. 
 
 “This fine Procession tapers off like a Cadence in Music” 192 
 
 From the Keion Roll. Fenollosa- Weld Collection , Boston. 
 
 “Flight Turning a Corner” j 94 
 
 From Keion s Panorama Roll of the Hogen Heiji War. 
 
 Fenollosa- Weld Collection, Boston. 
 
 Portrait Statue of Asangba t 9 8 
 
 At Kofukuji, Nara. 
 
 Portrait Statue of a Priest j 9 8 
 
 Nio J 9 8 
 
 By Wunkei. 
 
 Portrait Statue of Wunkei 19 8 
 
 Portrait Statue of Hojo — the Fifth of the Kamakura Guardians 19& 
 
 The Kasuga Lantern-bearer 
 
 By Kobun. Kasuga Temple, Nara. 
 
 202 - 
 
Chapter 1. 
 
 PRIMITIVE CHINESE ART. 
 
 Pacific Influence . — 3000 b.c. to 250 b.c. 
 
 N O national or racial art is quite an isolated phenomenon. It is 
 like a great river, the distant rills from which it derives its 
 waters being hidden. The origins of all civilizations are 
 swallowed up in mystery. We do not know the early migrations of 
 human beings upon this globe, nor can we even conjecture what causes, 
 operating in remote millenia, have divided them into such markedly 
 contrasted races. We can only penetrate a short distance backward 
 from the fringe of the known into the thick darkness of the unknown. 
 
 One added difficulty in such research is our proneness to adopt and 
 follow easy lines of classification. As if universals were anything more 
 than convenient names for prevalent tendencies ! Forces of upheaval 
 and change always precede the calm that lends itself to generalization ; 
 and it is these transition periods which give the lie to popularly accepted 
 history. 
 
 In the true scientific study of ancient Art this same obstacle of 
 accepted categories lies across our path. The very specialization of 
 archaeological study leads us to consider types as things hard and fixed. 
 Where Greek art merges off into something else, we do not like to 
 follow it. We boast of “pure Greek art” as if it were the outcome 
 of a law prescribed by heaven. We do not like to admit that the 
 generation which precedes — say Phidias or Michael Angelo — stores and 
 handles the supreme force which the new-comers, perhaps, waste. It is 
 a paradox, but true, that the culmination comes just before the cul- 
 mination ; just as it is true that the alien influence lies at the very core 
 of the national. 
 
 A very real addition to our resources in these difficult lines lies in 
 the “document” of Art itself. Epigraphy records facts about Art, but 
 only Art records Art. Thus, a careful following of the movements of 
 vol. 1. c* 
 
2 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 art forms, through even the most unpromising channels, often opens 
 up paths about which history is silent. Man is a very pungent, pene- 
 trating essence, which, in the course of a hundred thousand years or so, 
 has diffused itself into every geographical cranny, and, despite lack of 
 resources, has opened primitive lines of commerce throughout the globe, 
 British tin is used for the making of bronze by prehistoric races on 
 the Black Sea. Sea-shells from the Gulf of Mexico are ground into 
 the pottery of Minnesota savages. 
 
 All this is borne strongly upon the mind which takes up the subject 
 of a real history of East Asiatic art — not a curio-collector’s compendium, 
 mind you, but a tracing of unique lines of cause. “China is China,” 
 that is enough for the professed sinologue. To find evidence regarding 
 it outside of its own forbidding records, is what they cannot conceive. 
 How China became China is what they never ask. “ East is East and 
 West is West, and never the two shall meet,” so runs Kipling’s specious 
 dictum ; and American orators use it to-day to affect our treaty legisla- 
 tion. But the truth is that they have met, and they are meeting again 
 now ; and history is a thousand times richer for the contact. They have 
 contributed a great deal to each other, and must contribute still more ; 
 they interchange views from the basis of a common humanity ; and 
 humanity is thus enabled to perceive what is stupid in its insularity. 
 I say firmly, that in Art, as in civilization generally, the best in both 
 East and West is that which is common to the two, and eloquent 
 of universal social construction. Translate China into terms of man’s 
 experience, and it becomes only an extension of the Iliad. 
 
 There is an Odyssey , too, in Chinese art and life, an unwritten 
 Odyssey of the Pacific, where, for five thousand years or more, upon 
 those vast silent waters the carved canoes of maritime races have cut 
 lines of commerce from island to island, and from continent to continent. 
 The bulging broken contours of East Asia could not avoid the currents 
 of waters and of men, whose relics are strewn, like wreckage, half 
 around the globe, from the Fuegian coast of South America to the 
 Aleutian Archipelago, and from Khamskatcha southward to Tasmania. 
 
 It must always be considered, of course, in how far primitive men 
 evolved similar forms through the very poverty of their resources. This 
 must be specially true of methods : — materials to carve on, and metals, 
 stone or shell to carve with ; but not so clearly true of art forms. 
 That all men should conventionalize in adapting pattern to domestic 
 
PRIMITIVE CHINESE ART 
 
 3 
 
 industries is intelligible; but not that they should reach identical patterns, 
 and with the same aesthetic key to the spacing. Art, after all, in its 
 largest sense, lies in a peculiar, harmonious use of spacing, in which 
 value consists not in laws or classifications, but in uniqueness of effect. 
 We may allow much to concomitant evolution ; but not everything, 
 especially when lines of traffic are more or less obvious. 
 
 Taking a Mercator projection map of the world, with its centre in 
 the Eastern part of the Eastern hemisphere, bounded on the west by 
 Europe and Africa and (as Asiatic appendages) extended on the east 
 over Australasia and the Pacific Isles until the very western shores of 
 America are included, we can get a bird’s-eye view over about all 
 the geographical formations of human art. Only the Atlantic and 
 the eastern half of America is alien to the grouping, a sort of barren 
 region that would separate the outer edge of our map if it were wrapped 
 about a cylinder. Looking down now into the fertile regions of man’s 
 work, where continental pathways and Mediterranean proximity of shores 
 have invited access, we are enabled to make a large but sufficiently 
 accurate identification of the most active centres of art-dispersion within 
 this large field, which indeed we are ordinarily accustomed to conceive 
 as one. Making a very broad generalization, it may be said that these 
 centres have been two : — one belonging to the somewhat contracted 
 regions about the east end of the Mediterranean, where the continents of 
 
 Europe, Asia and Africa come to a common corner, as it were, and 
 
 where boundary stakes are necessary. The other belongs to some point 
 of the many less defined Mediterraneans enclosed by the large islands of 
 the western half of the Pacific Ocean. Whether it lie in the long strip 
 of sea which separates the semi-continent of Australia from New Zealand, 
 New Guinea and Borneo, or in the warm expanse that stretches between 
 Borneo, the Philippines, Cochin China and Formosa, or in the colder 
 
 currents that skirt North China, Corea, and Japan, or yet in the frozen 
 
 seas off the Amoor’s mouth, and bounded by Behring’s Strait and the 
 Aleutians, we cannot surely determine, but that in one of these it must 
 have originated seems by far the most rational hypothesis. Wherever 
 its origin, it had northern drives, and southern drives, and eastern 
 drives from island to island across the ocean, until it reached American 
 shores. The hypothesis here adopted, but for which there is no oppor- 
 tunity for me to present all the evidence, is of the existence of a 
 substantial unity of art forms, caused by actual dispersion and contact 
 
4 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 throughout the vast basin of the Pacific, and includes the arts of Peru, 
 Central America, Mexico and Alaska, as well as those of Hawaii, 
 Micronesia, Macronesia, and the early inhabitants of Formosa, China, 
 and Japan. I thus believe that there exists what we may fairly call 
 a “ Pacific School of Art,” and that it is quite sharply differentiated 
 from the schools of all other parts of the world, never penetrating far 
 to the west of a longitudinal line drawn from Central China to Borneo. 
 So much for the Eastern centre of dispersion. 
 
 To go back now to the Western centre, we seem justified in 
 speaking of it also, in a sense, as one, since the mutual influences of 
 its adjacent parts have so clearly acted and interacted as to make a 
 sharper pointing unintelligible. The three main areas of this centre 
 are the Mesopotamian plain, the Northern Nile Valley, and the Greek 
 Mediterranean ; the influences between which, throughout long periods 
 of time, have been mutual and multiple. We see their interaction 
 specially formulated in Cyprian art. Alexander’s conquest, 300 years b.c., 
 almost merged them into a common sea of forms. 
 
 If it be objected to this theory of world distribution that it leaves 
 India out of account, the answer is that Indian Art, in all of its high 
 reaches, at least, is dependent upon Mesopotamian : first Babylonian, 
 
 then Persian, then Greek, Greco-Baktrian, and Greek again. Whatever 
 native motives may have filtered into India’s prehistoric industries are 
 only like tiny rills flowing to feed the main Western current. 
 
 Such feeding rills are to be traced, too, over the outskirts of 
 established European and African arts. Greek art did not stand alone, 
 but leaned upon early barbarous motives that flowed down from the 
 Tartaric centre of its continent, possibly from Scandinavia also, the lake- 
 dwellers, and even the remote cave -carvers on bones of the hairy 
 mastodon. So Egyptian Art must have received ancient infusions of 
 motive from the same far African sources that yield us to-day the 
 spirited drawings of the Bushmen and Berin bronzes. The Eastern 
 Mediterranean was thus a primitive centre of confluence long before its 
 creative efforts had made it also a centre of dispersion. All later 
 European art grows up, by cuttings as it were, from this concentred 
 stem ; and so also the beginnings of creation in modern America draw 
 from the same life. 
 
 The special value to us of this theory of two centres lies in the 
 striking fact that Chinese art is the only large form of world art 
 
PRIMITIVE CHINESE ART 
 
 5 
 
 that has combined in itself creative impulses from both. The key to 
 early Chinese art is as follows : — its earliest motives were influenced 
 by Pacific art, and these were later overlaid by forms of the 
 Greco-Persian. Of course this is quite consistent with the fact that 
 Chinese art, like all great schools, still later must have experienced 
 
 ferments and achieved powerful reaches of advance from causes 
 operating within. 
 
 I have prepared for use throughout this book a chart, graphic and 
 chronological, of Chinese Art as a whole for five thousand years, 
 showing its ups and downs, its periods of creative vitality, its central 
 supreme culmination, and its slow final fall. This is probably one of 
 the first comprehensive views that has ever been given of Chinese 
 
 culture as a growing and a vulnerable essence, — as contrasted with our 
 ordinary false conception of its dead-level uniformity. We shall see in 
 these pages how Chinese art came to make and unmake itself. 
 
 Looking carefully at the chart it will be seen that the art takes 
 
 its obscure rise somewhere in the earlier part of the third millennium 
 before Christ, rises to its first faint wave of force with the Shang 
 Dynasty about 1800 b.c. ; to its second with the Chow Dynasty 
 about 1100 b.c. ; to its third and stronger creative effort with the 
 
 Han Dynasty in the second century before Christ ; then, after an 
 
 interval ascends slowly and firmly to its highest apex under the Tang 
 Dynasty in the eighth century, and again to a second hardly lesser 
 
 culmination under the Sung Dynasty in the eleventh and twelfth 
 
 centuries ; at last to fall from that point slowly and doggedly, and 
 almost without break, to its present low level of weakness and 
 degeneration. Such is the amazing outline — like a great ground-swell 
 of human power, almost as slow-moving and irresistible as the storm- 
 waves in the earth’s crust that have lifted and depressed continents. 
 It will be noted how late in time the culminations appear, contem- 
 porary, in fact, with the efforts of Charlemagne to re-collect the shattered 
 forces of Rome. 
 
 The smaller line traced above the main one is the similar graphic 
 curve of Japanese art reckoned upon the same time-scale, but on a 
 smaller scale of elevation. This Japanese art, while it also appears 
 late in time, is evidently not centred into a single overmastering 
 wave, like the Chinese, but appears dispersed into five successive and 
 distinct ones, of almost equal creative vitality. The relations between 
 
6 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 these and the corresponding periods of Chinese work form the very 
 ground-plan of this present effort to write their common history. The 
 chart should be referred to at every phase of the unfolding story. 
 
 Turning now to a special map of the Pacific Ocean, with its 
 island chains like stepping stones in half a hundred directions, let us 
 trace briefly a few of the salient features of Pacific design, and show 
 how closely they seem to be imitated by the earliest Chinese art. 
 
 The history of Pacific life and art in remote times is not directly 
 known to us, on account of the perishable nature of the materials 
 used ; but it is a fair presupposition that the primitive forms used 
 to-day by these simple Polynesian races do not greatly differ from 
 their lost predecessors. Most of these Pacific arts are fixed and 
 traditional. But it is of the utmost importance to find that the very 
 oldest forms of Chinese design, preserved to us in bronze, are in the 
 majority of cases nearly identical with the bulk of the island 
 decorations. Now here we have a fairly definite date to which we 
 can carry back the use of Pacific forms upon this globe, namely the 
 beginnings of Chinese history, somewhere between 3000 and 2000 b.c., 
 probably nearer the former ; and while one cannot say that the Chinese 
 species give us the oldest and most original forms of this genus, we 
 can safely conclude that we have a clear term of five thousand years 
 at least in which to account for the slow dispersion of such forms 
 from one or more centres throughout the Pacific half of the globe. 
 Between New Zealand and Hawaii curves a long stretch of sea ; yet 
 at a remote time its dangers were mastered by some dusky Ulysses in 
 Greek-shaped helmet of cocoanut, who has left the kinship of his 
 language to add to the proof of racial descent. Of course, I am far from 
 claiming that blood descent has always or generally accompanied the 
 enormously wide transmission of art forms. I am not required to 
 prove that the peoples of Peru, Alaska, China, and New Guinea were 
 genetically related. It is enough for my purpose to assert that, at least, 
 they communicated, and left behind the evidence of borrowed arts. 
 
 So again we can trace but clumsily a few of the probable lines 
 of this communication. Whether the South American forms, for 
 instance, passed over our continued island stepping stones from west 
 to east across the South Pacific, or whether they worked down the 
 coast from North America, we shall not here attempt to determine. 
 Yet, surely between our North Western Indians, say of Vancouver and 
 
Ancient Chinese Bronze showing Slanting Eyes 
 
PRIMITIVE CHINESE ART 
 
 7 
 
 Alaska on the one hand, and the Amoor or Ainu races on the other, 
 there must have been much community of blood. That the Eastern 
 branches of the Malay race derived designs from the Polynesian, does 
 not of course prove miscegenation ; but it is clear that there is some 
 degree of consanguinity between the Philippines and the Japanese. How 
 much weight should be given to tales of Chinese migration — voluntary 
 or involuntary — to American shores, is still obscure ; but it is practically 
 certain that the movement of all these forms was, in general, eastward ; 
 little or no return influence from America being traceable in Western 
 Pacific forms. 
 
 It would be interesting also to conjecture how and where the 
 Chinese first entered into the charmed circle ; whether, indeed, in 
 their sheltered abutments upon the Yellow Sea they may not even 
 have originated the movements, which then spread southward as well 
 as eastward. For other reasons it may seem more probable that the 
 ancient centre lay in the south, possibly in lands now submerged, and 
 that the general trends of dispersion lay north and north-east, move- 
 ments in which the more materially advanced Chinese races eventually 
 shared. But all such difficult problems must be left to the anthro- 
 pologist ; and his decision may depend upon the study of winds and 
 ocean currents. And, since I am not writing a history of Pacific art, 
 it is not necessary for me to force any conclusions. 
 
 Leaving behind us all such fascinating, if fruitless speculations, let 
 us identify some of the common features of Pacific art. Prominent 
 
 everywhere we find the suggestion of faces more or less human, with 
 two staring eyes and eye-balls in the centre. Upon the lintels and 
 rafter ends of New Zealand huts, and upon the totem poles at their 
 entrance, for all the world like those in the far-away regions of Alaska, 
 we find these faces carved ; and it is a striking feature that almost 
 universally we find these staring eyes slanted at a decided angle, similar 
 to but much more pronounced than the natural eye-slant of Mongolian 
 races. Where upon handles of utensils, or in full relief statues, these 
 faces form logical parts of heads, we can see that many of the pattern 
 marks represent tattooing. Passing farther north we find that this 
 general Macronesian feature is dominant in the art of New Guinea, 
 which in some respects shows more advanced and more Chinese 
 
 aesthetic forms. The bands of design that play about the features 
 
 interlock closely in finely spaced planes of relief, something like the 
 
8 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 knotting of early Celtic art. The specimens of similar tattooed heads 
 that have come from the Philippines, show eyes of less angle, perhaps, 
 but with a more consciously demoniac expression, as if the spirit 
 represented lent evil force to the use of the dagger whose handle it 
 decorates. This eye form, too, appears modelled upon the sides of 
 Aztec pottery, and sometimes with lines of bosses that suggest deriv- 
 ation from tattooing. This pair of eyes is the most conspicuous feature 
 of Alaskan art, worked as patterns on blankets, and carved or painted 
 on the prows of boats, as we still can see in China of to-day. 
 Everywhere, probably, these eyes denote “spirit,” or an animistic 
 symbol of vital use in summoning specific supernatural aid. Demonic 
 force plays below the surface of almost every domestic function. 
 
 Now it is a most striking fact that a practically identical use of the 
 face forms, the slanting almond eyes in pairs, the relics of marks of 
 tattooing, and the bosses, appear as the most salient features upon the 
 majority of ancient Chinese bronzes. It seems never to occur to the 
 professed Sinologue that the presence of these various forms may be 
 related to similar appearances in the art of the island peoples. He has 
 found in old Chinese tradition that this face, seen so often on Chinese 
 bronze, is only the “ T’ao tieh ogre,” who is a glutton with a canni- 
 balistic appetite. Given a name, the phenomenon is familiarized to him, 
 and filed away in a mental pigeon-hole. But this very tradition, prob- 
 ably one out of many from forgotten remote ages of Pacific relationship, 
 only confirms the theory of connection. These very bronzes were used 
 probably for the cooking and serving of food and drink in the most 
 ancient forms of ceremonies for the dead — the origins of “ Ancestor 
 Worship ” ; and what is more natural than that the face, or pair of 
 eyes — the symbol of the active domestic spirit — should appear full of 
 desire to eat and drink ? Here, we may well conjecture, is the very 
 spirit and source of altar-food conception. 
 
 It is true that in the very scanty records we cannot find any 
 evidence among the earliest Chinese of Pacific connections. Indeed, no 
 one knows where the race came from. A Western origin, from the 
 direction of the Caspian, has been vaguely and vainly conjectured. All 
 we know is that the earliest Chinese lived in the North, and near the 
 sea — about the lower reaches of the Hoangho — occupying a very 
 limited area. It is impossible here to enter upon any adequate account 
 of Chinese history. There are Chinese myths of heroic ancestors and 
 
PRIMITIVE CHINESE ART 
 
 9 
 
 leaders who taught the elements of industry and of agriculture. When 
 we catch our first glimpse of the Chinese under their patriarchal 
 Emperors (from b.c. 2852 to 2204) they were settled along the 
 Hoangho, with a capital probably near Kaifonfu, somewhat inward from 
 the sea, and were working out the details of material civilization. 
 One of these early founders, Huwangti, is clearly recorded to be a 
 foreigner — leader of a cognate tribe, perhaps irrupting from some 
 remote region, and bringing with him higher arts and a more com- 
 
 plete organization. This, too, is the time of the invention of written 
 characters, which superseded the making of records with knotted cords. 
 It is quite possible that the most primitive of the bronzes go back 
 
 to this day. 
 
 The early Chinese believed in spirits — spirits of the dead, of 
 nature, and, above nature, of heaven. There was a ruler in heaven, 
 like a tribal leader on earth. The people acted primitive dances, 
 and made offerings to these beings, some of whose faces we probably 
 see upon primitive utensils. The forms of these earliest bronzes are 
 
 rude and heavy : the patterns are set upon them with only partial 
 
 aesthetic effect, the bare symbolism remaining of primary importance. 
 In this the art differs from advanced Polynesian modes and the best 
 of the Aztec, where the aim is more polished and the effect charm- 
 ing, like the next stage of Chinese work. 
 
 The former accounts of the first Emperor of the so-called Hai 
 Dynasty follow — b.c. 2205 to 1707 — the great Yu, who first made 
 the Emperorship hereditary. We do not realise how democratic 
 Chinese institutions originally were ; like free tribal organization every- 
 where, and the self-governing village commune. Yu, with his pre- 
 decessors Yan and Shun, have been taken by later philosophers as 
 idyllic leaders in an age of golden peace, and set up as ideals to be 
 followed. This was done especially by Confucius, nearly two thousand 
 years later. At least moral order was already aimed at — the self- 
 governing of the earnest individual. For the material welfare of the 
 land they fought with their primitive engineering methods against the 
 unruly forces of the Hoangho, and they glorified agriculture. There 
 is no clear record of the use of human figures in the art of this 
 period. Primitive, unglazed pottery was almost surely known. China 
 was not yet China, only a peaceful and prosperous, order-loving 
 tribe, quite unconscious of its great destiny. Fishing and hunting 
 VOL. I. D 
 
io EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 alternated with agricultural pursuits, and whatever maritime tribes lay 
 near the coast, the Chinese must have touched. Our only art records 
 are their rarely dug-up bronze utensils. 
 
 Another Pacific feature in the decoration of these bronzes is the 
 fish, or marine, monster, the ancestor of the Chinese dragon, which 
 is identical with forms found from South Pacific Islands to North- 
 Eastern America. This sea-creature has a head unlike a fish, with 
 curved snout, opened nostrils, sometimes with tusks, and a curving tail 
 also unlike a fish. Yet it is often found in connection with forms that 
 are clearly fish-like. It occurs in New Zealand and Micronesian art, 
 carved on the handles of utensils, gourd bottles, and woven into stuffs ; 
 and it reappears in almost identical form in Alaskan patterns. Its 
 shape, identical on the early Chinese bronzes, is probably their dragon ; 
 only we see here that a “ dragon ” means no lizard monster of 
 Western tradition, but a semi-fish-like or possibly seal form — evidently 
 a spirit symbol connected with water. This figure is carved or 
 moulded on all parts of the oldest Chinese vase. In later forms 
 appear the tusks, which are more like those of the Aztec stone 
 dragon. 
 
 Another widespread Pacific form, akin to the pair of eyes, is the 
 mask, detachable, and to be worn by men or priests in impersonating 
 the spirits during ritual. Here we refer to a universal practice 
 recorded for us in the Roman word persona , or mask. But the Poly- 
 nesian and Malay masks have the slanting eyes, the tattooed faces 
 and the ogre-like features of the totem poles ; and in addition possess 
 strange, elongated noses, which sometimes take on the form of a 
 beak. In New Guinea, Borneo, and the Philippines we find these 
 masks, sometimes representing murderous spirits, in the Philippines 
 especially, with enormous noses. Now, although we have no primitive 
 Chinese masks preserved, we do find among the earliest Japanese 
 masks, used in the Shinto sacred dances, identical, though more 
 beautifully-carved forms, with the long nose, the bird-like beak, and 
 the slanting eyes. In Alaskan Ritual art these figures become 
 accentuated in the enormously projecting beak of the bird mask. 
 Among Aztec and Hawaian masks we find sockets, in which movable 
 pieces, such as the jaw or the eyelid, were set, just as in some of 
 the Japanese Shinto dragon-spirit masks. This dragon-world under- 
 neath the sea is part of Primitive Chinese myth. 
 
Long-nosed Wooden Mask 
 from the Philippines. 
 
 Ancient Shinto Mask with 
 long Nose. 
 
 Clay Chafing Dishes from Shell Mounds. 
 
I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PRIMITIVE CHINESE ART 
 
 1 1 
 
 Still another more special form of parallelism in ornament is the 
 frigate-bird pattern, so conspicuous in the finest aesthetic carving of 
 New Guinea. There, through centuries, it has become conven- 
 tionalised into lovely spiral bands, which we find identically repro- 
 duced on some of the ancient Chinese bronzes. 
 
 It is here worth while to speak of the help we derive from the 
 work of Chinese archaeologists. Cultivated mandarins of the Han, 
 Tang, and Sung dynasties have been great collectors of antiques, 
 and have written and published illustrated accounts of the pieces 
 which they had before them. Doubtless they had evidences of 
 relative age hardly accessible to us ; yet we can see that their 
 critical judgments were largely based upon the literary characters 
 which were even then frequently inscribed, or raised in relief, upon 
 the base of such bronze utensils. These collectors had access to 
 thousands of pieces, where we can see but a few tens at most ; and 
 the printed reproductions in early editions, of which the Ming are 
 now the oldest accessible, cut from wooden blocks, are marvels of 
 careful execution and beautiful printing. I shall hereafter use several 
 of the reproductions from the Hakkodzu (30 volumes), written by 
 Oho, of the Sung Dynasty, and Kdkodzti (10 volumes), edited by 
 Rotaibo, of Sung. Yet it does not follow that we must accept all 
 the dicta of these books without further criticism, as some of the 
 Sinologues are inclined to do. On the whole, however, we shall find 
 a great deal of consistency in their massing of patterns according to 
 dates. Only a few plates in the Hakkodzu and other books are 
 ascribed to so ancient a time as the periods of Hia and the pre- 
 ceding first Emperors. 
 
 The second such sub-period of the first great Pacific period in 
 Chinese art comes in with the Shang Dynasty ( b . c . 1766 — 1122). 
 
 Little historic record is left of this period, but if we judge from the 
 study of original bronzes of the type ascribed in the Chinese book to 
 Shang, we can believe it to be an age of greater polish and more 
 advanced art. The shapes of the bronze vessels have now become 
 specially plastic and beautiful ; severe and strong in design, with 
 simple, firm outline, and of a dignity and variety which make even 
 Greek vases look somewhat thin. Much of that tradition of fine form, 
 which led to repetition after repetition through all the Chinese and 
 Japanese after periods — from which more or less accurate copies we 
 
i2 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 derive our popular notions of Chinese beauty in bronze — comes down 
 through the ages from this remote time. 
 
 Not only are the forms among the grandest that human art has 
 left us, but the execution is worthy of the design. The handling of 
 the hard substance has become an exquisite art, the design is in lower 
 relief, and the surface has a wonderful satin finish, which in existing 
 originals seems now inlaid with drops and bars of green, blue and 
 crimson jewels, a slow chemical incrustation from the alloyed metals. 
 
 The patterns, often of much intricacy and grace, are still clearly 
 Pacific, but of a symbolism now frankly cut away from its roots, and 
 persisting chiefly for its decorative opportunities. The face pattern is 
 now smaller, used chiefly for handles and points of accent ; the dragon 
 forms have become conventionalized into richer and more bulky curves, 
 and the whole design tends to an interlacing of flat bands, sometimes with 
 straight lines as a basis, but always with some strong, high-tension curves. 
 
 As might be expected, this aesthetically modified Pacific pattern is 
 made to play with great nobility into the severe shapes of the vessels 
 it decorates. This is the golden age of primitive Chinese spacing ; 
 the ornament not over-elaborate or too accented, and often leaving 
 large cool surfaces of unbroken bronze between the bands. 
 
 Another important point to notice is that some of these bronze 
 
 vases seem clearly to point to clay types that must have preceded 
 them. Not only are the metal shapes plastic to the last degree, but 
 they exhibit at times trie very air-holes for draught in cooking which we 
 
 find is characteristic of primitive unglazed pottery vessels in Japan 
 
 and China. 
 
 The consideration of this rude pottery is now upon us. There 
 seems reason to believe that its home in China is rather towards the 
 south, which was as yet unconquered by the tall black-haired Chinese 
 on the north, but with whom, doubtless, there was early trade. The 
 aborigines of what is now Central and Southern China belonged 
 
 largely to races far different : Shan tribes related to Burmese, and 
 diminutive Miao-tse (who still live apart among the hills) more allied 
 to the primitive Japanese. 
 
 In the shell-mounds of Japan 2re found large quantities of vessels 
 of a bluish unglazed clay, tall in form with a long hollow stem, 
 above which rises a bulging central receptacle. Often a cluster of 
 smaller covered vessels are built into the piece, suggesting the common 
 
Frigate Bird Designs from New Guinea. 
 
 Wand, or Double Fan, used by 
 Natives in Dancing. 
 
 Canoe Ornament. 
 
 Carved Handle of Lime Spatula. 
 
 British Museum. 
 
 Alaskan Blanket, with Eyes. 
 
PRIMITIVE CHINESE ART 
 
 l 3 
 
 cooking and eating of the domestic meal. Slashes and holes near the 
 bottom and top of the hollow stem suggest that the latter must have 
 been filled with some kind of fuel, for the draught and smoke-escape of 
 which these orifices gave vent. The vessel was thus an oven, a boiler, 
 and a whole dinner service in one. 
 
 As I have already indicated, some of the finest Shang bronzes 
 seem to be built on this model ; the splendid bowl on a short stem, 
 owned by Mr. Freer, appearing to be a veritable “chafing-dish,” with 
 two large handles precisely like those of the present day. Here the 
 forms of the smoke-orifices are made to work beautifully into the 
 trend of the ornamental design. 
 
 Another feature of the prehistoric Japanese pottery, and probably of 
 the Chinese also, was the distribution upon parts of the surface, some- 
 times crawling up the stem, sometimes set upon the large central globe, 
 of rudely but strongly modelled clay effigies of animals and birds ; 
 often turtles, frogs and lizards ; but sometimes, also, horned cattle, 
 dogs, and horses. Whether the significance of these forms was to 
 suggest the origin of the flesh substances in the cooking ingredients, 
 or whether it may have had some totem or other symbolical significance, 
 it is hard to say. But it here appears that a Southern and Eastern 
 school of naturalistic sculpture in clay was arising at some early age, 
 and that it had no relation at all to Pacific design. That this animal 
 school led to later bronze work that can be identified as Han, we shall 
 see in Chapter III. Whether any Shang work of this type in either 
 bronze or clay now remains can only be determined after much close 
 comparison has been made of the scanty fragments. But the evident 
 relation of some Shang bronzes to the type of clay vessel that bears 
 these animals suggest that such may have existed. We think then that 
 we detect in Shang the first traces of a Southern realistic art working 
 slowly up against the Northern Pacific patterns. 
 
 It will be interesting, before leaving the meagre relics of Shang, 
 to compare the patterns with other well-known Pacific forms. It is 
 not now with the ruder of these that analogy is clear, as is the case 
 with the earlier Hia bronzes. It is rather with the more polished and 
 assthetically complex forms of New Guinea, New Zealand and Aztec art 
 that the parallelism now holds. For example, the triangular interlacing 
 of the bands upon Mr. Freer’s Shang bronze is almost identical with 
 motives carved in stone upon the facades of Mexican temples. 
 
i 4 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 The third sub-species of Chinese primitive art is that of the Chow 
 dynasty, which followed the Shang (b.c. 1122-1249). With the Chow 
 founder, the great Wen Wang, we are already upon pretty firm 
 historic ground. This acute personage, whose name means “ King of 
 Literature,” was the first great Chinese author and philosopher. It 
 was he who composed in prison the original core of the Y-king, or 
 Book of Changes, which Confucius much later elaborated. In this 
 work the symbolism of “ dragon ” categories is so bound up with 
 imperial acts as to be the origin of all that is still implied in the 
 terms “dragon-throne,” “dragon-face,” “dragon banner.” In a sense 
 the dragon is the type of a man, self-controlled, and with powers that 
 verge upon the supernatural. Wen Wang’s life, too, is the starting- 
 point for Chinese poetry, the Book of Odes, mostly Chow productions, 
 which Confucius collected, and some of which are supposed to eulo- 
 gise the deeds of early Chow monarchs and of virtuous members of 
 their families. 
 
 The only art which, to my present knowledge, remains from this 
 age is still the bronzes. Judging from the many Chinese drawings 
 and the few originals, the pattern of these is still remotely Pacific, but 
 much modified, and interspersed with realistic designs. Moreover, the 
 shapes of the vessels themselves are either of bird or animal forms, or 
 else over-elaborate and too consciously aesthetic. The pattern is apt 
 to be overloaded and grotesque in its disposition. In short, the Chow 
 seems to be an age of aesthetic decay, as, soon after the earlier reigns, 
 it became the seat of political decay. The strong empire of the “ King 
 of War,” son of the “ King of Literature,” was broken by the seventh 
 century into a ring of semi-independent feudal states. It was the 
 special mission of Confucius,* librarian to the Duke of one of the 
 smaller states, to bemoan the weak politics and morals of his day, and 
 to suggest a strong reconstructive system, based upon the idyllic 
 life of the patriarchs who had preceded Hia, and upon the virtues 
 and philosophy of Wen Wang himself. This Confucian philosophy, 
 which advocated a thorough-going Socialism curbing the individual to 
 act for common ends, though much discussed in later Chow, did not 
 become the basis of administration in China until the next great age, 
 the Han. 
 
 * Confucius, called generally in Japan “ Koshi,” in modern Mandarin pronunciation 
 “ K’ung-tzu,” born 550 or 551 b.c., died 478 b.c. 
 
Three-legged Chinese Old Chinese Bronze. 
 
 Bronze. 
 
 Chinese Bronze with 
 Long-Necked Bird. 
 
 Primitive forms of the Fish or Marine 
 Monster, the ancestor of the 
 Chinese Dragon. 
 
PRIMITIVE CHINESE ART 
 
 15 
 
 Nearly contemporary with Confucius appeared another great sage, 
 this time from the just awakening and half included South (the Yangtse 
 valley), Laotse, who advocated as thorough-going an Individualism as 
 Confucius did Socialism. The absolute freedom of the Ego is the first 
 principle of Laotse* and from this he would develop a more internal 
 morality than can be mechanically deduced from utilitarian ends. Thus 
 we have set here, clearly opposed in Chinese life, the two main types 
 of man which have created the dramatic unity of Chinese history, by 
 the growing complications of their warring. Which at first appealed 
 with the more force to art it is difficult to decide. Confucius’s thought 
 of a social harmony which should literally reproduce the structure of 
 music is sublime and fertile. “Keep your mind pure and free through 
 Art,” he writes. Also he advocated the setting up of painted or carved 
 portraits of great men to stimulate a popular ambition ; but whether 
 there ever were such paintings and sculptures in Chow we do not, at 
 present, know. 
 
 On the other hand, Laotse’s very South, the land of freedom and 
 natural beauty, was already celebrated for its plastic arts, and has always 
 possessed “ temperament.” It is pretty clear that this Taoist individ- 
 ualism was one of the greatest forces that rendered a later high Chinese 
 art possible at all. And even at the end of the Chow dynasty, we 
 have in parts of Kutsugen’s great Southern poem, “ Riso,” or the 
 “ Lamentations,” elaborated description of a splendid, ancient, non- 
 Chinese shrine in the far South, covered with symbolic paintings of 
 forgotten gods. Kutsugen’s was the first great outburst of poetry, 
 and strongly Taoist, after the Chinese Odes, which are Confucian. It 
 is the first great demonstration, too, of Chinese literary imagination ; 
 but we can only conjecture what new beginnings of visual art may 
 possibly have accompanied it. 
 
 There is one striking record in the middle of Chow of a first tentative 
 exploring by the Chinese of land lying to the west of their empire. About 
 600 B.c. the adventurous emperor Wa Tei, with a large retinue, is said 
 to have penetrated as far as the Kunlung Mountains which divide Thibet 
 from Kotan, and there to have met a kind of magical central Asian 
 “Queen of Sheba,” the “Mother-Queen of the West,” who entertained 
 him in magnificent state. Whatever the measure of truth in the story, the 
 
 * Laotse, called in Japan “Roshi;”in Mandarin pronunciation “ Lao-tzu,” flourished 
 from 580 to 530 b.c. 
 
1 6 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 marvels of a new life and work there seen, expanded into later myths and 
 legends — much as early Greek geographical accounts of outlying nations 
 are like truth seen through a romantic mist — so powerfully affected Chinese 
 imagination that the far western site became identified in later Laoistic 
 worship with the Taoist heaven. Probably some new elements in visual 
 design arose from this contact, which it is difficult now to identify. 
 
 The end of Pacific art and of the weakened Chow dynasty came together 
 with the advent of the Shin tyrant — who overthrew the alliance of the 
 feudal states, and subjugated them into the first colossal Empire that 
 included what is now the whole north and centre of China proper. He 
 brought the past consciously to an end, because he wished to rebuild with 
 clean stones ; thus causing the burning of all past books, especially those 
 which dealt with the endless disputations of the Confucian and Taoist 
 philosophers. If there were any philosophy at all in this brief meteoric 
 career, it was a sort of Nietscheism backing raw freedom and force against 
 formalism. Another of his colossal works, less futile, was the building of 
 the great wall for 1,000 miles across the north, to shut out the predatory 
 hordes of barbaric Huns, ancestors of Attila’s scourges, which already had 
 begun to threaten China with Tartar invasion. 
 
 Probably no new forms of Art could have been introduced during the 
 short reigns of this strenuous man or his son, as he left his subjects 
 little time for the luxury of aestheticism. His is an age of transition, a 
 needed stepping-stone from feudality to Empire, but leaving all real social 
 reconstruction therein to the genius of the Han Dynasty which soon 
 succeeded him. (202 b . c .) Here an entirely new set of forces make 
 their entrance into Chinese life, and particularly into Chinese art, which 
 now takes on new forms, so unrelated to the Pacific that we must devote 
 to them a special chapter. 
 
Chapter II. 
 
 CHINESE ART OF THE HAN DYNASTY. 
 
 Mesopotamian Influence — 202 b.c. to 221 a.d. 
 
 T HE rapidly expanding influence of China upon surrounding peoples 
 must have reached our Western world of the Mediterranean 
 precisely at this dramatic moment ; for though the violent Tsin 
 dynasty lasted only forty years, it contributed its name Sin, or Chin ; 
 and Sines, Sinico, and so the final form “ China,” to the earliest accounts 
 of it written by the Greek geographers of the Ptolemaic school. A little 
 later, the second century b.c., China became known to the Greco- Roman 
 world under an entirely different epithet, the Ser, or Seres, a people far to 
 the north-east, from whom was brought by caravan route the precious 
 fabric known by the Greek-formed adjective Serika or Serik, whence our 
 word silk. The strange fact is that the scholarship of Europe conceived 
 these two peoples to be entirely distinct, an error which was not finally 
 corrected until the explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth 
 century. What is significant for us in this is that the difference of names 
 corresponds to a difference of the routes by which Western travel moved — 
 the Sin fame and exports coming by sea around through the Indian Ocean to 
 Arabia at least ; the Ser products being carried overland on the backs of 
 camels. This difference and its long persistence in the Occidental imagina- 
 tion really correspond to an important and even a racial difference between 
 the North of China and the South. The North, the Seres, were the 
 descendants of the ancient black-haired race in its original bleak seats ; 
 the South, the Sines, were only just becoming known to the Chinese, 
 being loosely incorporated with their empire under Tsin, more firmly 
 under Han. By South, however, we mean also what is now the centre, 
 the Yangtse valley, and the whole eastern projection of Chinkiang, the 
 famous province of Wu (Go). It was from the ports of this new 
 province — in the neighbourhood of the present Amoy or Hangchow — that 
 the first maritime trade was opened to the South and West, though later 
 the still more southern ports in the Canton region came to rival them. 
 
1 8 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 But our concern here is still more strikingly with the fact that while 
 the short-lived Tsin gave its name to the Southern and maritime 
 Chinese, the whole overland line of trade between China and the Greco- 
 Roman Empire — which lasted down to the conquest of the Turks — was 
 opened for the first time by the Tsin’s great rival and successor, the Han 
 Dynasty. It is peculiarly the Han, in its sudden wonderful expansion 
 Westward, that represented the Seres proper, the men who made that 
 mysterious substance, silk. 
 
 The Han Dynasty came in with great eclat , and the refinements of 
 ripe military power, in a violent national reaction against the excesses 
 of Shin. The responsibilities of extended Empire were now for the 
 first time understood, for the small areas and the patriarchal 
 supremacy of tribal heads in earlier days, from Hia to Chow, should 
 
 hardly be dignified with that name. It was now that the first great 
 
 historic wave of Chinese culture surged up into a shining spray of 
 forms. There was, first, the intense and widespread literary criticism, 
 
 which reconstructed the texts of the ancient books destroyed by the 
 
 Shin tyrant ; much as the scholars of Florence, sixteen centuries later, 
 re-pieced the scattered fragments of Classic culture. Here comes in the 
 first critical study of the language itself, its grammar, its etymology, its 
 epigraphy, works of which some of the most important still remain. 
 
 This recovery of the works of the great Chow philosophers, 
 Confucius and Laotse, and of their followers who had warred 
 for eight ineffectual generations, led to new conscious attempts at 
 administrative organisation, based upon broad social principles, the 
 digests of which the new Han rulers had ready to hand. Speaking 
 briefly of this long, fertile period of a hundred years, we can say 
 that at the beginning of Han the Taoist, or Individualist, party 
 achieved a partial triumph, which was followed by the first definitive 
 formulation of Confucianism as an Imperialist constitution at an era 
 considerably ante-dating the birth of Christ. That society should be 
 organized as a great, obedient family, with multiform duties but no 
 personal rights — a sort of ethik-archy or government by Socialistic 
 morality — was the beginning ot characteristic Chinese form as we 
 know it ; a form, however, in which the most striking institutions, such 
 as the civil service examinations, were yet far from initiation. 
 
 The philosophy was rather a convenient engine for the Han rulers 
 to wield in defence of their dynastic power than a ripe expression of 
 
CHINESE ART OF THE HAN DYNASTY 19 
 
 thought and life in the Chinese people themselves. Here then, too, 
 in Han, the first great national histories were compiled and written, 
 trying to throw into an intelligible whole the fragments of tradition 
 that had filtered down through many motley centuries. 
 
 The poetry of Han, however, a noble mass of work, remained 
 largely Taoist or Individualistic, enforcing the prime fact which all 
 later Chinese critics, and their European Sinologist pupils, have 
 ignored, that almost all the great imaginative art work of the Chinese 
 mind has sprung from those elements in Chinese genius, which, if not 
 anti, were at least non-Confucian. This poetry is almost always in the 
 Southern romantic style of Kutsugen in his Riso, as opposed to the 
 primitive short-lined moralising Chow balladry of Confucius ’ compilation. 
 
 The causes which soon led to the expansion of Han influences 
 towards the West were twofold ; first, military, the outcome of success- 
 ful campaigns against the various Tartar tribes on the north and 
 north-west, and the coming into more intimate treaty relations with 
 these hordes of Scythians and Huns ; and second, philosophical and 
 romantic interest in the Taoist stories of the West, stories which had 
 descended in a halo of myth from the visit of a Chow Emperor to 
 the “ Queen-Mother of the West,” four centuries earlier. It was 
 especially the monarch Wutei (Butei), the sixth of Han, who ascended 
 the throne 140 b.c., to rule for fifty-four years, and whose long 
 reign may be called the golden age of this dynasty, whose military 
 prowess and restless Taoist imagination led him to inaugurate the 
 Turkestan campaigns. He summoned about him the Individualistic 
 genius of his day, professed to believe in and share the Taoist 
 mystical powers, and determined to re-visit the Queen of his Taoist 
 paradise. The first overtures were peaceful, Wutei sending an envoy 
 ostensibly to discover the line of migration to the far West of one of 
 his dependent Scythian tribes, the so-called White Huns. The envoy 
 traced them, after years of detention and difficulty, to the far highlands 
 of Baktria, where he came into contact with the Persians and the 
 Greeks, and whence he brought strange treasures of Western manufacture, 
 the knowledge of grape culture, and a fine breed of Turkestan 
 horses. Other messengers from Wutei, followed by armies — missions 
 that were renewed at times throughout the breadth of the Han 
 centuries — not only carried Chinese civilization and arms past the 
 Kunglung mountains to the very Pamir plateaus, but opened intercourse 
 
20 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 with the Mesopotamian plain, penetrating as far as the Persian 
 Gulf, from which one Chinese general later prepared to embark on a 
 Red Sea voyage to Alexandria. And thus it was that a permanent 
 caravan trade across vast deserts and the roof of the world was estab- 
 lished between China and Rome a hundred years before the Christian 
 era. The enormous mass of silken stuffs which the wealthy Romans 
 used for clothing all came from the far-away looms of Han, in return 
 for which the Chinese imported glass and enamels, steel, pottery, 
 elephants and horses. This was the first great line of world trade 
 over the central regions of our globe. 
 
 That an enormous impression should have been made by this new 
 intercourse upon the industries and arts of China, is natural enough. 
 The Han people might well discard much of the worn-out Pacific 
 motives, of whose origin they retained no real knowledge, and adopt the 
 more fertile ideas which were pouring in from the West. The 
 strangest fact, perhaps, is that the contact did not reach to deeper 
 intimacy, and a more perfect mastery of Western forms. Here China 
 must have touched the outer surface of a Greek art that had followed 
 in the wake of Alexander’s conquests, and of all the treasures of a rich 
 Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian past. Some European writers, indeed, 
 have gone so far as to inter, from the vague indications of literary 
 research, that Han art became very decidedly Greek, at least in its 
 early days. It would seem more strange that we do not find clearer 
 direct evidence of Greek tutelage, were it not for causes which tended 
 to make this continental intercourse fitful and abortive. Why should 
 not the two great empires of the world, China and Rome, have met, 
 affiliated, and established diplomatic intercourse, and we be able to 
 read of Chinese long-robed mandarins at the courts of the Caesars : 
 The enormous length of the trade-route, occupying some two years in 
 circuit, explains much ; but the deeper cause was the jealousy of the 
 Western intermediate people, chiefly the Parthians, who kept the two 
 ends of the four chains of trade in their own hands. It was the 
 rivalry of such “ go-betweeners ” that prevented the embarkation for 
 Alexandria of the Chinese general, and, roughly speaking, we may say 
 that the great and celebrated Parthian wars of later Rome were fought 
 chiefly to effect and to obstruct direct intercourse with this most im- 
 portant Eastern market of the Roman world. The sea-trade of the Sins, 
 via India, was obstructed by Arabs ; while the land-trade of the Seres, 
 
CHINESE ART OF THE HAN DYNASTY 21 
 
 via Ferghana, was definitely obstructed by Parthian success. Thus the 
 full vitalizing contact was never made until the weakening powers of both 
 Rome and Han destroyed for centuries all chance of it. And thus it 
 was that into the art of Han infiltrated only a somewhat motley group 
 of Western influences for China to transpose to her own alien uses. 
 
 It will be worth while now briefly to consider what were some of 
 these Western art forms which, in an imperfect intercourse, would have 
 been the most easily transportable. In older forms of Mesopotamian 
 art, Assyrian and Babylonian, and later in Persian, the Chinese must 
 have noticed the strong prominence of animal motives ; not only bands 
 of animals — horses, deer and lions — used in ornaments of utensils, and 
 often disposed in circular procession, but famous scenes of hunting, 
 with darting horses of the royal guard, chariots, charging lions, wounded 
 animals. Forms of winged animals, too, some with human bodies ; but 
 masks of birds or beasts — winged bulls and lions as vast symbolic 
 ornaments, or perched as capitals of columns ; forms enriched with 
 finer Greek influences, as at Persepolis, and even the flying Pegasus 
 himself, must have come to the Han notice. Strange branching and 
 intertwisting forms of foliage, too — the so-called “Tree of Life” in later 
 Persian pattern — the firm line tracery of stems, and the feathery 
 plumage of leaves ; and more than all this the formal Mesopotamian 
 use of continued flower and rosette patterns in stiff, doubly symmetrical 
 curve system, worked out in their coloured brick facades and interior 
 decoration. Here, too, we should have spoken, perhaps first, of the 
 use of glazed pottery generally in that greatest of all ceramic centres, 
 Persia, and in the Tigris and Euphrates joint valley. Upon some of 
 these vases there is a noticeable lack of design, but at times some 
 relief work. Among the colours are an egg-plant purple glaze, grey- 
 cream, superb blues, and wonderful dark greens. It is still a live 
 problem whence came this finest of the industrial arts ; but since the 
 recent unearthing of ancient collections of pottery in Persia and along 
 the Euphrates, we are coming to believe this the original seat from 
 which the arts of enamel spread, in many directions, possibly to China. 
 Looked at with a purely aesthetic eye, Mesopotamian design has a large 
 massiveness of proportion, and a simple but peculiar circular rhythm of 
 curve relations, which distinguish it from all other racial types. Its 
 Egyptian analogues are more spiky and rectangular ; its Greek more 
 flame and flower-like. 
 
22 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 But of very special influence upon the new art of Han was 
 evidently the peculiar thin and wiry forms of art, half Persian and half 
 Greek, which obtained in the semi-independent kingdom of Baktria 
 nearly down to the time of Christ. Later Persian forms, seen in 
 engravings of figures upon cylindrical seals, have become lank and 
 dry, as if the juice of their Assyrian prototypes had been pressed out ; 
 and this attenuation of form becomes often combined with effeminate 
 Greek rhythmic curves in Baktrian seals and coins. Figures are reduced 
 to mere filaments and splinters, which band strange angular intervals 
 upon the engraved ground. 
 
 If now we turn from this somewhat random enumeration to the 
 few scattered relics of Han art, we can trace something like the revolution 
 in Chinese aesthetic forms which we might be led to expect. A first 
 great innovation is in the glazed pottery, which, so far as 1 know, 
 did not exist at earlier dates. A considerable mass of this has come 
 into modern American collections, most of which is somewhat rude 
 and repeatedly conventional, showing a late Han degeneration. But 
 studying the finest and most characteristic pieces we shall discover much 
 of interest. The forms are largely low cylindrical jars with covers, 
 and tall finely moulded vases, with small base, full flaring centre, and 
 long neck above expanding into a wider lip. Many of these have no 
 ornamentation whatever ; some have only a few faint circles of geo- 
 metric marks, often like the cord-marks of primitive pottery. The 
 finest bear a single modest band of decoration in relief about their 
 equators. That some of these have been derived from bronze forms 
 seems proved by their bearing, at two opposite poles of their equatorial 
 region, the relics of handles that imply detachment ; face bosses which 
 show a relic of the old Pacific design, holding in their mouths a ring 
 that should hang free. Other forms, however, and generally the 
 undecorated, show affinities with the tall, oven-containing shapes of the 
 prehistoric unglazed vessels of the South. But over all these varied 
 pieces of modelled clay, harder and more brick-like than the chalky 
 Mesopotamian biscuits, has been poured a nearly identical glaze of dull 
 green, occasionally mottled with a little yellow, and often running into 
 heavy drops as in the finer Japanese pottery. These colours have been 
 largely deoxidized by long burial in the soil, fading into a semi- 
 iridescent colourlessness ; but the glaze can be traced upon the less 
 exposed portions. It would seem as if the Han potters, though 
 
HAN VASE WITH RAISED BAND OF 
 SLENDER ANIMAL FORMS. 
 
 Mr. Freer. 
 
 CLAY “CHAFING-DISH/' DESIGN 
 FORMS OF CATTLE IN FULL 
 RELIEF. 
 
 HAN JAR WITH COVER REPRESENTING 
 MOUNTAIN RANGES. 
 
CHINESE ART OF THE HAN DYNASTY 
 
 2 3 
 
 borrowing the idea of design from the Assyrians and Persians, could 
 not discover the chemical constituents of their finest blues. It should 
 be noted here that, beside the vases and jars, there occur forms of 
 
 miniature domestic utensils and animal effigies, also worked out in 
 
 glazed pottery, and which show evident affiliation with the prehistoric 
 animal culture, often upon the oven vases, of the primitive South. 
 
 Let us now look more closely at the motives upon the Han 
 
 vessels that show decoration in sculptural relief. The covers of the 
 jars are mostly heaped into curving ranges of mountains, which seem 
 to symbolize the wonderful fourfold pacing of that Pamian roof of 
 
 the world which the adventurous Chinese captains and merchants were 
 just learning to cross. The sides of the jars, too, have an underlying 
 network of mountain forms in crude curves, like successive sea-waves, 
 in very low relief. Occasionally upon the lower slopes of the moun- 
 tain, on the cover, we find the sculptured forms of animals apparently 
 lying dead in the wilderness — figures of horses, cows, or lions. But 
 the chief animal and human forms are found in higher relief in the 
 side bands of the jars, standing strong against the mountain outlines. 
 Here we find men on horseback, hunters ; perhaps wounded lions, 
 trailing their hind legs as in Assyrian sculpture ; wild cattle, sometimes 
 humpbacked like those on Baktrian coins ; forms of flying birds, and 
 inter-connecting traceries that cannot always be identified. Among the 
 animals, too, some are winged, quite in the Mesopotamian style — a 
 strange circumstance were it not for the contact, for in all the old 
 Pacific motive, even in that which delineates dragons, whose written 
 character-analysis seems to mean “ flying-flesh,” we find no early 
 attempts to portray wings. These animals and hunting scenes, though 
 generally not the mountain forms, are found in bands of closer curve 
 composition upon the vases also. And upon both jars and vases are 
 seen horsemen turning in their saddles and shooting arrows backward, 
 which it is perhaps not a wild conjecture to take for Parthians, or 
 Central Asian tribes akin to them. 
 
 After the clay vessels we should touch upon the bronzes, which seem 
 to divide themselves into three or four types. The first of these, and 
 still in use for ancestral rites, are more or less conventional copies of 
 the more ancient bronzes of the Pacific school. But these we need 
 not consider, being only hierarchic survivals and betraying no creative 
 aim. One new form of bronze resembles the glazed vessels with 
 
24 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 raised patterns on jars and vases, quite like those already described. 
 Here the Pacific forms of the handles stand out clear against the 
 Mesopotamian motive on the bands. Still a third form is the bronze 
 drums, which Professor Hirth has so well shown to have originated 
 in early Han. The patterns on these are very different from the 
 early Pacific, as from the Northern Han, and seem to point to a 
 far Southern, and perhaps a Malay, origin. Such drums have been 
 dug up mostly in the South, where the records say that a Chinese 
 conqueror originated them, carving native symbolical designs into 
 drum forms imitated from the Chinese drums made | of wood and 
 
 skin. The ornamentation is incised in fine line pattern, quite unlike 
 the clay reliefs, but surmounted at the top of the drum by rude 
 bronze images of frogs in complete relief. We do not know what 
 symbolism was played by this animal form, but we can clearly say 
 that their modelling is precisely like that of the rude clay figures of 
 unglazed prehistoric pottery in China and Japan, and therefore still 
 further attests its Southern origin.* A fourth form, of bronze, 
 was the mirrors, generally circular discs, the backs of which were 
 ornamented in low and high relief. The use of such mirrors may 
 
 ® In the spring of 1908, when crossing in the steamer with the well-known 
 Dr. de Grote, of Leyden, Holland, Professor Fenollosa had an opportunity of discussing 
 many such questions. Dr. de Grote said that among European students of the present 
 day it was generally thought that these frogs typefied a desire for rain, and that such 
 drums were almost surely used by the priests in invoking supernatural powers to terminate 
 a drought. 
 
CHINESE ART OF THE HAN DYNASTY 25 
 
 have come from Persian or Greek suggestion, but their patterns 
 probably did not. Here, however, is a great point of dispute, for 
 
 though a large number of Han mirrors imaged in the antiquarian 
 
 books, and found in collections, are of a mingled curve and star 
 pattern, interspersed with inscriptions in Han characters — patterns 
 which are clearly congeners of all else that we know in Han orna- 
 mental spacing — there are a few exceptional pieces shown in the 
 Chinese wood-cuts, by outline only, and akin to a few actual mirrors 
 which we have in our collections ; which I cannot, except for the native 
 judgment, find any evidence of belonging to Han. These are the so- 
 called “ grape and sea-horse ” mirrors, where the whole back is closely 
 loaded with a most intricate curving pattern in high, carefully 
 
 moulded relief in bands, and a central rosette of branches and 
 bunches of the grape, intercurving in a most natural manner, and 
 interspersed with delicately-winged flying birds, the inner circles often 
 being most graceful ; animal forms of horses, lions, and rabbits, 
 
 cantering about among a network of graceful foliage, the central 
 medallion having the same animals in airy circuit, or the strange, 
 half bear-like hairy animal called the “ sea-horse,” of which term there 
 is no explanation. The central knob, through a hole in which plays 
 the cord that holds the mirror, is generally of this sea-horse, but more 
 primitively modelled, more like the frogs upon the bronze drums. 
 
 We come now to the consideration of a quite different set of forms from 
 Han art, whose largeness of simple line and space relation are entirely in 
 harmony with the vases and bronzes, and whose patterns also show kinship 
 to Mesopotamian prototypes — namely the famous stone carvings of scenes 
 from Chinese history and life, found in several places lining the interior of 
 caves in the province of Shantung. These are of enormous value, because 
 they are the oldest elaborate representations of human beings remain- 
 ing in China, because they are dated , because they illustrate for us 
 the whole round of Chinese history and tradition as known to Han 
 scholars, and because they give us clear ideas as to the natural 
 limitations of Han power in design. Rubbings from most of these 
 have been published by Professor Chavannes, and printed from 
 wood-cuts in the Kinseibu Sa. 
 
 For the most part these divide themselves into two series, the 
 earlier and more meagre of which belongs to the first century 
 antedating the birth of Christ. These show figures of men, horses, 
 VOL. 1. e 
 
26 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 chariots, etc., incised in lines into the stone, being the earliest 
 representations of human life that have come down to us in Chinese 
 art. Many horses are sometimes driven abreast, and in the profile 
 drawing appear almost super-imposed, as in primitive Egyptian design. 
 These horses are not like the little stocky Tartar ponies, with short 
 necks and legs, but all full-blooded steeds, high-spirited, head and 
 forelegs lifted into lines of proud arch, with much fine rhythm of 
 general curve and with good action in the seated figures. Here 
 are dramatic scenes clearly modelled upon methods and subjects of 
 wall decoration found in Western Asia. This is still more obviously 
 the case in the second and much more voluminous series, found also in 
 Shantung, and dating from the second century after Christ, that is towards 
 the end of the later Han, when the capital had been removed to the 
 ancient Chinese seats in the East (Honan). Here we have a complete 
 round of illustration of all the important mythical and recorded deeds 
 of ancient Chinese history; the heroes, the patriarchs, the emperors, 
 coronations and assassinations, scenes of engineering and of agriculture, 
 the visit of the Chow conqueror to the “Queen of the West,” the 
 early deeds of Han itself ; beside a whole menagerie of animal 
 
 forms, frequently representing spiritual beings, flying horses with 
 wings and serpent tails, monkeys and imps — beings half-human, half- 
 animal, with interlacing tails, forming in places net-works of design 
 with added whirls of cloud, of hundreds of figures caught into an 
 interlaced, wriggling pattern. Most of these seem to be Taoist 
 
 spirits, showing the vigour of that cult even at a day when its 
 
 rival, Confucianism, had been in some sense adapted for government 
 administration. These figures are raised in relief upon the stone 
 tablets, and so in the rubbings come out into black silhouette. Here 
 are hundreds of horsemen and footmen, showing every rank of noble 
 and soldier — a little compendium of Chinese life at that remote day. 
 Considerable change is noticed from the style of the earlier of 
 
 Western Han, in that the horses are now more clumsy, with con- 
 ventional fat curves and weaker legs, but still with an attempt to 
 
 render them high-stepping and snorting. The action of the figures, 
 
 too, is very spirited. We can thus conclude that this Mesopotamian- 
 derived school of figure representation did not materially change 
 throughout the whole length of Han, having become a fixed style, 
 
 of which most of the movements are lost, a style which is quite 
 
Five Examples of Stone Carving. 
 
CHINESE ART OF THE HAN DYNASTY 27 
 
 in harmony with the strong and somewhat rude curve systems of 
 Han ornamental pattern already noticed. And here finally we can 
 
 see the representation of the sacred Babylonian tree, the “ tree of life,” 
 found in modern Persian carpets, growing clearly in the Paradise 
 garden of the Taoist Western Queen. 
 
 In aesthetic respects these horse forms of Han are more spirited 
 than any equine delineation of China at a later day, where the native 
 Tartar ill-shaped breed becomes the model ; but they are not so fine 
 as the superb horse painting of the Japanese Tosa School in the 
 twelfth century, described in Chapter IX. This Han art, and 
 especially the round of human forms, if studied in close relation to the 
 fine mass of Taoist and social poetry, will give us a clear conception 
 of the mentality of Han, and prevent our importing into it so much 
 that belongs to later Chinese growth. In the latter part of Han 
 probably began a thin stream of commercial relations with India and 
 the Western ocean. An embassy from Marcus Aurelius Antonius, 
 Emperor of Rome, is reported in Chinese annals to have arrived in 
 Southern Han; but Professor Hirth believes this to have been probably a 
 private venture of Parthian or Arabian merchants, subjects of Roman 
 Syria, who assumed the imperial name. Chinese records also show that 
 the Han people were well informed as to the structure and defences of 
 the Syrian capital, Antioch. 
 
 But the downfall of the later enervated Han was inevitable, not 
 only because of wasteful civil wars that lasted for generations and broke 
 China up into a second group of feudal states, but through the gradual 
 irruption of Tartar tribes from the North, who, scaling the Great Wall, 
 snatched province after province of the North from the weak 
 hegemony of rapidly changing dynasty, and finally drove what was left 
 of Chinese vigour into the safe recesses of the South, near the Yangtse 
 and below, where they might recruit their fortunes. In this way the 
 unity of Han art was doubtless weakened and lost, though an influence 
 that had acquired so much headway could not suddenly cease. But the 
 chief reason for making our break here, and commencing a new chapter, 
 is that a third great stream of Art forms and motives now began to 
 flow into China from a third direction — the Southern — namely Buddhism, 
 with all its complex and important potentialities for later Chinese 
 civilization. Chinese art is first Pacific, second Mesopotamian, third 
 Indian Buddhist. 
 
 e 2 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 CHINESE BUDDHIST ART TO THE TANG DYNASTY. 
 
 Indian Influence — Third Century a.d. to the Sixth Century. 
 
 T HE introduction of Buddhism into China from India, and event- 
 ually through China to Corea, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Japan, 
 was one of those stupendous revolutions, like the carrying of 
 Christianity to the Gentiles, which well-nigh obliterate racial and national 
 lines, and bring humanity to pay common tribute to spiritual forces. How 
 profoundly Chinese and Japanese civilization in general, and art 
 in particular, were gradually transformed by this quiet, pungent in- 
 fluence, has never been written by any native scholar, and hardly even 
 conceived by any European. On the one hand we have the vague 
 statement of our geographies that 400,000,000 of Buddhists in China 
 alone are to be added to the quota of Sakyamuni’s devotees. One 
 naturally infers that Buddhist thought and feeling are still to be found 
 paramount in all the institutions of Mongolian civilization. On the 
 other hand, the impression of actual travellers, and especially foreign 
 scholars, in China, is that Buddhism has become there a decayed and 
 despised cult, having almost no hold on the educated classes, and 
 quite a negligible factor in analysing the spirit of Chinese institutions. 
 The standard works on Chinese life and culture almost ignore 
 it. The place of Buddhist ideals in Chinese literature is seldom 
 discussed ; and the evident necessity of including Indian motive in 
 certain phases of Far Eastern art is explained rather as an isolated 
 phenomenon. 
 
 That the mass of the Chinese of the present day are devout 
 Buddhists, as the Ceylonese are, would be quite a misstatement. The fact 
 is that the whole influence of Confucian scholarship and influence that 
 is, the force of the whole Mandarin order, is implacably opposed to the 
 
CHINESE BUDDHIST ART 
 
 29 
 
 spirit of Buddhism, and has been from the eighth century, and even 
 before. This is why the views of Chinese history, and the estimate of 
 relative values among institutions, derived through Chinese scholarship — 
 and most of our Sinologues drink from that source — are entirely false in 
 their prevailing attitude, in that Chinese scholarship, lying entirely in the 
 hands of the Confucian literati, has always been violently partisan and 
 antagonistic. The truth is that a very large part of the finest thought 
 and standards of living that have gone into Chinese life, and the finest 
 part of what has issued therefrom in literature and art, have been 
 strongly tinged with Buddhism. To write the history of the Chinese 
 soul without seriously considering Buddhism, would be like writing the 
 history of Europe under the hypothesis that Christianity was a foreign 
 and alien faith whose re-rooting in Western soil had been sporadic, 
 disturbing, and on the whole deleterious. 
 
 How great practical peoples, like these healthy shoots of the Altaic 
 race, the Chinese and the Japanese, could ever have taken up with such 
 a negative, pessimistic, and non-political religion as the Buddhist re- 
 nunciation, may seem to many fairly questionable. The answer is that 
 here, too, partisanship stands in the way of truth-seeing. Most of our 
 information about the Indian religion is derived from Southern sources, 
 Pali, and the whole round of the Ceylonese illumination. It is enough 
 for scholars, who sometimes have a missionary bias, that Southern 
 Buddhism, the “Lesser Vehicle,” being the older (and the easier to 
 refute), must lie nearer to the original source, Sakyamuni himself ; and 
 is therefore the only form that we need seriously study or consider, 
 Northern Buddhism, they think, being derivative, revolutionary and 
 corrupt, need be studied only as a perverse curiosity. The great truth 
 which they forget is that Buddhism, like Christianity — and unlike 
 Mohammedanism — has been an evolutionary religion, never content with 
 old formalisms, but, filled with spiritual ardour, continually re-adapting 
 itself to the needs of the human nature with which it finds itself in 
 contact. Thus, becoming Northern or positive Buddhism with the more 
 vigorous Northern races in the North-west of India, it became still more 
 positive, social, and human with the great practical home-loving races of 
 China and Japan. 
 
 The attitude of those who would minimize the effect of Buddhism 
 in China is self-contradictory ; in that, on the one hand, they ask how 
 these sane moral peoples should have adopted a “ degenerate Southern 
 
30 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 pessimism,” and, on the other hand, denounce the Northern forms, 
 which have been made practical and optimistic by the vigorous contact, 
 as “ corruptions from the pure original doctrine.” The truth about 
 it quite corresponds to the commonplace fact in Christian history, 
 that our many modern Catholic and Protestant sects, which cannot 
 all — in spite of their several claims — be identical with the primitive 
 Christianity of the Apostles — have all been sane and broadening 
 
 efforts of the central truth to meet the almost infinitely varying 
 forms of human need. English Episcopacy and Puritanism may have 
 been equally hateful to a Southerner ; and yet really express sides of 
 Christian truth that conform to two powerful strands in the Anglo- 
 Saxon race. 
 
 It must be remembered, too, that the introduction of Buddhist art 
 into China was a slow affair, comprising in time a vast number of 
 the great revolutionary movements within the body of universal 
 Buddhism. The date 61 a. d. — so often given by writers who rely 
 
 chiefly on the written word as the important date of Buddha’s introduc- 
 tion to the Han Emperor Meitei in the form of a small gilt image — 
 is of no special importance to us ; first, because we can hardly identify 
 the form of the image ; second, because it belonged probably to early 
 and still negative forms of Buddhism ; third, because in fact the new 
 religion hardly began to exercise appreciable influence upon China and 
 Chinese thought before the third century; and fourth, because we can 
 trace no Chinese modifications in Buddhist art, no incorporation of the 
 new aesthetic canons, before the third or fourth century. It is from 
 
 these latter dates, after the final fall of the Han dynasty, that it is 
 
 proper to trace the real rise of Buddhist art in China. Let us 
 premise once for all that this art is largely sculpture, and that too 
 sculpture in bronze, including also those forms of decorated industry 
 that entered into temple architecture and ritual. 
 
 But before we begin a detailed study of the course of this new art 
 in the Middle Kingdom, it will be clarifying to preface a brief word 
 concerning the little we know of early Buddhist art in the various 
 parts of India. The origins of Indian art are lost in obscurity, though 
 it seems likely that the transition from wooden to stone forms took 
 place as late as the second or third century before Christ. The 
 erections and sculptures of that day are regarded as early creative forms 
 in Buddhist art. In those we seem to trace at least two different 
 
Eastern Gate of Sanchi Tope. 
 
CHINESE BUDDHIST ART 
 
 3 * 
 
 streams of influence, one native and aboriginal, the other exotic and 
 largely Mesopotamian. It is not an accidental phenomenon that late 
 Persian and Greco-Syrian forms should have entered the China of 
 Han at almost the same moment that they were moving south-east 
 also to assist in the expression of Buddhist motive. It was all part 
 of the dislocation and dispersion and eastward driving that followed 
 the great upheaval of Alexander. It was one of Alexander’s own 
 generals who first visited Central India and brought back to Europe 
 accurate accounts. 
 
 This is not the place to attempt the herculean task of dating or 
 classifying the movements of Indian art. It is enough for our pur- 
 pose merely to note a few of the typical forms that passed over in 
 the assthetic transmission to China and Japan. Among the forms 
 of native origin must be mentioned first what appears to be a key 
 form to Buddhist architecture, which Fergusson has conjectured to 
 be derived from the primitive bamboo and bark huts, such as are seen 
 to-day among the hill tribes of Central India, notably the Todas. 
 These are small and low tents, made by bending flexible poles over 
 into a semi-pointed arch, with both ends inserted into the earth ; two 
 or more of which set parallel and connected by longitudinal rafters 
 make a frame over which can be stretched a covering that approximates 
 in form a semi-cylinder. The curve, however, is more subtle than a 
 circular segment, since the pole ends are not quite vertical, and the arch, 
 though blunt, slightly approximates a Gothic point. How thoroughly 
 this form entered into Buddhist architecture may be seen first in the 
 cave temples, where the cylindrical nave opens within this arch into a 
 fagade, often filled with a stone discus representing window openings 
 of the same pattern. When independent stone temples were erected, 
 these forms still remained for doors and windows ; and are found, too, 
 in many of the wooden temple erections in China and Japan as an 
 ornamental form for window spacing. 
 
 The dome is but such a cylindrical section projected by revolution 
 upon an arch ; and this dome we find in the earliest forms of the stupa, 
 
 or sacred tumulus, and the derivative forms of the altar niche in the 
 
 caves, the diminutive tombs in cemeteries, and the reliquaries in priestly 
 treasuries. From this form, too, grew the well-known pagoda which 
 in its earliest form, still occasionally found as far East as Japan, is 
 
 merely a tiled wooden roof built over a dome formation, and over the 
 
32 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 square block member that surmounted it. In such Japanese pagodas 
 the dome, shown only above the lower roof in a strip of white plaster, 
 is not itself structural, but only an ornamental relic, the square wooden 
 framework below being the true erection. A high pagoda is only 
 a multiplication of these roofs, which needed not to be always of 
 equal space, as shown in the remarkable Yakushiji pagoda near Nara, 
 Japan. 
 
 Passing now to features of Indian Buddhist art that are wholly or 
 partly imported, we might point at once to the famous stone gateways 
 of the primitive Sanchi type, whose wooden architecture seems just to 
 be passing into clumsy stone. While the crowded small figures in 
 elaborate carving are not specially Mesopotamian, the rosette forms 
 set at salient points, and the winged animals, lions and bulls, set on 
 the pillars and posts, are clearly of Persian influence. How strongly 
 the rosette form recalls Assyrian, even where it had been already attached 
 to a lotos centre, is exemplified in the so-called “ moon stones ” ol 
 Ceylon, which are really the lotos thrones, on which the sacred erection, 
 dome and terraces and stairways — as if as a whole they formed the 
 very worshipful altar-piece — stand. Here the concentric bands of moving 
 animals and birds, intertwined with scrolls of leaf and stem, point back 
 to early Assyrian animal motives, and forward to the elaborate mirrors 
 and rich halos of the seventh century in China and Japan. 
 
 The Sanchi forms of Indian art, too, were partly incorporated 
 with the primitive Chinese conception of the dragon, originally Pacific ; 
 and the lotos is only the chief among Indian plant forms that enter 
 into later Mongolian symbolism and pattern. 
 
 We come now, lastly, to effigies of Buddha and other spiritual 
 beings which form the very core of Buddhistic art. In early Buddhist 
 symbolism the human image, as a thing to worship, probably played 
 no part, the stupa itself as containing a relic, the wheel of the law, and 
 the sacred “Trisul,” taking the place of altar-piece. But such severity 
 of impersonal restraint probably did not last down to the Christian 
 epoch ; for we hear of Buddha’s image in China, and the earliest of 
 the cave temples have representations of the sacred figure on the altars. 
 The most primitive form may' well have been a plain naked figure, so 
 severe as almost to transcend human contour, and with no ornament 
 whatever. But a standard Southern type, which also extended more or 
 less through the whole geography of Indian Buddhism, is probably 
 
One of the Buddhist Lotos Thrones, often called 
 “Moon Stones.” From Ceylon. 
 
CHINESE BUDDHIST ART 
 
 33 
 
 given us in those colossal Ceylonese stone figures whose clumsy bodies 
 are swathed in a single gauzy robe whose many thin and nearly parallel 
 lines of fold sweep like a river of wavy curves over body, arm and leg 
 in an expressive ornamental pattern. However simplified and modified 
 these lines of drapery become in a hundred later schools, they are always 
 present in some traceable form. 
 
 The Bodhisattwa form seems to be equally primitive with the 
 Buddha. This is of a graceful swaying figure, seemingly feminine, 
 with high tiara set over long flowing locks, and festoons of jewels 
 hanging from various parts of the body. The third order of 
 Buddhist spirit, the violent deities which correspond to Siva in later 
 Hinduism, had not been developed as early as the period of 
 which we speak. They derive doubtless from a closer union 
 between the Buddhism of the early Christian centuries and a 
 
 revived Hindu mysticism based upon the pre-Buddhist literature. 
 We shall speak of these under the mystical Chinese and Japanese 
 art of later chapters. The forms of imps, however, or elemental 
 spirits lower than man, have already been introduced. 
 
 That there must already have been a split in the Buddhist 
 ranks between the more conservative Southern sects and the non- 
 Indian races of the North and North-west, the Nepaulese, Cashmerians, 
 and the tribes that worked toward Central Asia over the North 
 
 plateaus. Here we find evidence of a different art — a Himalayan 
 art, a more Mongolian face, a more decorative catching of the folds 
 of the garment about the legs, long sweeps of mantle over the 
 
 shoulders, and heavy rosettes and flower festoons upon the hair, 
 twined over the breast, or worked into the strong girdle at the waist. 
 
 These forms that have remained are mostly in bronze, and small ; 
 
 and seem to be of a primitive character that would render them 
 the common ancestor of Chinese bronzes, and of the later Thibetan 
 art. That it was some such statuette that was brought to the Han 
 Emperor seems probable; at any rate such statues from the Indus 
 
 valley, or possibly from Turkestan itself, finally striking the caravan 
 route from China to the Caspian, came Eastward to the Flowery 
 Land as early as the close of Han. 
 
 It should be confessed, once for all, that of the enormous mass of 
 
 primitive bronze statuettes from many Asian sources which have always 
 
 passed among Japanese antiquaries under the name of ‘ c Indo-Butsu,” 
 
34 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 or Indian Buddha, it is often difficult to identify the origin. So many 
 of foreign make were copied or slightly modified by centuries of workers 
 in all Northern Buddhist countries, that which is the true Indian, which 
 the Chinese, which the Corean, and which the Japanese, has become 
 the great puzzle of the students for the last twenty years. And while 
 in many cases we can identify with considerable probability the racial 
 element in the school of design, it is often impossible to assert that 
 the object which displays this may not be an early copy executed by a 
 foreign artist. I am not now speaking of modern bronze copies, which 
 can be fairly well distinguished from the antiques ; I am referring 
 only to bronze whose certain date must fall between the second and 
 seventh centuries. The same is true, to a less extent, of the 
 wooden statues. 
 
 The Han dynasty of China fell in 221 a . d . after a long period 
 of weakness, which was destined to be followed by a break-up into 
 separate feudal states almost as hopeless as the disintegration of the 
 Roman Empire which was already commencing. The third century 
 after Christ was given over in China to the terrible anarchy involved 
 in the sanguinary “ Wars of the Three States,” a mediaeval age of 
 epic heroism, which has been sung in a hundred forms of prose and 
 verse, both in China and Japan, and entered as motive into a dozen 
 dramas. From this wild warfare issues the colossal shape of a hero, 
 Kwan-u, with a sad face and herculean frame, who is still worshipped 
 as a Chinese Mars. 
 
 In such confused times it is improbable that any definite move 
 toward a new Chinese School of Buddhist art could be afforded. 
 The art and the poetry are both confessed off-shoots from the Han 
 stem. And the next century became even worse, for now many 
 Tartar conquerors, emboldened by the dissensions of the Chinese 
 Kingdoms, came down from the North, mingling as mercenaries with 
 their employers, quite as the Teutonic people at the same moment 
 were enslaving in Europe the Roman army ; until, finally, they were 
 able to wrench away from the nominal Chinese Emperor a large portion 
 of his Northern tributaries. It is part of the same great irruption that 
 was beginning: to let loose a tidal wave of the kindred Tartar Huns 
 against the Roman Empire. 
 
 So far as we can peer back into the arts of this day, they show 
 only a clumsy Chinese modification of the Indian Buddhist types. 
 
Early Statue of Buddha. At Serioji, near Kioto. 
 
CHINESE BUDDHIST ART 
 
 35 
 
 The great wooden Buddha of Seirioji, near Kioto, the most primitive of 
 all the Southern types of Chinese Buddhas, is probably a Chinese work 
 of this fourth century, retaining much of the Han clumsiness and angular 
 sharpness of feature, while it turns into a certain symmetrical rude 
 decoration the Indian lines of clinging stuff, which it can afford to 
 raise into heavier carving upon its wooden surface. The ancient 
 tradition is that it is the original contemporary statue of Buddha, 
 brought from India to China, whence it was stolen by a Japanese 
 devotee who surreptitiously substituted a copy. But such manuscript 
 traditions in the records of Japanese Buddhist temples are for the 
 most part of no great weight, and we are free to believe this a 
 Chinese original modified from some Indian statuette or drawing. 
 
 By the year 420 of our era a decisive change was wrought for 
 China, full of the most important consequences for the future of her 
 literature and art ; and that was a clear division of the groups of 
 Chinese states into North and South dynasties — the whole North, the 
 ancestral seats, being taken over by Tartar conquerors, and for the first 
 time Emperors of pure Chinese race moving their capital down into 
 the lately civilised South. This separation, with relatively long inter- 
 vals of peace between the two sections, lasted nearly two centuries, 
 down to 589. In these two full centuries Chinese culture, including 
 poetry and art, entirely re-created themselves. 
 
 Of what took place in the Tartar regions of the North we know 
 little, since their dynasties have not been recognised by Chinese his- 
 torians as legitimate. The true Celestial annals, and indeed the lore of 
 Chinese genius, belong at this time to the stimulus afforded by the 
 new Southern conditions. The new Capital, near the present Nankin, 
 was on the great Yangtse, now just blossoming into her heritage of 
 wealth and commerce, and not far from the centre of a most picturesque 
 region, splendid lakes and magnificent mountains, still almost unexplored, 
 and covered with dense primeval forests. Not only did this sudden 
 revelation of natural beauty impress the Chinese imagination, hereto- 
 fore fed upon the more arid plains of the more ancient North ; but 
 it must be remembered that it was in this very central district, hardly 
 yet won to Mongol culture, that Laotse, the founder of Individualism 
 and Taoism, had been born some 1,000 years before ; that here the 
 first great elegiac poet, Kutsugen, had poured forth his lamentations 
 in rich splendour of imagery and the long swinging lines of a new 
 
36 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 metre. Here, too, a primitive people, of smaller stature, possibly allied 
 to the Japanese, had pursued rude arts of their own from an unpierced 
 antiquity, among which were the plastic forms of unglazed vases, and 
 the rude effigies of animals and birds in the same rough material. 
 Later in the Han dynasty this very plastic genius had found vent in 
 characteristic bronzes, such as the drums and the frogs set upon their 
 face. Here were veins of feeling and susceptibility fresh and unworked, 
 capable of inoculating with new power the somewhat worn imagination 
 of the destroyers of Han. It was the reversal of geographical relation- 
 ships in Europe, where the dispersed Romans found new springs of 
 effort in the vigorous forests of a German North. It must be noticed, 
 too, that these Southern seats of the Chinese were in closer proximity 
 to a new part of India, the South through Burmah, or along the 
 opening lines of coast trade. A few adventurous Arabian merchants 
 were already seeking the Southern and Eastern ports ; and a revived 
 native dynasty in Persia (the Sassanian) was in some vague communi- 
 cation by sea with the Chinese coast. The Byzantine Empire, on the 
 other hand, the Eastern successor of the Romans, still held a caravan 
 overland trade with the Northern or Tartar provinces. Still, as late as 
 451, the Hunnish invasions of Europe largely blocked the lines of 
 peaceful traffic. In the great simultaneous dissolving of the Roman and 
 Han Empires, the unstable hordes of Tartar locusts blotted out vast 
 regions of intervening space, and almost obliterated the memory of the 
 earlier contact. Civilisation had to be resown at both ends, and it was 
 the new Southern dynasties of China that began to reap the Eastern 
 harvest. 
 
 It was here, too, in the Southern Chinese nests, that Buddhism 
 could drop her most fertile germs. The Northern route from India 
 to China was precarious at best ; the superstitious tribes on the desert 
 border welcomed Indian culture as a new kind of fetich rather than as 
 inner enlightenment, and the Confucian scholars of Wei were, as always, 
 most powerful with their Tartar masters, and even led them at times 
 to kill Buddhist priests and destroy monasteries. It was in the 
 
 romantic, the Taoist, the Individualistic South that the deeper 
 Buddhism found its natural ally. Taoism was already the sworn toe 
 of the Confucian Socialism, full of mystical leanings, inclined to poetry 
 and art. With it the stronger tenets of a positive Buddhism that 
 regarded the devotee as a kind of spiritual hero, able to conquer 
 
CHINESE BUDDHIST ART 
 
 37 
 
 all regions of matter and spirit, quickly amalgamated. In short, we 
 can assert that the religion of the three Southern dynasties which 
 now ruled successively at Nanking — the Sung, the Tsi, and the Liang — 
 is a working union between Taoism and Buddhism, which practically 
 excluded for the time all the chilly growth of Confucian classicism. 
 Here, at these Courts upon the Yangtse, or often in picturesque 
 monasteries perched high on the shoulders of wild mountains, the 
 imported Indian priests and their native scholars mastered the greater 
 part of that stupendous translation of Sanscrit and Pali texts which is 
 known as the Chinese canon. The enormously rich literary treasures 
 of the Indian mind, and of Buddhist lore in its successive growths, 
 lay now in the hands of the imaginative Chinese. 
 
 One more important factor must be noticed — the general adoption 
 throughout China of a new form of writing material, a fine grained 
 paper, instead of bamboo and clumsy bark papyrus, with flexible silk 
 tissue for assthetic effort ; the manufacture of a rich dark ink from 
 lamp-black mixed with glue ; and especially an improved form of hair 
 pencil, which, with firm thick base, thinned at the tip into a fine 
 point, afforded great elasticity and modulated thickness to the 
 touch ; and a full reservoir of pigment for prolonged writing. With 
 these tools Chinese written characters became transformed from the 
 several stages of cutting and smearing in clumsy symbolism into a pure 
 caligraphic art where the flexibility of perfect brush stroke could unite 
 with decorative proportioning. Also a new medium for art was now 
 furnished, that could substitute for rudely relieved silhouettes upon 
 bronze, stone, or wooden plates, freer images conceived first in terms of 
 separated and highly decorative lines, which lines could then be filled 
 in with tones of ink, or with colours to differentiate pictorially the 
 value of masses. 
 
 It was in the first of the three Southern dynasties, the Sung (So), 
 that all these innovations found notable beginnings. The great poet, 
 Toemmei, for the first time, praises the life of rustic freedom upon 
 the Yangtse, and forms one of a White Lotos Club of mountain 
 climbers and thinkers organized under the leadership of a Buddhist 
 priest. His contemporary, Ogishi (Wang Hsi-chih), first established 
 the splendid spacing of written characters in manuscripts, and the free 
 thickening and thinning of the strokes, which renders him the “ Father 
 of Chinese handwriting,” and came later to its fruition with the perfect 
 
38 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 style of the Tang dynasty. The new opportunity of painting, too, 
 had been seized a little earlier by So Fukko, who had utilized the 
 freer brush stroke to delineate dragons floating in clouds of softer tone. 
 A contemporary of Toemmei and Ogishi, Kogaishi (Ku K’ai-chih), had 
 gone further in trying to make the lines executed by the brush a 
 rhythmic outline for poetically conceived figures. He is thus the 
 father of pure Chinese figure painting.* We know that he painted the 
 first portrait of the Upasaka Yuima, the prototype of the lay Buddhist 
 philosopher who was fast taking the place in this So of the Confucian 
 Mandarin. All later portraits of Yuima, who is traditionally a Hindu 
 metaphysician originally opposed to Sakyamuni, but converted by the 
 latter’s disciple Avanda, are developments from the thought of 
 Kogaishi’s. It may be that some original or copy sufficiently like the 
 lost Kogaishi original may yet be lurking in the archives of some rustic 
 Chinese noble ; but all those which in Japan lay claim to being such 
 bear evidence of later inspiration. But in the Kinseki So we find 
 two figures which had been cut on stone from drawings by Kogaishi, 
 and which probably give a fair idea of his delineation, but not of his 
 toning in ink and colour. What we are to look for in Kogaishi’s 
 pen force is made clear by the statement of later critics that Godoshi 
 really founded his stupendous line upon the key afforded by the So 
 master. 
 
 The short-lived Sei (Ch‘i) dynasty (479-502), which succeeded 
 the So (Sung), only carried these movements further. The great 
 
 landscape poet, Shareiun, following Toemmei, gives us the metrical 
 praise of wild mountain forms, like a veritable Chinese Wordsworth, 
 introduces the formal stanza of lines of seven characters that come 
 to perfection in Tang, and originates the word for “landscape,” 
 which afterwards becomes classic in both China and Japan, namely 
 “ sansui ” ; that is, mountain and water , assuming that in a perfect 
 landscape painting or poem there must occur both the upheaval 
 of form and the contrast, or softening, of it by alluvial motion. 
 Here, too, Buddhist painting practically originates in an effort to 
 substitute tinted drawings of altar-pieces for the statuesque originals. 
 These originals were often coloured when not of bronze, and the 
 
 * Editor’s Note. — The painting by Kogaishi in the British Museum is now 
 recognised as undoubtedly genuine. There is said to be another in the great 
 collection of Fuan Tang, in China. 
 
CHINESE BUDDHIST ART 
 
 39 
 
 new pictorial art could well represent the heavy statue on a scroll of 
 silk, capable of easy transportation. The lines for such work would 
 rather be hair lines representing the contours of sculpture than forceful 
 delineations of the thickened brush — a pictorial style which we may 
 suppose to have been imported, too, with Indian drawings. In this 
 way it may well be that the beginnings of strong line work with 
 Kogaishiin So were partly obscured by more delicate colour decora- 
 tions of Buddhist painting, until revived by Godoshi (Wu Tao-tzu) 
 in the 8th century. An example of such early Buddhist painting, 
 which follows the lines of statuary and delicate carving in halos, is 
 shown in this book. 
 
 But the real culmination of this romantic Southern illumination did 
 not appear till the Rio (Liang) dynasty in 502, and especially the long 
 reign of Butei (Wu-ti), its founder, who had been the chief general 
 of the waning Sei ; and who, the namesake of the Han Emperor 
 celebrated for opening intercourse with Western Asia six centuries 
 before, is the first great picturesque figure on the Chinese throne since 
 that famed Han (Kan) reign. Butei, denounced by the later Confucian 
 analysts as a superstitious bigot, is one of those great, generous- 
 minded monarchs who, full of hope and genius, fall into misfortune 
 through their lack of worldly wisdom. At first he was a staunch 
 advocate of Taoism, giving, indeed, to all late Chinese literature that 
 flavour of enthusiasm over hermit life and the mysterious power 
 attainable through mountain freedom which to-day is best preserved 
 in the romanticism of the Japanese soul. But early in his reign 
 the twenty-eighth Buddhist patriarch, Daruma, came to Western China 
 from India, and Butei invited him to his Court, where he became 
 his chief patron and student, affording him perfect seclusion in a 
 cave temple among the mountains. It was this same Daruma who 
 amid these picturesque scenes developed the thought and discipline 
 of a new Buddhist sect, the Dhyan or Zen, which, however, did 
 not bear its full fruition of influence upon literature and art until 
 the Sung dynasty. Butei (Wu-ti) has never been forgiven by 
 later Mandarins because, a few years later, he went the extreme 
 length of dedicating himself, though still an Emperor, as full 
 Buddhist priest in the temple of Dotaiji.* In 546 he went about his 
 kingdom preaching Buddha in person, like an itinerant monk. In 
 * Dotaiji is one of five temples built by the Emperor Butei. 
 
40 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 this way his dynasty weakened, and was soon succeeded by the 
 short-lived Chu. 
 
 The development of landscape poetry and of Buddhist painting 
 under Liang was enormous ; but most of the latter is lost in all 
 
 but name. It is possible that the famous landscape painting in 
 
 oil upon leather that decorates the Chinese biwa or lute in the 
 Japanese treasury at Nara, dates from this time; but the Tartar 
 nature of the scenery and costume, in spite of the elephant, would 
 lead us to ascribe it, if so early at all, to a Northern contemporary 
 artist. Traces of Buddhist Liang painting are met with, however; 
 the considerably defaced Amidaiji Mandarin of Nara-Ken probably 
 belonging to this age. 
 
 But the bulk of the knowledge which we have of the Buddhist art 
 of Rio (Liang) and Chin (Ch’en), of their Northern contemporary, 
 and of the following Sui dymasty (589-620), which united North 
 and South, after two centuries of separation, into a provisional 
 
 Empire, is derived from the remains of sculpture rather than of 
 
 painting. Pictorial art still remained, to the second century of 
 
 Tang, an inferior and derivative one. The greatest glories of far- 
 
 Eastern sculpture were still to create ; and here we must give a 
 
 brief account of their tentative forms. 
 
 The statues of this whole separated period — 5th and 6th 
 
 centuries — are divisible into two great forms, as they derive their 
 nature from Northern Tartar or from Southern Chinese influences. 
 The Northern school is more clearly related to the lingering traces 
 of Han and to the early Himalayan Buddhist forms that had first 
 penetrated China by the Northern route. Here the rhythmic 
 
 curvature and the attenuated forms, partly based upon Persian and 
 Baktrian art, which we studied under Han in the last chapter, 
 find new opportunity to expand in the richer Buddhist iconography. 
 The rhythmic lines of decoration, first shown in Mesopotamian ornament, 
 and afterward in such Ceylonese as the “ moonstones,” now enter 
 into the lotos and flame halos of delicate bronzes, often in low 
 relief. The figures in these reliefs, sometimes to be studied from 
 stone copies, are generally, to the North, much attenuated, long, 
 thin, and graceful, not unlike the Greekish figures found in relief 
 upon Baktrian coins. The earliest Chinese Himalayan bronzes, 
 though ruder, had this tendency to slimness and height. These 
 
Bronze Figures on a Priest’s Staff-Head 
 
CHINESE BUDDHIST ART 
 
 4i 
 
 two features, attenuation and decorative curvature, distinguish the 
 
 finest North Chinese sculpture of the 6th century. 
 
 But in the South we have a different movement, which perhaps is 
 to be regarded as double. On the one side, more graceful 
 
 Buddhas of a South Indian type, with concentric lines of clinging 
 drapery, persist down to the Tang ; but, more important, there is 
 
 a movement, particularly located in the Eastern provinces of the 
 
 South — called Go — to utilize for purposes of Buddhist sculpture 
 the indigenous plastic genius which had created the unglazed pottery, 
 the bronze drums, and the clay and bronze animals, such as the frogs. 
 This plastic genius of the South, long lying dormant and con- 
 fined to secular decoration, now suddenly expanded in the new field 
 of Buddhist creation. The bronze Buddhas of this school, like the 
 Han and post-Han animals, are heavy and severe in type, square 
 in their main shapes — square heads, square crowns, square bodies 
 to which the flying draperies closely cling — the heads, hands and feet 
 too large for the bodies ; the draperies opening in little shell-shaped 
 folds, the features hard and sharp, with projecting angular nose — not 
 unlike what the heads in the Han stone silhouettes suggest. We 
 can feel that this is a more primitive art than the Northern, with 
 not the faintest suggestion of Greco-Baktrian grace in it, and hardly 
 more than a trace of Indian suavity. It is not specifically Pacific 
 either, although there remains a chance that what 1 have spoken of 
 as the Southern prehistoric school of unglazed clay modelling may 
 be remotely related to Pacific. The type of such Buddhas and 
 Bodhistatwas, for the two are not greatly differentiated, is the gilt 
 bronze statuette still at Horiuji. It comes like a being from a 
 new Buddhist world. 
 
 We have many reasons to believe that a considerable intercourse 
 had grown up between the Eastern Chinese of Go and the early 
 Japanese, as far back as the fifth century at least. Hence came by the 
 evident sea-route the knowledge of Chinese writing and classical 
 literature, and the first hints of Buddhism. The Japanese still call 
 their earliest pronunciation of Chinese characters — preserved by their 
 syllabury — “ the Go sound.” There must have been immigration to 
 Japan from Go, for we have such traditions as that a Chinese 
 Buddhist sculptor of the Go School came over to Japan about the 
 year 500, and became naturalized in Yamato under the family name 
 
 VOL. 1. f 
 
42 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Tori. We shall notice the work of the descendants of this man in 
 the next chapter. 
 
 A most interesting merging of these several Northern and Southern 
 schools of art, and of the social tendencies to which they belonged, was 
 achieved in the year 589 by the foundation of the first solid Imperial 
 dynasty since the fall of Han, 350 years before. This Sui (Zui) dynasty, 
 passionately devoted to Buddhism, proved to be short-lived, serving as 
 a mere introduction to the great Tang (To) dynasty, as the Tsin had 
 done for the Han 800 years earlier. For purposes of the history of 
 culture we may take the Sui and the earliest years of Han as if 
 they formed a single movement. The characteristics of this move- 
 ment are clearly involved in a fertile union of so many rich diverging 
 tendencies. 
 
 For a moment the lordly Confucians of the North, rejoicing in the 
 re-achieved national unity, joined hands with their Buddhist and Taoist 
 brothers from the South, mingling tendencies to literary and art 
 impulse which had diverged or grown up under widely differing con- 
 ditions. The whole rich past of Chinese experience could be brought 
 under a single view, and creation could be attempted in a new and 
 freer form that should transcend all the other forms, while incorporating 
 their material. This is the central reason for that extraordinary flowing 
 of the Chinese genius in the early Tang dynasty. We shall follow it 
 only in its very first steps, up say to about 640 a.d., and again only 
 so far as it affects Buddhist sculpture. 
 
 It is fairly clear just how the bronze types were enriched by a 
 conjunction of the two main tendencies, although for a time, as in the 
 early Corean work, we notice a good deal of oscillation between the 
 two poles, and some ineffective effort. In general we may point to a 
 reconciliation between the two main aesthetic features of North and 
 South — the tall slim grace and exquisite curvature of the former, and 
 the heavy and solid sobriety of plastic form in the latter. The strong 
 bronze modelling of the Tori type, mentioned above, now became used 
 to execute more rounded, tall and human figures, of perfected contour. 
 Such bronze statuettes as the Buddha of Healing, Yakushi catching up 
 his long robes in his left hand, probably belong to this new movement. 
 So does the larger seated figure formerly belonging to M. S. Bing, of 
 Paris, with the beautiful plates and the base of angels in low relief 
 seated on lotos thrones and playing on musical instruments. These 
 
The "Five Kokuzo.” At Toji, Kioto 
 
CHINESE BUDDHIST ART 
 
 43 
 
 latter figures have a combination of grace and sweetness in conception, 
 and of a certain rude naivete in style, that reminds us of the early 
 work of Donatello. A still more perfect example is the little bronze 
 Kwannon of Contemplation, owned by the Fine Arts Academy in Kioto. 
 This was found by one of my Japanese colleagues and myself during 
 one of our early explorations, and purchased by us as a nucleus 
 for treasures which we hoped that a museum attached to the coming 
 school would eventually collect. This has perfect suavity of contour 
 combined with restraint, as naive as an Egyptian bronze, yet human as 
 archaic Greek, using the fold system of the bronze drapery in the Go 
 School as the starting-point of wonderfully rich and unsymmetrical line 
 relations. But one of the finest groups of this period (from 580 to 
 640 a.d.) are the hard, dark wooden statues, more than half of the 
 size of life, of the so-called “ 5 Kokuzo,’’ now owned by the temple of 
 Toji in Southern Kioto. These retain all the quality and feeling of 
 bronze ; the splendid naive animals, peacock, horse, etc., on which the 
 figures sit, recalling the early Southern animal sculptures in clay and 
 metal. The figures here show that projection of the face line in profile 
 over the line of the depressed chest, and nearly in line with the 
 projecting abdomen, which belongs to most all the work of this day 
 ( 600 a.d.) in China, Corea, and Japan. It is possible that this 
 characteristic contour implies the mystical depression of the diaphragm 
 and the withholding of inspiration — -a feature entirely changed in later 
 work. Here too the lengthening of the lobes of the ears is shown to 
 be due to the insertion of heavy cylindrical ornaments enlarged at each 
 end. This feature is found in other Chinese statues of this date, as 
 in the Chin or Dzin Bisjamon of Seiroji, near Kioto. Here we have 
 the very type of a North Chinese warrior, with oblique rolling eyes, 
 but of a tall slender figure clothed in armour, utterly opposed to the 
 dumpy Chinese warriors of modern art. 
 
 That we should make a break at this point is due to the facts — first, 
 that Corean and Japanese art have already started under influences 
 derived from North, South, and the Sui union ; so that we should study 
 these important branches in connection with the parent stem ; and the 
 fact that Chinese art itself is about to take on several new features 
 with the rising Tang, notably the modifications of the Greco-Buddhist 
 School. Before we come to consider that powerful solvent, we must 
 make a full inventory of those naive but charming forms of Far- 
 
44 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Eastern Buddhist art that centre about the illumination of Sui. In 
 Japan especially we shall find records of this art far richer and more 
 splendid than any which have yet been discovered by us in China. But 
 the Japanese branch grew partly from Corean transplanting, so that we 
 must first consider briefly the art of the Peninsula. 
 


 
 Ij/JJflOH TA 8aOD83H'l HHT -lO JIAT3AI 
 
DETAIL OF THE FRESCOES AT HORIUJI 
 
Chapter IV. 
 
 EARLY COREAN AND JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART. 
 CHINESE INFLUENCE. BRONZE SCULPTURE. 
 
 6th and jth Centuries a.d. 
 
 C HINA is, in fact, what she names herself, “ The Middle King- 
 dom.” She is like a great central tower encircled with powerful 
 buttresses of races, partly akin to her in blood, partly tributary, 
 but all feeling the weight of her great ideals. Her neighbours on the 
 west and south — Thibetans, Burmese, Malays of Siam and Annam — we 
 do not specially consider in this monograph, what is strongest in their 
 early art being more related to Indian than Mongolian. But on the 
 north and north-east China is fringed with a line of states and peoples, 
 often hostile, sometimes servile, but of a blood and thought closely 
 akin to her own. These, too, have all been submerged by very similar 
 waves of Northern Buddhism ; and they have imported from the 
 common centre Taoist and Confucian principles in varying proportions. 
 
 The Hunnish, Scythian and Mongolian hordes to the north have 
 seldom entered sufficiently into the pale of civilization to produce even 
 a branch art, except when, for short periods, they have put themselves 
 in possession of the Imperial throne. They have little in common 
 with what we have called the Pacific affiliations of the primitive 
 Chinese. But for the tribes on the Amoor river — to a less extent the 
 Manchus — for the Coreans, and especially for the Japanese, what is 
 primitive and what is fine in Chinese life and art have had a vital 
 meaning, so that we may regard their several, and often robust, 
 civilizations as almost integral parts of the central movement. The 
 most original and the most independent of all these surrounding states 
 has been, of course, the Japanese. The civilization of this complex 
 island race has often proved itself, and is proving itself again to-day, 
 to be for incisive idea and flexibility of spirit — less a subordinate or 
 
46 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 tributary than an independent leader in the whole group. No doubt 
 it can be made the object of a separate study ; and yet, especially for 
 the purposes of Art, there is sound value in regarding its work as a 
 variation, though a very unruly one, upon the Chinese norm. 
 
 Closer to China than is Japan, closer in spirit if not in race, because 
 closer in communication, lies the peninsula of Corea, originally a wealthy, 
 prosperous, and progressive country, though now so feeble. Corea 
 has only in part, and then for very short periods, been included 
 within the limits of the Chinese empire. At other periods she has 
 been dominated, and now seems finally to be dominated, by the Japanese. 
 But in the early days of her civilization, from the 4th to the 7 th 
 centuries of our era, she betrayed so much of independent vigour 
 and genius as to make her art, though only for a short illumination, 
 a special and important centre of creation. This happened, too, at a 
 time when Japan, still in the grasp of semi-barbarism, was prepared to 
 take her first great step out into the light. That the neighbouring 
 states of Corea, only a few days’ sail across the narrow straits, should 
 have become the special tutor of Japan at the time of Japan’s most 
 critical youth, is a circumstance so fortunate as to make at least a brief- 
 study of her early Art a part of the study of Chinese and Japanese. 
 Corea, in some real sense, was a link between the two ; and for a 
 moment, about the year 600, her Art flared up into a splendour which 
 fairly surpassed the achievements of her two chief rivals. 
 
 A still juster view of the relationship is found, if we consider the 
 juxtaposition of three important land projections into the China Sea: 
 the peninsula of Corea pointing south-east, the Southern islands of 
 Japan sweeping to the south-west, and the Chinese province of 
 Go projecting to the north of east. Between these three early sea 
 communication had been easy, and both Corea and Japan had been 
 influenced by the Art of Go while they were still in their barbarous 
 beginnings. 
 
 Some European writers have appeared to hold that Corean Art in 
 the 6th century must have been influenced quite specially by the Art 
 of Persia. This seems to be due to their assumption that Persian 
 Art in the 6th century was like what it became after contact with 
 Mongolic races in the 13th century and onward. The Persian Art 
 of this day was Sassanian, which can be described as a mixture of 
 debased Assyrian with debased Roman. We have already seen that 
 
The Famous Corean Tamamushi Shrine, 
 
 at Horiuji. 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 47 
 
 the early Tang dynasty of China was in some sort of communication 
 with the Sassanian coast. Whatever small Persian influence entered 
 Corea and Japan at this time was Sassanian, and in both cases probably 
 derived from intercourse with Go, where commercial relations with the 
 ports of the Indian Ocean were already centering. The likeness of 
 Corean, Chinese and Japanese Art of the 7th century, however, to the 
 Persian of a later day, such as it is, is much more likely due to a 
 counter-wave of influence, which carried Eastern motive into West 
 Asia. This movement, however, and in fact the many refluxes ol 
 influence between China, India and Persia, lie beyond our scope. 
 
 The early Buddhist Art of Corea, of which we hardly get satisfactory 
 glimpses before the 6th century, is derived from a convergence of the 
 same two streams which, as we have seen, were to enrich the central- 
 ized Art of the Dzin dynasty in China; that is, motives from both North 
 and South. By overland route Corea remained in close touch with the 
 Tartar north, with its Corean trade with the Mongols and Manchus 
 and Amoor peoples, and thus with a more primitive slender Buddhist 
 type that ran somewhat to effeminacy of curve decoration. By mari- 
 time route, on the other hand, Corea had come under the influence of 
 the southern Yangtse provinces, with their severe sculpturesque style 
 and their skill for modelling in bronze. In a special sense, therefore, 
 Corea had already forestalled the Dzin dynasty in its ability to unite 
 the two streams of south and north, and therefore rose upon a sudden 
 wave of artistic power which in China itself was slower in gathering. 
 Corean Art, however, is not just like Dzin ; partly because of a new 
 racial genius, partly because the elements were to be combined in 
 different proportions. In the finest Corean work the Go element 
 probably played a more decisive part, because while to China Go was 
 only a part of the south, to Corea it was the south itself. We find, 
 then, in Corean 6th century Art a wider range of forms between the 
 two extremes of excessive attenuation and short dumpy figures with 
 large heads. 
 
 The Corean race was probably in prehistoric times, like its neighbours, 
 strongly affiliated in custom with the Northern Pacific races ; but records 
 of this early day are mostly lost. As in Japan, the relics dug from 
 primitive graves reveal forms related to the Han dynasty of China, 
 under which Pacific motive is already submerged. But during the days 
 of Han itself, Corea and Japan, quite independent of the Chinese 
 
48 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 monarch, had come into close relations through an invasion of Japan. 
 If we could see the rude art of both peoples at this time we should 
 probably find it Pacific. Corea paid tribute to Japan for many years. 
 Still neither of those peoples could have been regarded as highly 
 civilized. The beginnings of Corean culture, which preceded Japanese, 
 themselves followed the dispersion of Chinese peoples due to the long 
 disturbance of the civil wars of the 3rd century. Feudal, as distinguished 
 from dynastic Han, held out until 263. Go, one of the most import- 
 ant of the three fighting states, submitted to Western Shin, thus ending 
 the war in 280. Doubtless whole groups of colonizers from Han and 
 Go had sought shelter in the neutral peninsula, thus bringing the 
 industries of civilization. The study of Chinese writing and of one or 
 two Confucian classics came even as far as Japan, but from Corea, in 
 285. Through the 4th century these disturbances persisted, and little 
 new culture could have been gained. But with the division between 
 north and south in the 3rd, the new Buddhist Art, sweeping over 
 China in two separate waves, could reunite in Corean creative efforts. 
 It is from this date that we consider a high Corean Buddhist culture 
 to begin that finally displaces the relics of Han Art. But perhaps 
 nothing that we have to show of Corean Art dates from before the 
 6th century. It is almost entirely derived from early importations into 
 Japan. No attempt will here be made to distinguish between the arts 
 of the three states into which Corea was early divided, but we shall 
 merely say that the state called Hiakusai, the nearest both to Japan and 
 to Go, produced most of the pieces which have been preserved to Japan. 
 
 One of the earliest Corean Buddhist types which we possess is the 
 very attenuated bronze seated Kwannon of contemplation, a small statuette. 
 Its extreme thinness is almost grotesque, and its sharp features are a 
 mixture of Han and Himalayan. On the other hand, the draperies 
 show influence of the Go method. A much larger figure of the same 
 subject is worked up in wood and leather, the latter substance being 
 used for the connecting bands of drapery. By far the tallest of the 
 Corean figures is the standing Kwannon with a vase, still on the great 
 altar of the Kondo of Horiuji. The head is small and well formed, 
 but the body of excessive length, some fifteen heads perhaps. The close 
 fitting of the long downward drapery lines, with almost no relief, is 
 essentially Corean, but that phase of it which may be Sassanian is 
 native. A stiff formal curvature is given to the openings of folds, 
 
Detail of Painting of Tamamushi Shrine. Painting on the Doors of the 
 
 Horiuji. Tamamushi Shrine. 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 49 
 
 the ends of mantles curving up like flower petals. For primitive 
 painting and early writing in the Go style we have the illuminated 
 Scripture roll, where little dumpy Buddhas are surrounded by equally 
 crude disciples, all in harsh primitive colours. The vague suggestions 
 of rock and tree are in a free scratchy style that recalls the early 
 Chinese landscape in oil previously mentioned. 
 
 That this is the very nature of Corean landscape is also shown 
 by the paintings, also probably in thin oil, upon the so-called Tamamushi 
 Shrine. But elaborate Corean secular painting is best exemplified in 
 the portrait of the Japanese Prince Shotoku, made at the beginning 
 of the 7th century by his guest, the Corean Prince Asa. 
 
 Two great monuments of sixth-century Corean art still remain. The 
 Tamamushi Shrine, already mentioned, is a miniature two-story temple 
 made of wood, to be used as a kind of reliquary, which was presented 
 to the Japanese Empress about 590 a.d., and which still stands in 
 perfect preservation upon the great altar at Horiuji, near Nara. The 
 roof is finished in metal in the form of tiling. The lower story is 
 hardly more than a great box, with paintings upon its four sides. 
 But the upper story opens with miniature temple doors, which, as well 
 as the solid parts of the walls, are elaborately painted on the exterior. 
 The paintings below are much defaced, but the landscape portions show 
 mountain forms that are probably akin to the Han clay reliefs of the 
 Kunlung range. Long, lanky Buddhist angels fly through the air, amid 
 bamboo trees. The finest paintings, and best preserved, are the two 
 tall, thin Buddhist deities upon the doors, which show a relationship 
 to the thin art of the Northern Wei. Here is a hint of the flying draperies, 
 which sculpture for the most part eschewed. But the most striking 
 feature about this shrine is the elaborate finish of all the corners and 
 pillars and transverse beams with an overlay of plates of perforated 
 bronze, which were probably gilded, the patterns of the perforation 
 being among the finest specimens of the Corean power over abstract 
 curvature. These repeating patterns are full of unique pictorial tangles 
 of long, cool curves of restraint, knotting themselves at unexpected 
 foci. This fine Corean curvature we must explain as an outcome of the 
 Babylonian of Han, re-inforced by the Persio-lndian of Buddhist originals, 
 like the “moonstones,” made delicate by Tartar Art in the divided 
 centuries, and strong again by the specially decorative genius of the 
 Coreans. 
 
50 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 How early the Coreans began their plastic work in glazed pottery, 
 for which they later became so famous, is still a disputed question. 
 No examples of it are found in the Japanese treasury of the 8th 
 century. Corean temple architecture is exemplified by the oldest buildings 
 of Horiuji in Japan, which we shall soon describe ; and the decorative 
 arts are still further shown in the hangings and carvings upon the 
 Kondo of Horiuji. Some of the priests’ vestments, showing Sassanian 
 designs of rosettes essentially Babylonian, and Persian groups of hunting 
 kings and lions were probably brought from Hiakusai at this time. 
 
 But the greatest perfect monument of Corean Art that has come 
 down to us, without which we could only conjecture as to the height 
 reached by the peninsula creations, is the great standing Buddha, or 
 possibly Bodhisattwa, of the Yumedono pavilion at Horiuji. This 
 most beautiful statue, a little larger than life, was discovered by me 
 and a Japanese colleague in the summer of 1884. I had credentials 
 from the central government which enabled me to requisition the opening 
 of godowns and shrines. The central space of the octagonal Yumedono 
 was occupied by a great closed shrine, which ascended like a pillar towards 
 the apex. The priests of Horiuji confessed that tradition ascribed the 
 contents of the shrine to Corean work of the days of Suiko, but that 
 it had not been opened for more than two hundred years. On fire 
 with the prospect of such a unique treasure, we urged the priests to 
 open it by every argument at our command. They resisted long, 
 alleging that in punishment for the sacrilege an earthquake might well 
 destroy the temple. Finally we prevailed, and I shall never forget our 
 feelings as the long disused key rattled in the rusty lock. Within the 
 shrine appeared a tall mass closely wrapped about in swathing bands 
 of cotton cloth, upon which the dust of ages had gathered. It was no 
 light task to unwrap the contents, some 500 yards of cloth having been 
 used, and our eyes and nostrils were in danger of being choked with the 
 pungent dust. But at last the final folds of the covering fell away, 
 and this marvellous statue, unique in the world, came forth to human 
 sight for the first time in centuries. It was a little taller than life, but 
 hollow at the back, carved most carefully from some hard wood which 
 had been covered with gilding, now stained to the yellow-brown of bronze. 
 The head was ornamented with a wonderful crown of Corean openwork 
 gilt bronze, from which hung long streamers of the same material set 
 with jewels. 
 
The Corean Standing Kwannon with a Vase. The very attenuated Bronze seated 
 
 Still on the great altar of the Kondo of Horiuji. Kwannon of Contemplation. 
 
 Front and profile views. At Horiuji. 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 51 
 
 But it was the aesthetic wonders of this work that attracted us most. 
 From the front the figure is not quite so noble, but seen in profile 
 it seemed to rise to the height of archaic Greek art. The long lines 
 of drapery, sweeping at the two sides from shoulders to feet, were 
 unbroken in single quiet curves approximating straight lines, giving 
 great height and dignity to the figure. The chest was depressed, the 
 abdomen slightly protruding, the action of the hands, holding between 
 them a jewel or casket of medicine, rendered with vigorous modelling. 
 But the finest feature was the profile view of the head, with its sharp 
 Han nose, its straight clear forehead, and its rather large — almost negroid 
 — lips, on which a quiet mysterious smile played, not unlike Da Vinci’s 
 Mona Lisa’s. Recalling the archaic stiffness of Egyptian Art at its 
 finest, it appeared still finer in the sharpness and individuality of the 
 cutting. In slimness it was like a Gothic statue from Amiens, but far 
 more peaceful and unified in its single system of lines. Its arrangement 
 of draperies seemed to be based upon the bronze statuette type of Go, 
 but suddenly expanded to unexpected beauty by the addition of such 
 slender proportions. We saw at once that it was the supreme masterpiece 
 of Corean creation, and must have proved a most powerful model to 
 the artists of Suiko, especially to Shotoku ; but all that we have to 
 speak of later. 
 
 The one additional feature which here merits the highest praise is 
 the wonderful flower-like tangle of the curved lines in the open-work 
 crown which twine about the focus of a crescent moon. Whatever the 
 promise of decorative beauty in low relief or perforated plates already 
 approached by Han mirrors, or Wei groups, or the Corean scroll work 
 upon Tamamushi, all were far surpassed by the richness and aesthetic 
 unity of this splendid crown. It must ever remain a chief monument 
 of the temporary supremacy of Corean Art at the end of the sixth 
 century. 
 
 This must end our special account of Corean Art, which we intro- 
 duce here only because it forms the fitting and necessary preface to 
 the study of early Japanese Buddhistic art. If the Go influence came 
 directly into Japan with the Tori family and others, it recoiled again 
 in a second more fluent wave and mingled with other fertile germs 
 from the shores of Corea. So many were the types that came pouring 
 into Japan from all parts of Asia, India, North China, Go and Corea, 
 that at first the Japanese sculptors were almost bewildered. The 
 
5 2 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 variety of choice, however, brought with it freedom ; and certainly 
 among all the most delicate and aesthetic models were those which little 
 Corea furnished. 
 
 ******** 
 
 In entering upon the study of the total Art of Japan we have a 
 subject which might well be detached for a separate monograph. And 
 yet we deliberately renounce the privilege of that more obvious unity 
 for the difficult task of describing the larger unity into which the 
 creations ot all East Asian peoples were really swept. It may seem 
 presumptuous for one who is neither a scholar nor a sociologist to 
 group cultures which no scholar yet understands in their separation ; 
 and yet just because art work furnishes such a large amount of 
 evidence, impressive even where it lacks explanatory record, it is most 
 important to weigh the unique testimony of these aesthetic documents. 
 
 Japan ! What romantic thoughts and memories arise at the name ! 
 Set uniquely along the coming paths of traffic between East and West, 
 endowed by temperament to become the interpreter of East to West 
 and of West to East, we have here an illuminated corner of history’s 
 scroll, a flash of human genius at highest tension, which in our 
 records only the sensitively organized Greek, and that for only a few 
 centuries, ever reached. The land itself — a fitting casket for the soul — 
 is as broken into islands, peaks and promontories as the Greek Archi- 
 pelago, but swathed with a far richer garment of semi-tropical foliage. 
 The charm of the South Sea Islands is all here without their excessive 
 enervation ; for along her second unique line of geographical setting, 
 Japan, washed on opposite sides by currents from the Equator and the 
 Pole, declares also kinship to that bright North with its mysterious 
 races who still seem to retain the keys of Pacific Art. 
 
 It would be folly here to attempt even a succinct view of Japanese 
 history or culture, or to enter into those deep studies of Shinto motive 
 and family cult which Lafcadio Hearn has illuminated. I shall have to 
 assume that the reader already knows much of this, and confine myself 
 to those additional bits of information which throw direct light upon 
 the path of Art. 
 
 Japanese civilized Art probably begins at the end of the 6th century 
 with the almost simultaneous introduction of Buddhism from Go, from 
 Dzin, and from Hiakusai. And yet there is never a beginning to a 
 national art; pursue it as far back as we may to some primitive guiding 
 
Portrait of Shotoku-Taisiii 
 and his two Children. 
 By the Corean Prince Asa. 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 53 
 
 impulse, beyond that we still find traces of indigenous power. The long 
 interval between the 3rd and the 6th century was for Japan a period of 
 slow acquisition, of semi-civilization, of the dim dawning of industry and 
 letters — a period whose almost prehistoric art is known to us only by 
 the recent exploration of rude stone-cut tombs. But still beyond that 
 stretches a far vaguer world of unknown derivation, which has left 
 almost savage traces in the primitive shell-heaps, and which must have 
 had close affiliation with the Ainos of the north and the Miaotse of 
 Go on the south. 
 
 The Japanese people, though of extraordinarily complex origin, have 
 been welded by time into an almost homogeneous race. And yet we 
 can trace in their art signs of successive immigrations, much as Dr. 
 Schliemann traces the nine superimposed ages of Ilium. At the bottom, 
 or near it, lie the broken shards of unglazed pottery from the primitive 
 shell-heaps. Above this, perhaps, and connecting it with the Han 
 period, are various relics of the Pacific Age, conventional designs upon 
 bronze ornaments, comma-shaped jewels of hard stone which were once 
 strung into necklaces like bear’s claws, and the first hint of masks 
 which, even among their later Shinto derivations, show close analogies 
 with both the south — New Guinea and the Philippines, and the north- 
 east — Alaska and Mexico. In some cases this analogy amounts to 
 identity. 
 
 But perhaps the most satisfactory evidence of this early art is found 
 in a comparison of the architecture of the primitive Ise shrines with 
 Filippino huts on the one hand and the Aino villages of Yezo on the 
 other. In a view of the one-storied Aino thatched houses with their 
 narrow streets we probably have a correct glimpse of a Japanese “ city ” 
 of, say, about the time of Christ, among which the dwelling of the chief 
 or “ emperor ” was a mere enlargement of the type upon a raised plat- 
 form much in the Ise style. Aino or Kumaso or Yebisu settlements 
 remained common all over Japan until the 7th century, and lingered in 
 Northern Hondo even down to the 12th. Many Japanese geographical 
 names are derived from this primitive source. It is said to have been 
 in the 2nd year b.c. that an imperial decree abolished the immolation 
 of living human beings at Court funerals, clay figures being substituted. 
 And it was not till 468 a.d. that even the emperor’s “palace” enjoyed 
 the addition of a second story. 
 
 The first great semi-civilised age, the dawn of civilisation as opposed 
 
54 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 to this primitive barbarism, extends from the 3rd century to the 6th, 
 and is conterminous with the slow dispersion of Han Art and blood 
 eastward into Corea and over the Yellow Sea. Yet even this pre- 
 Buddhistic Japan retains Pacific forms in its ornament, mixed with some 
 Han-like patterns derived from Corea and Go. The building of military 
 and industrial roads began in 250 ; weavers were sent as tribute from 
 Corea in 283 ; a finer breed of horse was received the following year ; 
 a Corean Professor of Chinese classics introduced the written characters 
 in 285 ; Chinese came from Han in 289; Corean physicians came in 
 414; mulberries were planted in 457; an imperial commission to Go 
 returned in 462 ; Go sends special Chinese weavers in 470 ; carpenters 
 and masons are ordered from Corea in 493 ; a special embassy from 
 the Buddhist Emperor Butei of Liang arrives in 522 ; but the decisive 
 step that marks the limit of this acquisitive age was taken when a 
 Corean prince sent over to the Japanese Emperor Kimmei in 552 a 
 partial set of Buddhist scripture and images presumably bronze. 
 
 The chief source of our knowledge of the art of this transition 
 period is the grave tumuli of Yamato and elsewhere, from which modern 
 archaeology has unearthed the objects buried with kings, heroes and 
 statesmen. These tombs are narrow chambers lined with large faced 
 stone blocks, over which a large mound of earth was heaped. In the 
 centre of the chamber stands a massive stone coffin, with an enormously 
 heavy board cover in a single piece. From within such capacious 
 receptacles have been disinterred the human bones, armour, swords, 
 jewels, vessels, mirrors and clay figures of men and horses belonging 
 to this interesting day. The unglazed clay work is essentially like 
 Southern Chinese, with its oven-pots surmounted with communal 
 service, and with horses and other animals not unlike in shape the 
 Han pottery derived from Southern sources. This pottery is only a 
 refinement upon the savage fragments found in the primitive shell 
 heaps, only that was more blue in tone, whereas this tends toward cream- 
 yellow. The human figures are rude, mostly like those of wood and 
 stone found throughout Pacific lands, hardly inferior to the best of 
 Mexico and Peru, and at their best rising to a vigour of action, as 
 in the clay bowmen, which foreshadows the civilized Buddhist art of 
 the seventh and eight centuries. 
 
 The metal work is bronze and iron, showing a mixture of at least 
 two influences ; one akin to the work of North-Eastern Asiatic tribes 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 55 
 
 and essentially Pacific in ornament, the other essentially Han. The 
 Corean derived element is probably itself already a mixture of these 
 two. The sword blades are straight for thrusting, and quite unlike the 
 later curved sword of Japan. Armour is made of a few thin plates of 
 steel sewn or riveted together. Casques are simple pointed domes 
 tightly fitting. Bronze mirrors are clearly Han in type, the simple star 
 and circle ornament relieved on the back, sometimes accompanied by 
 rusty Han inscriptions also in relief. An immense amount of bead 
 work is found, mostly in carved shell and stone, among which the 
 comma-shaped magatama, often of a clear green stone, plays a powerful 
 part. In short, it is all the arts of a crude people rising upon the 
 circumference of civilization through importations from the centre, and 
 not yet sufficient master of itself or of technique to invent indigenous 
 forms. 
 
 Upon this simple island people, with its patriarchal organization, 
 its village groups, its crude domestic industries, and its primitive Shinto 
 Shamanism, descended rapidly towards the end of the sixth century the 
 full splendour and force of continental civilization, with its imperial 
 institutes, its rich city life, its imaginative literature, and especially with 
 its deeper moral questioning, religious theories, and vast views of 
 spiritual hierarchy in the world of Buddhist gods. Buddhism crept 
 in slowly, and with some preliminary storms, between the middle and 
 the end of the century, the noble Soga family becoming its strongest 
 patron. But in 593, on the sudden death of the Emperor Sujun, his 
 widow ascended the throne as the Empress Suiko, who thereafter 
 enjoyed an uninterrupted reign of 36 years, dying at the ripe age of 
 75, a reign so fraught with wonderful changes that we must speak of 
 this first illumination of Japanese culture as we do of the reigns of 
 Elizabeth and Victoria, and call it the age of Suiko. Now the husband 
 of Suiko had, as a younger man, taken part, as had also his son, 
 Shotoku, in the first Buddhist nobles’ war that had been declared against 
 the new religion on purist Shinto grounds by the rebel Moriya. On 
 coming to the throne, after substantial victory, Sujun had registered 
 his intention to take the new religion out of private aristocratic 
 patronage, and make it the imperial faith, in short a State religion, as 
 it was already in Corea. This vow of her dead husband the great 
 
56 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Empress Suiko made it her long life work to carry into effect, more 
 than seconded as she was by the Prince Imperial, a man of such extra- 
 ordinary mind that he takes his place among the great creative sages 
 of Eastern Asia. He has sometimes been called the “ Constantine or 
 Buddhism” for Japan. And, though he never ascended the throne, 
 dying some years before his mother, this Prince Shotoku was evidently 
 the core of all reforms. His friend, the King of Hiakusai, delighted 
 at the new move in Japan, sent over his son, Prince Asa, in 597, who 
 then painted the famous portrait of Shotoku already alluded to ; and we 
 may presume that it was at this time that the Tamamushi Shrine, which 
 we have elaborately described, was presented to the Empress Suiko. 
 In 603 and 604, Shotoku himself composed and promulgated a new 
 constitution, which divided the government into graded offices with 
 appropriate rules and costumes. Not content with this, the Empress 
 sent, in 606, a student of the noble class to study constitutional and 
 court law in Dzin, the newly reunited Chinese Empire. Besides his 
 report, the Coreans were zealous in sending Dzin books to Yamato. 
 A history of Japan had been ordered in 620 ; but Shotoku died in the 
 following year. 
 
 But the greatest work of Suiko and Shotoku was undoubtedly the 
 founding of Buddhism and of Buddhist Art upon solid and splendid 
 foundations. The first school of Japanese Art proper is the Suiko 
 school. In the second year of the Empress’s reign, 594, an imperial 
 decree ordered the building of Buddhist temples, and especially en- 
 trusting the work to the young prince. Shotoku now bent all his 
 energies to import from Corea, scholars, priests, architects, wood 
 carvers, bronze founders, clay modellers, masons, gilders, tile makers 
 and weavers ; in short, all skilled artisans whose work was involved 
 in creating and installing a great Buddhist temple such as were already 
 known in the peninsula kingdom. Not content with this, and realizing 
 how utterly the success of such complicated and novel work would 
 depend upon his personal inspection, he deliberately studied crafts- 
 manship in these several arts, placed himself under the most learned 
 and devout of the Corean Buddhist scholars, and in due time allowed 
 himself to take holy orders under the name Shotoku, somewhat 
 like but with more serious purpose than the Chinese Emperor Butei 
 of Liang a century before. Full of modesty, zeal, and piety, Shotoku 
 gave lectures, interpreting the new religion, not only to his relatives 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 57 
 
 in the Court, but to the people, who, dazed with the splendour and 
 soul-stimulus of the new culture, thronged earnestly to hear him in 
 the temples. 
 
 But Shotoku never lost sight of his central purpose to erect a 
 great dominating monastery in grounds not far removed from the 
 imperial residence. The capital of Japan, which had been removed 
 by successive monarchs from point to point of Yamato provinces ever 
 since the days of its conqueror, Jimmu Tenno, was now located on 
 the site of the present town of Tatsuta, a little station on the Nara- 
 Ozaka railway, where the picturesque winding Tatsuta river, famous 
 in even the earliest Japanese poetry for its fringe of maples emerging 
 from the slopes of Mount Kaminabi, debouches upon the gravelly 
 northern slopes of the great Yamato plain. Here, upon the last 
 curvetting of the foothills, between whose grim and scarred domes 
 ran up little bays of level green that might support the monastery' 
 with abundant harvest, Shotoku decided to erect his master temple. 
 A labour of disappointing years it was to accumulate rare craftsmen and 
 expensive materials, mostly by importation ; but Shotoku in person 
 superintended the levelling of terraces, the cutting and hauling of the 
 great cedar log pillars from the mountain slopes, the kilns and the 
 forges and the thousand temporary workshops, saw rise slowly into the 
 air architectural piles of storied pavilion and pagoda that dwarfed to 
 toadstools the wildest architectural fancies of any West Pacific 
 islanders ; until at last the dream of his father Sujun stood completed 
 before him, the great monastery temple Horiuji, built in arcades with 
 tower gates about an enormous sanded court, and centred with blue- 
 tiled palaces that rose up the mountain slopes terrace behind terrace. 
 Here now was the enormous structure dedicated in presence of prelates 
 and ambassadors from Hiakusai and Dzin, and here the regular work 
 of a great cathedral church was inaugurated in 616. Many branch 
 temples, dependent upon it, were built during the next twenty years in 
 neighbouring parts of the province, especially on sites where later was 
 to stand the metropolitan city of Nara. 
 
 The early history of Horiuji is obscure, and it is possible to infer 
 that a disastrous fire destroyed a large part, but not all, of the original 
 structures, in 680. But there is fair reason to believe that three 
 of the buildings at present existing date from before the fire, and 
 back to the age of Suiko — namely, the front gate guarded by the 
 
 vol. 1. G 
 
58 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 “ Two Kings,” the great pagoda in the fore-court, and the massive 
 Golden Hall (Kondo) containing the central altar. Otherwise we must 
 suppose that the Suiko hangings above this altar were faithfully copied 
 after the fire in a style that had already grown archaic — an improbable 
 supposition. Though the pagoda is somewhat heavy and flaring in 
 proportions, in the Kondo we have one of the noblest examples of 
 Japanese or of early Chinese architecture. Though the material be 
 but wood, we must remember that in this earthquake country good 
 wood is the most permanent material, proved, as in this case, to out- 
 last many a stone erection of mediaeval Europe. Already fine pro- 
 portion is in it, and a wonderful and unusual relation between base 
 and pitch of roof. If the front gate contains, as Mr. Cram seems to 
 think, evidence of Greco-Buddhist structure, that would be a reason 
 for dating it from after the conflagration, for there is no evidence of 
 any specific Greek influence in the art of the Suiko age. 
 
 In this temple of Horiuji were placed many of the great treasures 
 of Corean art that had already, as models, found their way into 
 Japan. Here, to-day, on the great altar of the Kondo, a solid block 
 of masonry, some 80 feet in length by 30 feet in width, and raised five 
 feet above the floor, stands the Tamamushi shrine, and several other 
 shrines of inferior workmanship, the excessively tall wooden Kwannon 
 already described, and other smaller pieces. When the Yumedono 
 Kwannon was removed to its present position we do not know, but it 
 would probably have stood originally on some part of the great 
 altar in the Kondo. The present contents of the many buildings of 
 Horiuji are made up of a motley aggregation of paintings, statues, 
 and sacred utensils, designed or collected at many different ages, and 
 of workmanship ranging from Indian and Persian through Chinese 
 and Corean to Japanese, sacred treasures which have been brought 
 to this central monastery as from age to age their original possessions 
 crumbled away or were burned through carelessness or in wars. This 
 process has made of Horiuji a natural and national museum, especially 
 of those forms of art which belonged to the worship of its antique 
 Sanson sect, a form of Buddhism which has now no other representa- 
 tive than Horiuji in the Japanese islands. As Sanson temple after 
 Sanson temple decayed, the mother, Horiuji, became the national 
 custodian of their treasures. 
 
 But of this enormous mass of material I intend to speak now, at 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 59 
 
 first, only of those portions which belong specifically to the Suiko age, 
 leaving the others to subsequent chapters. As one stands upon 
 the altar of Kondo, he gets to-day a strange, weird feeling of 
 Greekish frescoes, Norman hangings, Gothic statues, and Egyptian 
 bronzes, so varied is the jumble of forms of a hundred sizes. The 
 store-house, too, might be ransacked for pieces that would over-fill the 
 altar ; and it must be remembered that of the hundred or more 
 ancient bronze statuettes which formerly were treasured here, the 
 larger number, though not the largest pieces, were taken at the 
 restoration for the Imperial archives. 
 
 Picking out now the Suiko specimens in something like their 
 historic order, we ought first to refer back to their ancestor in that 
 stiff, square, gilt-bronze statuette which we have already taken as the 
 Go type of the fifth century. This was still kept at Horiuji, in the 
 
 godown, at the end of the 19th century. It will be remembered 
 
 that a Chinese sculptor of Go, possibly the author of this very piece, 
 had been naturalised, with other emigrants, as a Japanese citizen in 
 the early part of the sixth century, taking the Japanese family name, 
 Tori. That he could have practised the art of Buddhist sculpture in 
 Japan in those early years we have no evidence. But we do have 
 reason to believe that his son, who must have kept up through the 
 interval the knowledge and exercise of his plastic art, found oppor- 
 tunity, when Buddhism was coming into his father’s adopted country 
 at the end of the century, to return to the original home of inspira- 
 tion, and give us perhaps the first bronze statuette that we can 
 
 identify as made in Japan. This bears an inscription which, ascribing 
 
 it to the second Tori, seems to date it as of the year 589, in the 
 reign of Sujun. It is thin, being forced up out of a single sheet of 
 metal, but of a sombre dignity and primitive proportion which recalls 
 the solidity of Go. But to this has clearly been superadded some- 
 thing of the Corean delicacy of curvature, a greater slimness of figure, 
 a finer symmetrical sweep of the mantles at the side. It is most 
 interesting to compare this with, on the one hand, the Go gilt 
 Kwannon, and on the other with the far larger figure of the 
 Yumedono. It clearly partakes of the nature of both, and establishes 
 a sort of canon for the Suiko style. 
 
 Of those of the many existing statuettes which are probably not of 
 Indian, Chinese, or Corean workmanship, there are several others which 
 
 G 2 
 
60 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 exhibit the unity of this early Suiko type ; but the group which finally 
 establishes it as a school, and which is the most elaborate exemplification 
 of it, is the bronze altar-piece which was modelled and cast, under 
 Shotoku’s supervision, by the third generation of the Tori family, the 
 grandson of the original immigrant, as the holy of holies for the Kondo 
 of Horiuji, There it still stands, enthroned, near the centre of the 
 south side of the great railed altar. It is an elaborate group, richer 
 than any Chinese or Corean piece which to my knowledge we now 
 possess ; being a complete trinity of statues, thin but detached, com- 
 posed against a magnificent bronze halo-screen. The central figure 
 sits in attitude of a Buddha ; the side figures, Bodhisattwas, stand upon 
 lotos seed-pods. These side figures have separate flame halos detached 
 from the general screen-halo, which contains as its central feature the 
 circular halo of the Buddha’s head. The side figures have the large 
 square head and stiff proportions of the Go statuette, but with a sweep 
 of draperies which relates them clearly to the Yumedono Corean. The 
 open-work crown of the latter has here become a solid curved plate, 
 whose height gives the already large head too much prominence. This 
 Buddha must be taken, in lack of any other such perfect specimen, 
 to be the type of Suiko bronze Buddhas, and probably not far from 
 the type of fifth-century Go Buddhas. The head, though uncrowned, 
 is far too heavy and square, the features seeming not merely Indian, 
 but almost negro. The hands, too, are large and clumsy. But in 
 the disposition of the drapery, in spite of its primitiveness, we have 
 a pyramidal line system that approaches grandeur. The simple shawl- 
 like outer garment, open at the breast, folds on the arms, and then flowing 
 down over the crossed knees, enshrouds the throne below in a broad 
 rich set of curving folds that reveals a decorative beauty close to antique 
 Greek. It is a tremendous tribute to the genius of the sculptor, Tori 
 Busshi, that, overlooking the awkwardness of the human forms, we are 
 absorbed in the architectural splendours of the group. Not only do 
 the three figures build up into a finely flanked pyramid, but their unity 
 and beauty are enormously enhanced by the spacing and the lines of 
 the bronze screen. This is a large flat plate of bronze elaborately 
 ornamented in low relief. It rises in the form of two concentric arches 
 the inner of which contains within lotos tracery the main halo that 
 centres behind the Buddha’s forehead. The outer arch holds heavy 
 clouded forms writhing upward like smoke and flame, among which 
 
Ivondo Altar Trinity. 
 
 By Tori Busshi, at Horiuji. 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 61 
 
 sit in higher relief a group of small Buddhas. Between all, even the 
 minutest parts of this astonishing work, we find the most subtle curve 
 rhythm, that carries out into original creation germs of line feeling already 
 involved in Corean Art. Yet, far removed from the over- warm sphere 
 of Indian sensuousness, and without possible contact with West Asian 
 forms, it takes on much of the severity and dignity of archaic Greek 
 work. It strikes a happy compound of the three kindred geniuses 
 of Go, Corea, and Japan ; and as the initial creative work of the new 
 land, it augurs wonderful wealth for the coming art. And indeed in 
 the element of architectural beauty in sculpture it has only once been 
 surpassed in the second Trinity with a screen described at the end of 
 this chapter. 
 
 Nothing like a complete enumeration of the Suiko pieces known to 
 us can be attempted. Another bronze Buddha in fragmentary condition 
 stands upon the same altar. But a second interesting group of studies 
 is found in the wooden figures which chiefly belong to two temples, 
 Horiuji, and the Rokkakudo of Udzumasa near Kioto. Closely akin 
 to the Bodhisattwa of the bronze Trinity is the separate wooden 
 Kwannon, holding a vase in her left hand. Here we find the flame 
 halo, the large head with heavy features, and the lotos throne of 
 petals that bend downward — all characteristic of Suiko Corean work, 
 but there is an attempt to model naturally the exposed upper portion 
 of the body. In the two gilded Bodhisattwa that stand on the Kondo 
 altar, we have a still greater pensive sweetness, the heads are rounded, 
 and bound with a wreath that really feels half Greek. Of an entirely 
 different type, being almost Aztec in feeling, we have the small and 
 earliest Kwannon of eleven heads, cut out of a hard dark mahogany- 
 like wood resembling bronze. This is most elaborately carved and 
 undercut in very deep relief ; evincing probably a phase of Chinese 
 genius rather than Corean ; and possibly a Southern phase in which 
 Annamese and Himalyan influences combine with the genius of Go. 
 This was originally the central secret deity of the Buddhist auxiliary 
 shrines at Tonomine in Yamato. It can now be studied in the art 
 school at Tokio. 
 
 Other wooden forms are the portrait statues of this day, of which 
 the group of Shotoku Taishi, surrounded by his young children, kept 
 in the Taishiden of Horiuji, where the spirit of the prince-saint is still 
 worshipped, is the most elaborate. Here we find a timidity and effemi- 
 
62 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 nacy of curvature in the drapery, which the artist has not quite 
 mastered. The faces of some of the children, awkward and even 
 Kamskatkan in type, recall the faces of the crude clay figures dug 
 from earlier Yamato tombs. Other statues of girls and children retain 
 in original paint the very patterns of the dress. Perhaps the finest 
 portrait is that of one of the Sojos, said to have been the first abbot 
 of Horiuji, installed under the auspices of the prince-priest. Here, while 
 we find Corean traces in the pleated folds at the bottom of his robe and 
 in the curvature of wrinkles upon the face, in strength and individuality 
 it is only a little inferior to the portraits of the eighth century. 
 
 Still another form of wooden Suiko statue is the militant type or 
 altar guardian, the group of four statues called the Shi Ten O, or Four 
 Heavenly (Deva) Kings, who were set at the four corners of the great 
 square altars, facing outward. Early Chinese painted types of these are 
 shown in the Amadaji Mandara ; and in the Bisjamon of Seirioji we 
 have the slender North Chinese Tartar type of the sixth century. But 
 in the four guardian kings of the Horiuji altar, nearly life-size, we have 
 the only remaining specimens of the pure Suiko type, whose prototype 
 was the group formerly in the Kaidendo of Shodaiji, near Nara, destroyed 
 by fire in the early part of the 19th century. The peculiarities of this 
 type are great. The faces are heavy, square, and almost negroid, like 
 the Tori bronzes. The bodies are chunky, and stand evenly straight 
 upon both feet, which are encased in a kind of moccasin. Though 
 carrying spears, these spiritual warriors wear no armour, unless the fairly 
 tight-fitting body- piece, edged upon the statue in openwork metal, can 
 be supposed to represent a leathern cuirass. This is bound tightly 
 about the waist by a very heavy rope. Over the upper part of this, and 
 tied loosely over the shoulders, is a small mantle or shawl, knotted over 
 the breast in closely flat ironed lines, and giving a strange Egyptian or 
 Persian feeling. But what makes the Persian feeling still stronger is that 
 both legs are encased in heavy very loose trousers, which bag about the 
 ankles, where a closely ironed ruffle emerges that half covers the feet. 
 Twisting ends of a girdle, also flat as if closely ironed, fall nearly to 
 the feet from under the cuirass. It is this shawl, these trousers, and 
 the element of ironed ruffling that have led me to feel that this type may 
 have been built partly out of Sassanian elements. But the strangest 
 feature of all is the heavily carved wooden crouching animals upon 
 which these figures stand, some cow-shaped but with human hands, 
 
The Chuguji Kwannon. By Shotoku-Taishi. 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 63 
 
 themselves supported upon rock forms that curve like Suiko drapery. 
 It is recorded that this Horiuji set was carved by two Japanese; but it 
 is possible that the original Shodaiji set may have been brought from the 
 continent. It hardly seems possible to believe this the costume of a 
 Corean warrior ; it certainly is not Chinese ; and it has no relation to 
 any Greek influence such as might be exerted from Khotan. The type 
 remains a mystery; but at present we call it provisionally a Go type 
 with Persian features, and modified in details by Corea-Suiko ornament. 
 
 Suiko pure decoration is best exemplified by the baldachian hangings 
 above the main altar of the Kondo at Horiuji. This, too, is unlike all 
 else in the Buddhist art of any known race. These baldachians, of which 
 there are several, are a kind of pointed box opening downwards, lined with 
 square, rectangular, and triangular panels, many of which show traces of 
 stiff painting of flowers and rosettes, and fringed with an intertwisted gold 
 tasselling. An upper flaring cornice is covered with very delicate tracery 
 in openwork bronze, as in the finishings of the Tamamushi shrine. But 
 the whole body of the box, under the cornice and above it, is bossed on 
 the exterior by rows of little detached wooden angels upon open brass- 
 work flower thrones, or of cockatoo birds in flight. Openwork finials flare 
 at the corners. The barbaric painting in reds, blues, greens, and cream 
 whites of these stiffly spaced members, of some red much discoloured, 
 makes us feel for all the world as if we were looking into an Egyptian 
 tomb. The forms of the angels are rounded and slim, and the cockatoos 
 curve in strong line, not unlike the forms upon the Chinese Wei relief of 
 the sixth century figured by Dr. Bushell. 
 
 I have reserved for the last the greatest masterpiece of Suiko art, a pure 
 bit of spiritual interpretation, more sculpturesque, more human and more 
 divine than the bronze altar Trinity — namely, the large carving from dark 
 bronze-like wood of an unornamented Kwannon in contemplation, now 
 kept in the little nunnery of Chuguji, in the rear of Horiuji. This follows 
 the attitude already shown us by the little bronze statuette of Liang or 
 Dzin in the former chapter. The body, modelled like Egyptian, with 
 great restrained beauty, is nude to the waist. Even the hair is indicated 
 only as a smooth mass slightly relieved from the skin. The drapery, 
 falling from a girdle at the waist, heavily envelops the limbs, making fine, 
 archaic Greek transitions of curve from the horizontal to the vertical leg-. 
 The drapery that surrounds the dome-like throne seems to be another 
 portion of the same mantle, as in the Buddha of the altar Trinity, though 
 
64 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 its lines are less flamboyant. But the great beauty of this statue, in which 
 it is only equalled by the profile of the Yumedono Corean, is in the face, 
 which has its finest effect from the front. It is the face of a sweet, loving 
 spirit, pathetic and tender, with eyes closed in inner contemplation. The 
 negroid coarseness of the Tori faces has disappeared. 
 
 The impression of this figure, as one views it for the first time, is 
 of intense holiness. No serious, broad-minded Christian could quite 
 free himself from the impulse to bow down before its sweet powerful 
 smile. With all its primitive coarseness of detail, as in the feet 
 especially, it dominates the whole room like an actual presence. This 
 finely imaginative work, whose genius we can trace from the suggestions 
 of preceding models, is clearly the work of an original master mind, 
 one capable of transcending conventions, or rather of moulding them 
 to express a free spiritual conception. This is why we more than give 
 ear to the Horiuji tradition that the work came from the hands of 
 Prince Shotoku himself. His was certainly a mind capable of conceiving 
 it ; and the varied elements from which he drew suggestions of form, 
 Chinese, Corean and Japanese, lay ready to his hand. We must call 
 it the first great creative Japanese work of art in the matter of spiritual 
 power, as the Kondo Trinity is the first in the matter of decorative form. 
 
 From these promising beginnings of the Suiko age we find the 
 young Japanese art advancing through the successive decades of the 
 seventh century by leaps and bounds. The next Emperor, Jomei Tenno, 
 who ruled from 629 to 641, also favoured Buddhism, and enjoyed the 
 advice of a good Minister, Kamatori, who was hailed as the ancestor of 
 the great noble family of Fujiwara, in a later age. His contemporary 
 portrait has come down to our day. Meanwhile the Tang dynasty in 
 China had succeeded the Dzin, and diplomatic relations were opened 
 up with it by Jomei. In the next somewhat troubled reign of the 
 Emperor Seimei, with interruptions from 642 to 668, Chinese Court 
 costumes, rank, and receptions of courtiers were established by imperial 
 decree. Corea was partly cut off from Japan through invasion from 
 Tang; and thus, in some sense, Japan was left for the moment to 
 her own artistic resources. These were a large stock ot originals, mostly 
 Indian, Chinese and Corean, and her own budding genius. The art of 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 65 
 
 this age is a concious recasting in a long series of trial forms of the 
 elements involved in this stock. The chief advance is found in the 
 series of bronze statuettes which were manufactured for altar pieces of 
 the many Buddhist temples that now spread all over Yamato. 
 
 Hokkeiji and Horinji were sites not far from Horiuji ; but the slopes 
 of Kasuga mountain, about twelve miles to the east, later to be the 
 eastern suburb of the Emperor Shomu’s capital of Nara, were 
 already the seats of several flourishing temples. There is a per- 
 sistent Nara tradition that at one of these, called Iwabuchi-dera, 
 a special school of bronze statuette modelling and casting was 
 instituted. However that may be, we can trace in the many 
 existing remains a clear and fairly single artistic effort to discard 
 the clumsier, weaker, and more external features of the primitive 
 models, and to aim ever at a more human grace and spiritual sweet- 
 ness. If we were to place before our eyes a series of the statuettes of 
 Bhodisattwa, we should see clearly this intentional experiment of 
 proportion and modelling, the structural elements in many cases re- 
 
 maining unchanged. The draperies become more simple and natural, 
 the peculiar shell-like Suiko fold being soon discarded. So graceful 
 do the statues quickly become, and so beautiful the faces, that it 
 seems as if a specific Greek archaic influence must have been at 
 
 work. It is true that we are here on the historic verge of a Greek 
 
 influence coming down through the Chinese of Tang ; but this is an 
 influence not at all of archaic Attic work but of a somewhat late and 
 coarsened Greco-Indian proportion. Besides this, Greco-Buddhist in- 
 fluence was hardly naturalized in China until after the middle of the 
 century, and it was not till then that Japan, under Tenchi, began 
 a systematic study of Tang institutions. We must rather believe that 
 in the post-Suiko series of small bronzes we have a Greek-like beauty 
 which is an independent discovery of the Japanese genius. But of 
 course one cannot dogmatically deny that some sporadic intrusions 
 from Chinese and Corean sources may have been superadded. 
 
 I can speak here in detail of only a few of the more striking 
 members of this series. One early feature is a rounding and broaden- 
 ing of the face, which is a Dzin or early Tang trait, as opposed to 
 the earlier Go. The lines of mantles and jewelled ornaments, too, 
 become more relieved — detached something in the style of the wooden 
 eleven-headed Kwannon before mentioned. 
 
66 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 An early form, only slightly removed from Suiko, and possibly 
 one that adheres to Horiuji traditions rather than the newer experi- 
 ments ot Iwabuchi, is the statuette with heavy round negroid head, 
 nude to the waist, but with mantle caught up into a large, round, 
 
 knot at the waist. 
 
 A much larger bronze, nearly three feet in height, is the figure 
 of Kwannon kept in the storehouse at Horiuji, which is clearly a 
 
 deliberate improvement upon the Korean lanky Kwannon upon the 
 Kondo altar. It holds a vase in its half-raised left hand. The 
 
 crown upon the head so protrudes at the sides as to give the effect 
 ot a flat top. But the body is charming and graceful in modelling, 
 and the face pleasant. 
 
 The most beautiful of the standing Buddhas in this statuette series 
 is undoubtedly the small figurine, hardly more than a foot in height, 
 ot the Tathagata of Healing, Yakushi Niorai, symbolical of Buddha 
 as the great soul physician. This is the most sacred altar-piece of 
 
 the Shin Yakushiji temple in Nara, of which we shall speak more 
 fully in the next chapter. It is beautifully proportioned, the face 
 round and sweet, with small nose and delicate mouth ; the hair, like 
 that of the Chuguji Kwannon, being only a smooth raised surface. 
 The hands and feet, too, are small. But the most interesting feature 
 of all is the drapery, which is a beautiful translation into bronze 
 designing of the cross concentric folds of the Buddha’s mantle, as 
 exemplified in the colossal stone images of Ceylon and in the primi- 
 tive Chinese wooden Buddha now at Seirioji. Here, instead of the 
 countless little crinkly folds of the Indian gauze, we have a few 
 simple, clear folds, whose stiff repetition from chest to ankle gives 
 the figure much naive dignity. The Suiko folding is entirely eschewed 
 in the skirt. Members of this statuette series are also to be found 
 in wood, generally as in the Suiko “Aztec” example of an eleven- 
 headed Kwannon. 
 
 A decidedly Greek impression is given us by the upper part at 
 least of the most delicately modelled Kwannon among the Horiuji 
 pieces. Here every detail of costume is but a refined imitation of 
 another Chinese one already described as closer to the Suiko type. The 
 hands and feet are especially beautiful. The finest view is in profile, 
 where the beautiful free lock of hair escaping from the twist at the top 
 of the head, combined with the fillet or crown, gives to the head 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 67 
 
 the effect of a Mercury. The antique Greek effect is enhanced by the 
 extreme delicacy and beauty of the features, the mouth and chin 
 especially. This is the first Japanese profile which compares in beauty 
 with the Corean Yumedono Kwannon of the sixth century. But to 
 realize the full beauty of the head and face, and to recognize that, 
 after all, it is not Greek, it should be seen enlarged in a two-thirds 
 pose. It was thus that I specially photographed it in 1883. The 
 little standing Buddha in the crown is a new type with free drapery. 
 The hair is beautifully modelled in waves flowing back from the 
 forehead. The curves of the brows run unbroken into the nose, 
 as in all finest Japanese Buddhist bronzes. The mouth is the most 
 naturalistic feature, giving us the most delicately curved surfaces in 
 the lips. But what we notice here especially is the perfection of 
 casting and finish in all the surfaces, shown particularly in the skin 
 of the face, where it appears as if the bronze came with perfect 
 satin texture from the mould, requiring no after finish of tool or file. 
 This quality is characteristic of the very finest Chinese and Japanese 
 bronzes, which are now to come to our notice, and is probably 
 obtained by first making a perfect model in wax. An extreme refine- 
 ment in such delicacy of finish will be shown in the Tang mirrors. 
 
 Another Bodhisattwa statuette, also of considerable size and kept 
 at Horiuji, gives as a whole, though perhaps not so specially in 
 the face, the feeling of the archaic Greek Mercury or Athene. The 
 head is more spherical than the preceding ; the raised right hand 
 is stronger. The feet, the skirt on the bronze pedestal, the upper 
 half of whose lotos petals open upward, are like the Shin Yakushiji 
 Buddha. What is here most beautiful in the drapery are the festoons 
 over the shoulders and breast, and falling from the waist to bind 
 the skirt inward at the knee. It is the double curve theme of 
 those festoons and of the thin crossing statues that gives this statuette 
 its unique beauty. Taking the head, raised hand, and festooned 
 breast together, we could hardly avoid, were it not for the some- 
 what thick and formal neck, the impression that we were before a 
 Greek bronze. It is indeed a beauty parallel to the Greek, but 
 one to which a possible Greek element may have remotely entered 
 only through the roundabout roads of Baktrian influence upon Han, 
 or of Greco-Persian influence upon early Indian Buddhism. The 
 specific Greco-Buddhist influence has yet to appear. 
 
68 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 This brings us down to the age of the next great Emperor, Tenchi, 
 whose short reign, beginning in 668, was celebrated by the removal of 
 the capital to Shiga, near the present Otsu, on Lake Biwa. The 
 famous Karasaki pine, covering more than an acre of ground, is 
 believed to be the last relic of his palace gardens. It was he who 
 determined to make a more serious study of Chinese institutions 
 and especially of Chinese law, for which purpose he dispatched a 
 special mission to Tang. The Emperor Temmei, who reigned as his 
 successor till 686, carried on the policy. 
 
 It must have been in one of their two reigns, probably the earlier, 
 that the supreme masterpiece of this rapidly advancing statuette school 
 was executed in the same white bronze of which the mirrors were 
 composed. It came just at a moment when the delicate problems in- 
 volved were about to be overshadowed by new powerful impulses 
 surging in from Tang with Greco-Buddhist art. It is a perfect product 
 which could have occurred only at this one moment in the history of 
 the world, reaching the highest aesthetic range of early Buddhist art 
 among any race from India to the Pacific. It is possible that specially 
 fine sporadic examples from Tang may have helped to the culmination, 
 but we have no trace of them. 
 
 The new piece is a second elaborate Trinity with a screen, and 
 seems to have been designed with conscious reference to the earlier 
 one by Tori Busshi, as a point of departure. We do not know the 
 name of the designer of this, but he is the next greatest artist of 
 Japan after Shotoku Taishi, and one of the greatest bronze artists of 
 the whole world. 
 
 To realise what enormous artistic gains the gap of some sixty years 
 has won for this piece, we ought to compare the two Trinities in a 
 single blow of the eye. We should find that the stiff vertical lines of 
 the Suiko type have been changed into more graceful and laterally 
 interflowing rhythms, and that every delicacy and sweetness of type in 
 the statuettes reach their height in the latter piece. It is like passing 
 from Egyptian to Greek art. 
 
 The figures of the Trinity are placed much as before, only the 
 three all rest upon lotos thrones that grow with twisted stems out of a 
 horizontal bronze sea. It is the blessed beings realised in their own 
 garden Paradise. And it is doubtless a clearer importation from the 
 best of this thought of Sukavhati, the heaven of Amita Rha or the 
 
Bronze Trinity, with Screen. Horiuji, Nara. 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 69 
 
 Buddha of Boundless Light, that is embodied in this piece. The 
 three statues are fully rounded, detached, and finished at the back. 
 Between the Buddha and the screen a magnificent openwork halo of 
 bronze lace is set in an independent plane. The screen, which rises 
 into pointed waves at the top, and is flanked with panels that might 
 fold on hinges, is modelled in three distinct planes of relief, little 
 Buddhas at the top, half-round as in the Tori example, blessed figures 
 of angels, much flatter, who kneel upon lotos thrones in the back- 
 ground, and lotos leaves mixed with flying mantles from those angels 
 that form a tracery in very low relief. Once more, within the 
 interstices of this elaborate pattern, and into the smooth surface 
 of the screen, are incised little cloud forms descending and little 
 groups of growing flowers, making as it were a sixth plane for the 
 whole design. 
 
 Between this large number of elements on many planes it might 
 be thought that, as seen from the front, a certain confusion or at least 
 inconsequence would reign. But the truth is that no more unified 
 system of curves was ever conceived, even on a Greek facade or 
 frieze. Not one of these thousand flowing curves that is not in- 
 finitely harmonious with all the others. They interplay like melodic 
 phrases in music. The blending of strong architectural plan in the 
 composition with naive sweetness in the separate rhythms, can find as 
 analogue in Western art only the spirit of the work on Ghiberti’s 
 bronze doors in the Florentine baptistery. The decorative lines are 
 stronger and more orderly than in the naive reliefs at Perugio and 
 Rimini of Agostino Duccio. 
 
 The central Buddha is clearly an aesthetic advance upon the 
 standing statuette of Shin Yakushiji. While we have lines of drapery 
 of the same simple forms, their parallel cross curves are now caught 
 up, as in archaic Greek, into converging catenary curves, here firmly 
 tangent to the almost vertical line of the garment’s edge that falls 
 from the left shoulder, and from which other sets of radiating curves 
 enfold the left arm. The disposition of this drapery, too, over the 
 crossed legs enables the artist to convert horizontal curves directly 
 into vertical, thus giving a most beautiful variety. But perhaps 
 supreme mastery by the rhythm of line is best shown by the mod- 
 eller in his treatment of the hands and the break of the drapery 
 from the wrists. The hands and attitudes of the fingers are so 
 
70 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 conceived as to centre into their strong action the curve vitality of 
 the whole complicated design. It vibrates to the very tips of the 
 fingers, which nod as naively as flower petals on a stem. These 
 hands too are thick and firm, like the whole body, not weak and 
 effeminate as in some of the Kwannon statuettes. It is noticeable that 
 the webbing between the fingers that appears in the larger statues 
 of a little later date, is here used not only with structural but for 
 aesthetic value, the curves of these webs entering magnificently into 
 the contour. This artist knew to the minutest degree the rights of 
 conventional treatment in decorative bronze relief; and in this respect 
 at least the piece becomes the world’s masterpiece. The hair, instead 
 of rising into the ugly convention of lumpy curls, as in the Tori 
 Trinity, or lying in a quite smooth layer as in the Shin Yakushiji 
 Buddha, cuts the latter into a few thinly relieved spiral locks, ap- 
 parently a unique convention which does not occur again, being 
 apparently displaced by Greco-Buddhist forms. 
 
 The standing Bodhisattwa at the sides are of a grace and sweet- 
 ness transcending all the Kwannon statuettes. There is the slight 
 sideways swing of the hip noticed in the last wooden eleven-headed 
 Kwannon; but a perfect subordination of relief in ornament to the 
 decorative value of the figures as wholes, to which the swing of all 
 the broad mantles beautifully contributes. The hands here are not 
 too small and refined as in the statuettes, but, if anything, just so 
 much too large as to act as perfect accents in the architecture of 
 the total group. 
 
 In the low relief angels of the screen we find that, studied in 
 detail, they only exemplify still further the absolute artistic value of 
 this work. Never, down to their smallest detail of drapery, is there 
 a lack of invention or of perfect taste in subordinating the inessential 
 and the merely pretty to the interpenetrating idea. These figures are 
 like, but far more graceful and sweet than the somewhat similar 
 bronze angels of China and Dzin, shown in the last chapter. Some- 
 how in charm they seem to lie between Orcagna, Donatello and della 
 Robbia. No European, however, not even a Greek, ever conceived 
 such perfection of formal line and surface in low relief as is shown 
 in these lotos forms, and the angels’ mantles seemingly caught upward 
 into the intense spiral lines of some great spiritual draft. It is this 
 prevailing tension of the screen lines toward the vertical which saves 
 
Detail of Screen from the Bronze 
 Trinity at Horiuji. 
 
EARLY COREAN and JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART 71 
 
 them from what they would often become with Europeans, weak, 
 insipid decorative flourishes. 
 
 But to realise what is the true scale of remove here from decorative 
 weakness, rather, what is its supreme vitality and power, in a formal 
 aesthetic of which elsewhere Greek art is the typical example, we must refer 
 to the detached circular halo, which I photographed separately in 1882. 
 This consists of a single flat disc, which has not only been perforated in 
 the Corean manner, but had every one of its thin surfaces undercut, so 
 that not a single member of this narrow scale that does not pulsate with 
 finely modelled surfaces in space of three dimensions. Though the execu- 
 tion must have been a triumph of bronze-lace casting, yet the vigorous 
 plasticity of the curves suggests rapid paring with a knife, the method 
 frankly employed in carving the original wax. The body of this most 
 beautiful halo in the world consists of three main members : — The lotos 
 centre, the rich grill interlude of fine crossed curves, and the border of 
 arabesques. The lotos centre has itself a centre of the circular seed pod, 
 surrounded by sixteen petals, all so exquisitely modelled in the infinitesimal 
 relief as to appear like an actual flower. The brilliant colour of this 
 member is got by its solidity contrasted with the openwork beyond. The 
 grill, in its fine spacing, gives us a grayer colour in two tones, also kept in 
 subordination by the simplicity of its forms. But upon the broad circular 
 band of the border the artist’s whole wealth of purely decorative openwork 
 curvature has been lavished. There is nothing here so representative as 
 the lotos leaves and stems in the screen relief. This is leaf form, but 
 drawn out into splendid scrolls and bands, like the finest Classic and 
 Renaissance arabesques. Only these are no imitations of Classic suggestion, 
 but a new creation along parallel lines. What the volute and the acanthus 
 and anthemion are to Greek ornament, these interplaying organic spirals, 
 of large and small curvature, crossing, meeting, intertwisting, are to 
 Japanese. It is a glorious thing to know that some creators have been 
 able to do this thing without that abject subserviency to Greek pattern 
 which Western art has exhibited for two thousand years. There are men 
 who can create with the same naivete and beauty as the Ionians. And, let 
 it be noted, too, that these curves, so intricate, are the farthest removed 
 in all art from the insipidity of the Renaissance flourishes, which we 
 sometimes teach as a poisonous miasma in our art schools. These 
 are curves of extreme tension, as of substances pulled out lengthwise 
 with a force that has found its utmost resistance, lines of strain, long, 
 
72 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 cool curves of vital springing, that bear the strength of their intrinsic 
 unity in their rhythms. 
 
 Perhaps I have given too much space to this exquisite Trinity ; but it 
 is, so far as I now know, the unique flower of the early East Asian stage of 
 Buddhist art. It is fortunate that it could bloom before more powerful 
 currents from without and within, already gathering, could tear its archaic 
 elements to pieces. It is in these momentarily balanced opportune calms 
 in all human history that supreme art arises ; and this is true of Asia as 
 of Europe. How utterly then must Art History become a record of the 
 causes that have produced unique individuals, rather than non-chronological 
 and abstract essays upon industrial technique. 
 
Chapter V. 
 
 GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA. 
 
 7 th and 8th Centuries A.D. 
 
 I N the history of Chinese art we have already sharply marked three 
 periods : — the Pacific, the Mesopotamian, and the early Buddhist 
 from India. We have seen only the third of these forms falling 
 within the limits of Corean and Japanese civilization, though traces or 
 the two earlier remain in the barbaric art of Japan. And we have noted 
 as the aesthetic culmination of this total complex movement, up to the 
 second half of the seventh century, the second Japanese bronze Trinity 
 with a screen. 
 
 We have now to look at what is properly a fourth wave of influence 
 upon Chinese art, the so-called Greco-Buddhist — a wave that was long 
 in gathering in Western Asia, swift and brief in its passage across China, 
 and somewhat more deliberate in its breaking and dissipating upon the 
 shores of Japan. 
 
 It seems strange at first sight to think that Greek art has really 
 conquered a second and greater continent on the East, as it has manifestly 
 dominated Europe on the West. It will be news to many that such 
 a potent factor in what they have always regarded as the romantic 
 art of Japan should be that very classic art which they boast as its 
 opposite. So potent indeed is the classic spirit that in time it has 
 spread to the bournes of the ultimate oceans, and in fact encircled the 
 earth. A full account of its slow passage north-eastward across the 
 continent of Asia will, some day, fill a most romantic chapter in Art 
 History. 
 
 Many immediate doubts rise naturally to the lips — If Greek art 
 reached Japan by way of China, why did it come so late ? If it was so 
 potent throughout East Asia in the seventh century, why should its 
 force have been spent so early as the eighth? If China came into 
 VOL. i. h 
 
74 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 contact with Baktria in the second century before Christ, why was it 
 not then that Greek art obtained its strongest grip over her ? Since 
 Japanese early Buddhist bronzes offer so many analogies with archaic 
 Greek art, must not this latter be somehow concerned in the trans- 
 mission ? Is the Greco-Buddhist art, after all, of Greek, Roman or 
 Byzantine origin ? So difficult have seemed the answers to these and 
 other questions that some writers, like Mr. Okakura, seem inclined to 
 deny that there has been any classic influence upon Indian, Chinese and 
 Japanese art at all — just as I am inclined to deny that any specifi- 
 cally Greek influence helped model the Japanese statuettes of Tomei, 
 Seimei, and Tenchi. On the other hand, Professor Hirth would throw 
 back the specific Greek influence as far as the Han. 
 
 If we look at the graphic curve of the ups and downs of Euro- 
 pean art as a whole, drawn upon a single time scale, we see that 
 it piles into two great and sharply-pointed waves whose summits are 
 separated by a gigantic trough of 2,000 years. Our pride is somewhat 
 shocked to see that the great European mind has been stricken with 
 aesthetic disease and decay during by far the largest part of its 
 course. The long, tiresome, and apparently hopeless descent of classic 
 art in both Europe and Asia filled more than a millennium. But, upon 
 inserting against the same time scale the curves of Chinese and Japanese 
 art, we see that their rise to culmination under remote classic influence 
 in the seventh century, is contemporary with the moment of deepest 
 depression in Europe. A specifically Christian art, the Gothic, rising 
 from Greek ruins in the West, comes much later than a specifically 
 Buddhist art arising from Greek ruins in the East. Yet it would 
 not be surprising if the process upon the two sides presented many 
 features in parallel. 
 
 If there were any way of showing how archaic Greek art could 
 have got into Central Asia, and then exerted influence a thousand years 
 after it was dead in the West, we should eagerly invoke it to explain 
 a thousand pseudo-parallels. Not only should we find like technique 
 in the convergence of simple catenary curves, and the shell-like openings 
 of downwards falling drapery, and in the character of face-modelling, as 
 we have already indicated ; but we should discover the identical cork- 
 screw curls upon a Buddha’s head and in the thick beards of ancient 
 Dorian sages and heroes. In aesthetic dignity the simple long folds of 
 the Yumedono Kwannon just match those of the Greek bronze 
 
Statue of Mausolas. 
 
 Statue of Buddha as an Indian Prince, 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 
 
 75 
 
 charioteer, and the intertwining lines of the three famous figures upon 
 a tomb show rich systems of tension curves comparable with the screen 
 Trinity. The sway of the figures in the finest Japanese bronzes of the 
 eighth century recall that in the winged Victory of the Louvre ; even the 
 stocky little short-headed horses of the Parthenon might serve in 
 comparisons. And yet we must dismiss all these striking analogies as 
 independent growths of a common human genius. 
 
 It is not the great culminating Attic or Rhodian art of Greece that 
 pierced its way into the West body of Asia; but rather a native Ionian 
 form that already had found independent, if lower development among 
 the cities of Asia Minor. As the Mesopotamian powers, especially 
 Persia, spread to those and absorbed them, they left Oriental features 
 in their wake. Perhaps there were three waves of intermingling between 
 the Eastern Mediterranean and the Euphrates — a prehistoric one which 
 involved both in Asiatic origins, the Persian domination, and more 
 
 potent still, the Hellenic intermingling that followed Alexander’s 
 conquest of Syria and Persia. Thus we find among Greeks such a 
 purely Asiatic type, we would almost like to say such a Buddhist type 
 as the Diana of the Ephesians, with the many forms of relief upon its 
 halo, and its multiplicity of function denoted by repetition, as in the 
 eleven-headed Kwannon. Greek painted portraits found among the 
 
 tombs of Egypt, indeed the wholer ange of Byzantine figure art is 
 stiffly Persian, not to say hieratically Buddhist in its design, and upon 
 late Byzantine Christian marble reliefs we find symmetrically arranged 
 birds and grape vines, not unlike, but much ruder than ancient Nara 
 
 decoration of the eighth century, and the lovely designs upon Tang 
 
 mirrors. It is noticeable that the twisting stems of such vines are for 
 all the world like the lotos stems under the angels upon the Japanese 
 bronze screen ; both apparently deriving from Assyrian tree forms of a 
 thousand years before Christ. So much for possible reflex waves. 
 
 It cannot be doubted, however, that the remote origin of Greco- 
 Buddhist dates from the conquest of Alexander. To be sure, Greek 
 influence had already spread Eastward from the Ionian settlements in 
 Asia ; but such sporadic transmission was confirmed, rendered official and 
 usual, as it were, when Greek monarchs ruled almost as far East as 
 India. Megisthus indeed, one of the Greek generals, made friendly 
 visits to the Central Indian Buddhist kingdom of Maghada. And yet 
 it can hardly be said that Greek aesthetic canons and sculptural technique 
 
 H Z 
 
7 6 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 made at first much headway against Mesopotamian formation. For the 
 most part, Persian forms were only a little modified ; and the Selencida 
 did not hold Persia long. It was rather to the North-East, among a 
 freer mountain people, not enervated with ancient Assyrian tradition, the 
 Baktrians, that Greek art took specific hold. Here an independent 
 dynasty of Greek sovereigns, not tributary to either Antioch or 
 Macedonia, maintained itself down to the second century before Christ. 
 
 The sources of Greco-Baktrian art were probably as follows: — 
 First, the school of Greek sculpture already located and hardened in 
 Syria. The type of this is the famous mausoleum of the King of 
 Coria, whose name has added a noun to our vocabulary. If we 
 compare the very statue of Mausolas with the winged Victory of 
 Samothrace, or the Parthenon fragments, for instance, we find, along 
 with like technical processes, a great change in aesthetic ideals. The 
 lines of drapery are now heavy, unimaginative, and grouped with poor 
 decorative intention; the actual number of convolutions is far fewer; 
 the grace of the figure is lost ; and a method of cutting the eye very 
 deeply under a projecting brow has come in. In short, the method 
 is coarse and realistic, like certain late phases of Roman work ; and 
 the features reveal a materialistic face, a sort of gorged satrap type, 
 which seems to indicate the evil influences of Oriental luxury upon 
 Greek manhood. That this is quite the type of sculptured figure 
 which occurs in the Ghandara relics will shortly be seen. 
 
 Another source, which may have in part counteracted the heaviness 
 of the first, was the kind of terra-cotta work exemplified by the Tanagra 
 figurines. This, though realistic, found a new kind of grace in their 
 slim proportions and plastic movement. It is possible from this very 
 attenuated suavity that the thinness which we have noticed in North 
 Chinese and Corean early Buddhist bronzes ultimately derives. 
 
 A third source, which would naturally help to confirm the slimness, 
 is the seal engraving and the medalling in which Greek art is so 
 happy. Here, where whole figures are grouped into a design, a 
 tendency to give them a thin line feeling shows a natural aesthetic 
 impulse. This prevailing thinness of seal work is characteristic of 
 Persian art also. It enters from both sources into the designs of 
 Greco-Baktrian coins. Where these are almost pure Greek, they 
 
 show thin classic figures in rhythmic pose or motion, combined often 
 with animal forms, of lions and hump-backed bulls of similar 
 
Group of Heads from the Lahore Museum 
 

 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 
 
 77 
 
 attenuation. That this Perso-Baktrian slimness really did condition 
 
 Chinese Han ornament upon the first glazed vases, we have already 
 seen in the third chapter. 
 
 A fourth source was, of course, architectural structure and ornament 
 — the column, the volute capital, the acanthus scroll, the anthemion, and 
 other leaf forms. All these are found in endless fragments among 
 the Ghandara relics of the Lahore Museum. 
 
 How then can we account for the bodily transference of these 
 
 Greek traditions massed in Baktria to Ghandara kingdoms in the 
 north-west corner of India ? When the Chinese Emperor Butei of 
 Han sent his first commission to the West 120 years b.c., as men- 
 tioned in Chapter II., it was with the primary purpose of tracing 
 the migrations of the Yuechi, a prominent Tartar or Scythian band, 
 sometimes called the White Huns, who had suddenly vacated their 
 seats in Northern Mongolia. The commission found them, after long 
 ' years’ search, settled peacefully among the mountain valleys and 
 plateaus of that same Baktria which had already enjoyed Greek 
 tuition in Art for two hundred years. It was then that the Baktrian 
 
 sources opened up by the great caravan way to the knowledge of 
 
 Han ; though it is hardly to be supposed that, at that difficult dis- 
 tance, much in the way of heavy sculpture would have been available 
 for transportation. Indeed, the intercourse was too sporadic and indirect 
 to lead then to any thorough-going transplanting of a style. If 
 Greek art, after centuries of far closer contact with Persia and India, 
 had been able to exert so little effect upon their conservative design, 
 it is not conceivable that a few small models or drawings, approxi- 
 mately Greek, could have transplanted anything like classic technique 
 to the alien and distant provinces of China. It is rather in the 
 slowly accumulating influence over the Tartar mind of these domesti- 
 cated Scythians during a century or more that we must look for 
 a possible line of transmission. We know that it was those very 
 Scythian tribes, now grown strong, populous, settled, and civilized among 
 their Greco-Baktrian adopters, who, somewhere probably in the first 
 century before Christ, or at latest just after, grew restless again in 
 their contracted seats, envied the rich possibilities of that splendid 
 north-west plain where Indus leaps down toward the sea from its 
 mountain cradle, and in a series of unrecorded migrations or violent 
 campaigns, made themselves masters of it. Here was a Tartar race 
 
78 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 upon Indian soil, with Greek methods in its hand — indeed a fresh, 
 hopeful combination. Here, in a great North Indian empire, which 
 has been called Ghandara, they lived and ruled for at least four 
 centuries, undergoing varying vicissitudes in their peaceful, or warlike, 
 influences with the other races of Central and Northern India. 
 
 Yet even this would hardly have availed to perpetuate Greek art 
 as a mere remote tradition were it not that here a distinct new work 
 was given to Greek art to do — that cut it from its decaying roots 
 and transplanted it into a new vitality. This work was the creation 
 
 of a complete new iconography for the early stages of a positive 
 Northern Buddhism. In strong contrast to the effeminate pessimism 
 of the South of India, the races of North India were already restless 
 in their efforts to recast the parent faith, or, as they believed, restore 
 it to its primitive, ante-metaphysical usefulness. Among these the 
 half-polished Scythian conquerors of the North, of fresh, positive, 
 healthful mind, found themselves in the position of leaders ; and to 
 the capital of their sovereigns, near the present Peshawur, flocked the 
 more independent sages of the Buddhist world. It was something like 
 a Gothic Emperor Charlemagne saving Roman Europe by fostering 
 the first new life of a northern and mediaeval scholarship. And just as 
 the spiritual and philosophical leadership of Christendom fell to Scots- 
 men, Saxons, and Irish, so did that of Buddha-dom to scholars of 
 Mongolian blood. Here it was that Asampho and Vasubandhu for- 
 mulated the positive tenets of an idealism so searching and vast that 
 it well-nigh surpasses the scope of Hegel, and may yet be recognised 
 as the intellectual flowering of Asia. Here, too, the Scythian Emperor 
 Kamikka, perhaps in the first century of our era, held that fourth 
 Pan-Buddhist council which formulated the larger policy of the North, 
 and led to a final split with the metaphysical bishops from Ceylon 
 and the South. This was the decisive move which made a deeper 
 Buddhism possible for North China and Japan. 
 
 For determining the exact age and derivation of this Scythian move- 
 ment in Buddhism, we have much conflicting evidence to sift. That 
 it was largely confined to its primitive seats in the Punjab until perhaps 
 the third century is probable. Between that time and the sixth it spread, 
 in its forms of art at least, to the south-east as far as Java, and to 
 the north-east along the Khotan route on the south edge of the 
 desert, until it had almost penetrated China. That this slow process 
 
Statue of a Scythian Emperor. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 
 
 79 
 
 involves wave after wave of doctrinal evolution is probable enough ; 
 and there is probably no singleness in the transmission of artistic models. 
 Nevertheless there seems to be a certain degree of unity to the many 
 efforts which for the moment we have to group together as Greco- 
 Buddhist art. 
 
 The monuments of this art, as found in the ancient seats of 
 Ghandara, have been explored by General Cunningham and others of 
 the Archaeological Survey of India, and their ruined fragments, kept by 
 the fanatical Hindu iconoclasts of the fourth century, have been collected 
 into the museum at Lahore. Lesser fragments are dispersed through 
 many of the museums of Europe. 
 
 The relations of this art to the Syrian Greek are especially notable 
 in the portrait statues of the Scythian rulers. The drapery is more 
 formal, not unlike debased Roman ; but the attempt to give muscular 
 detail and the deep cutting of the features is not primitive Indian, 
 and has no relation to the cramped Persian. Some of these inonarchs 
 are girdled in festoons of flowers. They wear heavy mustachios. And 
 some of the heads of warriors are crowned with a cobra cap. Later 
 examples cut the eye in degenerate Greek fashion without depth, making 
 only the two lids. 
 
 It is most interesting to compare with these portraits the favourite 
 statues of Sakyamuni as a young prince, before his conversion. Here 
 he stands in marble effigy, dressed in almost identically the costume of 
 the Ghandara grandees, with heavy mantles passing over the shoulders 
 and arms, and the luxuriant waving hair, purely Greek in style of 
 cutting, descending over the shoulders and caught up in a beautiful 
 dome-like lock on the top of the head. A flat circular slab for halo 
 relieves the face, which is sometimes round and smiling, now lean, sharp, 
 anxious, and almost “ Baktrian.” The chest, ribs, and abdominal por- 
 tions are finely modelled in classic style. 
 
 A most interesting transition can now be marked, in comparing 
 the Lahore statues, between these Buddha princes and the detached 
 statues, generally seated, of the ascetic Buddha, the Sakyamuni of re- 
 nouncement, approximating in its cross-legged attitude to the familiar 
 Buddha altar-pieces of so many countries and centuries. Here the robe 
 is a single ample garment swathing in its many lines of fold the whole 
 body, or all but one shoulder. But the lines of these folds are now 
 far more Greek, more realistic, deeper cut, and much more beautiful 
 
80 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 than primitive Indian in the folds of the catenary curves. The hair, 
 too, at first shows the top lock, though simpler than the prince’s curls, 
 yet displaying itself as a natural bunch of hair flowing in small waves. 
 As hieratic tradition hardens or skill decreases, the lines of the garment 
 become more formal, the eyes more prominently set under formal brows, 
 the topknot more like a domed excrescence upon the Buddha’s head ; 
 and the hair waves on both head and knot reduced to formal and 
 parallel lines, between which the old lumps reappear as individual curls. 
 
 Among the finest of the Buddha heads, illustrating this transition, 
 is that of the so-called Taxila Buddha, a fragment named from its place 
 of discovery, the identical place where Alexander fought his battle with 
 Porus. It can be seen here that the lobes of the ears were elongated 
 and pierced to receive the weight of some heavy jewelled ornament. 
 We have already noticed in Chapter IV. that an ornament still remains 
 as ear weight in the Chinese Dzin statues. This Taxila head has a 
 decidedly Napoleonic cast. In some Lahore Museum photographs it 
 is expressly compared with a Greek head, an Egyptian, and a Scythian 
 portrait. 
 
 But to realize the wealth of type, beauty, and classic quality of 
 Ghandara heads, we ought to study the female or Bodhisattwa portraits. 
 Here we find some that are for all the world like Roman portraits of 
 ladies in the Naples Museum. The female Bodhisattwa type is very beau- 
 tiful, catching the hair up into a domed topknot like the Buddhas, but 
 in which there is no suggestion of implied cerebral monstrosity. This 
 beautiful form of coiffure remains in the finest Greco-Buddhist statues of 
 Japan. There are portraits of old men, too, with long straight falling 
 beards, like a tragic mask ; and fine clear-faced youths with riotous curls 
 escaping under a Phrygian cap. Other details familiar in Northern 
 Buddhism are found on every hand : the lion and the elephant thrones 
 for instance. Upon a lion sits a headless youth playing an instrument 
 that seems nearly identical with a Chinese biwa. 
 
 But another most notable feature are the architectural panels heavily 
 carved with sculpture in high relief, for all the world like degenerate 
 Greek on the one hand, and still more like the early Italian revival 
 decorations of the Pisani. Here are countless scenes from the life of 
 Buddha, the familiar figure being surrounded by figures in turbans ; 
 now working in with those dramatically ; now seated enthroned, and 
 with the hand raised in attitude of preaching ; and now reclining 
 
Buddhist Carvings from Khotan. 
 
 Khotan Bodhisattwa, 
 Slim Type. 
 
 Painting from Khotan 
 Figure on Horse. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 
 
 8 1 
 
 upon the bier of Nirvana. One of the most beautiful decorations is 
 in three concentric lunettes of Buddhist pointed window arches, where 
 three groups of figures are well-spaced, the angles of the upper band 
 being filled with graceful semi-classic chimeras of rolling snake’s body, 
 a leaf tail, shoulder wings, a centaur’s foot, and a Greco-Buddhist beast. 
 Processions of figures with animal heads, seriocomic, are for all the 
 world like sculptures on the facade of Orvieto. 
 
 Specially characteristic are the groups of classic figures, masses 
 standing, and in half or almost full relief, about the faces of high 
 rectangular altars, and separated into panels by columns. Of these, 
 some of the finest, though headless, are nude below the hips, with 
 thoroughly classical drapery, and, what is more to the purpose, of a 
 graceful attenuated proportion which recalls the Ionic statuette type of 
 the past, and points forward, as does this very disposition about the 
 altar, to the Khotan sculptures of Central Asia. That terra-cottas them- 
 selves are not absent in Ghandara is proved by many vigorous clay 
 heads of Buddhas and children, and humorous types of old men and 
 vagabonds. It is here possibly that we have a connected relic of 
 dramatic types descended from Greek comedy, and not unlike Greek 
 comic masks. Scythian coins, too, show the persistence of the Greco- 
 Baktrian type. 
 
 But if after all this evidence any sceptic were to doubt at least the 
 semi-classic origin of this Ghandara art, we could still point to goat- 
 like Silenus statues, representations of Athene ; but more conclusively 
 than all to the elaborate capitals with their ornaments of fine acanthus 
 leaves and the modified volutes of their corners. Here it is startling 
 to find a keen realization of the strange combination of East and West, 
 in the little graceful Buddha, with head bent in contemplation, and hand 
 stretched out for support to a fold of giant Greek acanthus. 
 
 I have given so much space to the description of an art which is 
 properly not included in the history of Chinese, partly because it is 
 specially interesting to us Westerners to trace the steps of our own 
 Greek art in its trans- Asiatic passage to Japan ; partly because its 
 Scythian authors are, after all, of the same Tartar race as the Buddhists 
 of North China and the Coreans ; but especially because it is this very 
 Ghandara art that was studied by the Chinese pilgrim Hiomtsang which 
 gradually expanded north-eastward toward the Chinese boundaries, and 
 which did eventually in the seventh century make its triumphant and 
 
82 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 vivifying entry into the new great Buddhist theatre of China, Corea 
 and Japan. We can hardly understand the meaning of dominant Japanese 
 types at Nara without this reference to their Indian sources. 
 
 How far this Greco-Buddhist art of the North-West affected the rest 
 of India is still a problem. It has been supposed that at least it passed 
 south-east across India to the port near the topes of Amravati, whence 
 ships weighed anchor for Java. Whether the magnificent sculptures of 
 Borobodor in the great Southern Island are in reality Greco-Buddhist of 
 Ghandara origin, or whether they may not have been developed into 
 Greek-like beauty by a fresh island genius, akin to the Japanese, out of 
 elements already latent in Ceylonese art — I am not called upon to decide. 
 But that this wave of civilization from Ghandara passed northward from 
 the Indus valley, into the great mountain passes of Balkh and Swat, 
 leaving an earlier Himalyan type stranded in the side stations of Cash- 
 mere and Nepaul, and advancing over the roof of the world to the 
 great Turkestan plain lying beyond the Pamirs, pushing up toward 
 Kashgar and Samarcand, and downward again to skirt the southern bor- 
 ders of the great deserts which the Kunlung range, with its treasures of 
 native jades, separates from Thibet, and so on kingdoms far toward 
 the Chinese border, has been verified by the important recent explor- 
 ations of Sven Hedin, Mr. Stein of the Indian Government, and others. 
 There from the sands of Taklamakan deserts, which, blowing from the 
 North, had swallowed up as early as the ninth century populous Buddhist 
 Kingdoms, visited and described by the Chinese travellers Fahien 
 and Hiontsang, have been dug, and six years since, manuscripts 
 written upon leather in the Karasthri script used in Ghandara, and 
 clasped with seals impressed by Greek figures, vast altars decorated 
 with life-sized relief Greco-Buddhist figures in stucco, Greco-Buddhist 
 heads in terra-cotta mixed in the strata with Chinese coins, figures 
 of classic females holding a child, clay Buddhas more or less rude 
 with the full Ghandara drapery, fragments of great clay halos with 
 Buddhas in half relief, and tinted in brilliant colours, and paintings 
 upon leather of figures riding horses, whose bodies seem at first like 
 modern Persian, but show rounded heads with the Greco-Buddhist 
 topknot very close to the heads of the famous frescoes at Horiuji. 
 To-day the original wooden posts of these submerged buildings, and 
 worn by the storms of a thousand seasons, project in sad desolation 
 from the great low plains that stretch for hundreds of miles to the 
 
Small Statue of Buddha carved in Stone 
 among Greek Acanthus Leaves. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 83 
 
 north-east of the Khotan oasis. Khotan was from ancient days the 
 centre of this region, and near it the finest and richest of the ruins 
 lie. Manuscripts, Karasthri and Chinese, prove that this rich region had 
 a flourishing Greco-Buddhist art as early as the third century, and that 
 it was destroyed not later than the eighth or ninth. 
 
 Looking at the terra-cotta sculptures of a certain great altar, we 
 see that they are almost identical in noble, tall aesthetic type with 
 the Greek headless figures on the Ghandara altar. We shall soon see, 
 too, their close relations with the Greco-Buddhist sculptures and 
 paintings in China and Japan. Here then is the missing link which 
 enables us to carry classic proportions and drapery from Baktria 
 to China, and eight centuries later than the Western expedition 
 
 of Han. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Khotan, Mr. Stein visited an early temple, 
 perhaps of the third century, where some ancient conqueror, coming from 
 the West, perhaps from Ghandara, had become deified into the great 
 warrior champion of Buddha in those regions, a Constantine in helmet 
 and linked armour who treads down the dwarfed spirits of evil. 
 This object of local worship is included among the four great 
 archangels of the Buddhist altars, and is specially worshipped in 
 separate altar-piece, as we shall see, in his cult imported from Khotan 
 into Japan along with its Greco-Buddhist art. The very leather 
 
 boots of these militant figures, into which the trousers are tucked, 
 
 their suits of armour and leather aprons, appear in the Chinese 
 
 sculpture of the next age. 
 
 One more notable feature is that in some of these sculptures, 
 which are perhaps later, we find a tendency to great attenuation and 
 height, with small rounded head and small waist, which seems to 
 imply a new mixture with the older Himalyan type, like that which 
 was pouring northward into Thibet, and to foreshadow that slim 
 Northern Tartar type of East Asia, which passes into Corean art. 
 Certain paintings, too, upon the walls of these excavated houses give 
 us the small heads, rounded shoulders and simple colours of the 
 earliest Corean Buddhist painting, such as we find as illuminations on 
 primitive scripture rolls. 
 
 Perhaps the Khotan pieces of great aesthetic value are few, but 
 among others we must point to the very fine terra-cotta head, only 
 slightly injured, which will compare very favourably with the Taxila 
 
84 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Buddha. We shall regard this in a special sense as an artistic link 
 between the latter and the Chinese clay Buddha of Udzumasa. 
 
 We come back now to Chinese art, at the point where we left it, to 
 mark the extraordinary harvest sown by it in the adjoining fields of Corea 
 and Japan. Already at the end of Chapter III. we have described the 
 extraordinary invigoration of Chinese genius due to the sudden fusion 
 into the Dzin and Tang empires, apparently for the moment complete, 
 of all hitherto separate movements and scattered elements: Buddhist, 
 Taoist, Confucian, Northern, Southern, Tartar and Miaotse. The Tang (To) 
 dynasty had come in as a military colossus in 6 1 8 ; but the great soldier 
 and leader ot Tang who consolidated Chinese strength and expanded 
 it again far toward the West, was the second Tang emperor, Taiso— 
 one of the greatest and wisest of Chinese rulers, who reigned from 627 
 to 650. It was in this great westward expansion that the introduction 
 of Greco-Buddhist art was effected. Chinese armies and peaceful missions 
 now marched again westward into Turkestan ; and the pious pilgrim 
 Hiomtsang stopped at all the famous Greco-Buddhist sites in Khotan, 
 Turkestan, Ghandara and Central India, collecting manuscripts, drawings 
 and models of every description, which were all safely brought back to 
 China in the year 645. 
 
 Meanwhile, communication by sea had been opened up with Sassanian 
 Persia ; princes and scholars of the Western kingdom had been received 
 as guests in Taiso’s capital, and wrote in Persian the world’s first careful 
 notes of the Middle Empire, which have only recently been made 
 available to Europe in translation. There is reason to believe, too, that 
 the Byzantine emperors, or their governors in Syria, had held com- 
 munication with China, and even implored the assistance of her powerful 
 ruler to make common cause against the firebrand Mohammed, who 
 was just starting a conflagration on the borders of both. Taiso 
 apparently agreed to the alliance, and his armies were preparing to 
 advance from Turkestan to the relief of Persia, when the Saracens, 
 with Napoleonic haste, frustrated the junction by driving a wedge 
 eastward across the Chinese path. 
 
 One seems forced to trace some providential meaning in this second 
 blocking of a direct union between Europe and Asia. Only twice in 
 Chinese history was it conceivable that Celestial commissioners should 
 have fraternized with Roman ; once about the time of Christ in the Han 
 
Clay Head of a Boy dug up at Khotan 
 
 By permission of Dr. Aurel Stein. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 85 
 
 dynasty, the first Chinese expanded empire ; and again in the second 
 great Chinese empire, the Tang (To) of the seventh century. Both were 
 powerful enough to pierce a continent ; both were anxious to meet face 
 to face the renowned Rome of their day. But Parthian trade jealousy 
 had blocked the first meeting in the days when Western Rome had 
 started on her decline ; and now Mohammedan religious fanaticism was 
 to block the second when Eastern Rome already felt weak before the 
 foe that was to dismember and destroy her. 
 
 Here is the true explanation of why Greco-Buddhist art was so 
 late in reaching China, and why its contact was so brief and its force 
 so rapidly spent. It was a tragic moment for the whole East, a mere 
 touch-and-go. This new Ghandara Buddhism with its fine art had 
 been smouldering at the very western gates of China for three cen- 
 turies, but the weakness of internal dissension had helped the barriers 
 of the desert. Just now, when the power of Tang was fraternizing, 
 after a lapse of 400 years, with Khotan, Kashgar and North-Western 
 India, and claiming share in the great religious harvest, it was all 
 about to be blotted out by a mighty Saracen sirocco that would soon 
 obliterate its faintest trace and change the whole current of Central 
 Asiatic thought and art for ever. It was high time that Hiomtsang 
 should go the rounds, make notes and amass relics before the great 
 black curtain shut down. Destruction lay for Buddhism on every 
 hand, not the Mohammedan blast alone, but a threatened final on- 
 slaught of the Northern sands that had already swallowed kingdoms, 
 and a fanatical rising in India itself, which was to wipe out the 
 peaceful monasteries from the Peninsula in a wave of darkness and 
 blood. 
 
 So much for the reason why Greco-Buddhist contact was short. 
 But in China itself the new inspiration was enthusiastically welcomed 
 by the Buddhist party. Hiomtsang and his relics were installed in a 
 rich temple, and he given charge of a body of scholars to translate 
 and interpret the manuscripts he had brought. We have Chinese 
 evidence that Khotan art rapidly penetrated eastward. Scions of the 
 royal house of Khotan became guests in China, were naturalized, and 
 brought in their national arts, of which the records of painting declare 
 that the new style modelled the Buddhist figures into an appearance 
 of full relief. No examples of this kind of painting exist, unless, as 
 I suspect, it be partially preserved in the great frescoes at Horiuji, 
 
86 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 which I am soon to describe. Along the newly re-opened route 
 learned immigrants, driven, perhaps, by already growing disturbances 
 in the South, came up over the mountains from India, bringing the 
 germs of a new esoteric Buddhism which was to flame into pro- 
 portions of grandeur in the next century. 
 
 It is possible that the early Chinese landscape, painted in oil upon 
 leather in the Horiuji collection, and showing Tartars on a white 
 elephant in the foreground of a great valley lighted by a sunset, belongs 
 to this early Tang date, though I have already conjectured its attribution 
 to the sixth century. But if we compare the statue of the Khotan 
 hero, Bisjamon, now in Toji of Kioto, with the Dzin or pre-Dzin 
 example in Seiroji, we shall see how much richer modelling and grace 
 Chinese art was absorbing. Here the details of the armour fully 
 carved, and the group upon which the warrior stands, a female with 
 Greco-Buddhist top-knot in the centre, flanked with large headed dwarfs 
 or barbarians, exactly correspond with features of the stucco Bisjamon 
 unearthed by Mr. Stein near Khotan. Of late seventh century is another 
 fine Chinese Bisjamon, somewhat weather-worn, kept in the Japanese 
 temple of Udzumasa. 
 
 In North-West China, near Suifu, is cut into the face of a great 
 sandstone cliff the whole paraphernalia of a Buddhist paradise, the 
 Trinity on thrones, a congregation of the faithful in realistic grouping 
 at the sides, and great terraced stories of palace temples at the back. 
 Here the disposition of the drapery, rather than the grace of the 
 figures, leads us to ascribe Greco-Buddhist origin. But smaller Chinese 
 carvings of the same subject, some in closable pocket shrines of wood, 
 show much more clearly the Greco-Buddhist style. 
 
 But the finest and most classic forms that have come down to our 
 day from this brief movement, of which there is no clear connected 
 account in Chinese history, are the great statues, miniatures, and relief 
 tablets, done in marble, in hard-baked clay, and in soft composition 
 clay. The marble statues of Buddhist deities, full-size and very beau- 
 tiful, were found lying buried beneath the grass that covers ruined 
 mounds, in the outskirts of the present Western capital of Singanfu. 
 fust here stood the early capital of Tang, nearly upon the ruins of 
 the early capital of Han, and close by the site of the capital of the 
 still earlier founders of Chow. What a field for the archaeologist of 
 some future century, who will have been able to overcome the 
 
The Soft Clay Statue of Buddha Seated, 
 
 at Udzumasa, near Kioto. 
 

GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 87 
 
 superstitious dread of excavation; and who will find, layer after layer, 
 first at the bottom the veritable bronze vessels and unglazed shards of 
 Chow ; next the walls and bas-reliefs of Han ; and then the broken 
 columns and prone altar pieces in marble of the Greco-Buddhist 
 monasteries of Tang (To). 
 
 Samples of the hard clay reliefs, in graceful, crisp, and exquisite 
 finish, not unworthy of the Japanese bronze Trinity, are preserved in 
 Horiuji. Here the grouping is almost identical with some of the 
 panels of the Horiuji frescoes. The placid Buddha sits on a throne 
 with feet not drawn up into the cross-legged attitude, but falling over as 
 if from a chair, and resting upon a lotos footstand below. The lines of 
 single drapery here, disposed in a new fashion, are crisp and wonderfully 
 beautiful. Graceful Bodhisattwa are at the side, shaven monks in the 
 background. Fragments of the elaborate halo are beautifully plastic. 
 
 But the most typical example of Chinese Greco-Buddhist art is 
 probably the soft clay sitting statue of a Buddha, kept at Udzumasa 
 near Kioto. There is no clear record that this is Chinese ; tradition 
 had rather called it Corean. The Japanese would probably like to 
 claim it. But, even in the clay figures of Sangetsudo, there are no 
 Japanese examples of such realistically plastic modelling, quite omitting 
 all such decorative line passages as we find in the bronze statuettes. 
 Here the figure is clearly Greco-Buddhist, quite like the first Ghandara 
 Prince Sakyamuni, of the Lahore Museum; but more powerful in 
 conception and execution, in proportioning and spiritual presence, 
 than any Indian piece. The great heayy folds are deeply cut as if 
 by firm pressure of the thumb, quite as we block out the masses 
 in our wet clay models. The small curls in the hair, too, are like 
 waxy lumps which we had just pinched together with three fingers. 
 Perhaps some of the roughness is due to repairs ; but it seems 
 probable that this statue was left undecorated and as massively virile 
 as an untouched photograph. The profile, too, is almost as fine as 
 the Yumedono Kwannon. That this statue became in a clear sense 
 the model for the colossal Japanese bronze Buddhas of the Wado 
 and Yoro epochs can hardly be doubted. 
 
 One more phase of Greco-Buddhist art in China must be touched 
 on, namely — the white bronze mirrors. We know from Chinese records 
 that the proportion of metals in their alloy was nearly equal parts 
 of copper and tin. The more common forms of these circular 
 
88 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 mirrors is to fill many elaborate concentric bands with astronomical 
 and necromantic symbols mixed with delicate Chinese writing. These 
 symbols show actual constellations, or groups of triglyphs from the 
 Y-king categories, the tortoise and hoo-bird, and the so-called zodiacal 
 animals. These are manifestly in subject of Chinese origin, and only 
 in their delicacy of tracery superior to the gems of such Taoist 
 symbolism found in Han. More graceful mirrors than these are 
 figured in the Chinese archaeological books sometime as Han, 
 where the most delicious arabesque traceries clasp into spirals the 
 vivacious outlines of hoos and lions ; while flowers, butterflies and 
 birds on wing fill the ten-pointed star of their border. But by far 
 the most beautiful mirrors are those entirely covered with exquisitely 
 modelled relief, almost surpassing the Japanese angel screen in easy 
 grace and perfect finish, of heron-like birds flying among grape vines 
 in the border; and animals that look now like a lion, now a bear, 
 and now a squirrel, plunging among still stronger compositions of 
 grape bunches in the centre. The hollow piece that holds the 
 string is as like a glorified frog on a Han bronze drum. We have 
 already spoken in Chapter II. of the controversy over these pieces ; 
 how the Chinese books call them Han, how Professor Hirth argues 
 that they are Han; but of the aesthetic impossibility how, judging 
 from examples I have yet seen, my sincere doubt that they can be 
 Han; that they are not pure Greek, though Greek-like in effect, seems 
 clear. We find the grape-vine pattern used upon late Greek work, 
 but with nowhere this degree of grace. These pieces, of which many 
 large specimens are kept in the Shosoin storehouse at Nara, must for 
 the present be ascribed by me to an inner decorative flowering of 
 Chinese genius to perfect with Chinese shapes rude motives that may 
 be derived from Ghandara. We shall speak of these once more under 
 Shosoin. 
 
 We have already explained why this specific Greco-Buddhist move- 
 ment in China was cut away at the stem before it had absorbed 
 sufficient vitality from the parent root to render it more than a 
 sporadic form. Pure Chinese causes working from within, making 
 
 nobler use of native elements, forgetting the pagan non-symbolic grapes 
 and squirrels, and substituting more Chinese proportions and rich 
 passages of brush delineation for tall and realistic Buddhist modelling, 
 were about to follow the rapid rise of Tang poetry to the veritable 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 
 
 89 
 
 splendour of an illumination. By the year 698, when the Emperor 
 removed his capital far to the east, at Loyang,* this momentary 
 quickening had well-nigh ceased. 
 
 It seems a tendency with some writers to claim all that followed 
 for centuries in Chinese and Japanese art to the credit of the 
 Greco-Buddhist movement ; but this is to confuse classifications. In 
 this work we aim to seize the peculiar creative impulse of each 
 period, and thus explain the uniqueness of its art. Judged by such 
 aim the Khotan influence was brief, and the specific form only in 
 part assimilated. It is doubtless true that a certain legacy of 
 nobleness and grace was left to later ages by this brief passage, just 
 as a certain naive solidity was deposited by Han — but little that 
 is specifically of Greek type. No doubt Chinese art grew with 
 every step, incorporating successive powers ; but the elements that 
 now entered into the quick evolution of Tang were more internal, 
 spiritual, and formally Chinese. 
 
 * Japanese pronunciation “Rakuyo.” 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 I 
 
Chapter VI. 
 
 GRECO-BUDDH 1 ST ART IN JAPAN. 
 
 The Culmination of Sculpture — Nara. 
 
 L et us observe now the outflow of this sudden classic wave in China 
 to Kingdoms lying on her eastern border. Tang (To) ambition 
 had essayed to annex Corea in 645, and temporarily succeeded 
 in 668 ; thereby almost leading to serious friction with Corea’s friend, 
 and nominal superior, Japan. This is why Japan was so much more 
 cut off from Corean contact in the seventh century than in the sixth, 
 and why she was forced first to evolve art from within, second to be 
 influenced by Tang. Corea, too, could not avoid this influence ; and we 
 have evidence that her art, already so fine, was lifted up into something 
 like new Greco-Buddhist proportions before the end of the century. 
 
 The royal palace in Seoul, set in the midst of fine gardens, with 
 its beautiful carved marble terraces, railings, bridges and columns, 
 and its specially fine swing of tiled roof, shows clear traces, through its 
 many rebuildings, of that great day when Corea was swayed by Tang. 
 It is not certain whether the cream glazed pottery for which Corea 
 afterward became so famous can date from this seventh century. But 
 we have one large Corean bronze of the first rank, which was presented 
 from the continent toward the end of the century, and which exhibits 
 clearly the Greco-Buddhist influence, though in combination with invete- 
 rate Corean traits. This is the splendid life-sized standing Kwannon, 
 worshipped as the central altar-piece of the Toindo pavilion in Yaku- 
 shiji, near Nara. 
 
 To mark exactly what Corean art has gained — and possibly lost — 
 in the interval of a century, it is a privilege to compare this Toindo 
 Kwannon with the Yumedono Kwannon of almost similar size described 
 in Chapter III. In these two pieces we have the supreme summits — 
 so far as we now know — of Corean art. 
 
DETAIL OF THE FRESCOES AT HORIUJI 
 
I/JiflOH fa aaooaiiM i 3ht rc> ji//nra 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 91 
 
 The later Kwannon stands a little stiffly, with almost no hip-sway, 
 upon a new type of lotos throne, the upper petals of which rise stiffly, 
 like an artichoke, from an octagonal box member whose curving sides 
 are decorated with relief flower scroll that may well be modified 
 acanthus. The modelling of this bronze throne is of the utmost power 
 and semi-classic beauty. The lower part of the figure retains much of 
 South Indian and early Corean feeling, with its drapery close winding 
 about the legs, the fine outward swing of Go folds at the side, and 
 the somewhat thin and wiry mantle that twines to the feet over shoulder, 
 hips, and arms. But in the upper half of the body we return to an 
 approximately Greco-Buddhist type : primarily the proportion, the fine 
 long chest and slightly suggested swell of the bosom, the graceful waist, 
 the long arms, the small well-modelled hands, and especially the small 
 beautifully ovalled head. The hair is of the pure Greco-Buddhist 
 Bodhisattwa type, the very large top-knot being encased in a filigree 
 net with conventional scrolls. Finely moulded jewels encircle the neck, 
 crisply relieved from the satin texture of the skin. Above all, the face 
 possesses great beauty, enhancing under its semi-classic sweetness that 
 beneficent mysterious smile which we noticed in the Yumedono and 
 Chuguji Kwannons. It remains to add that the bronze of which it 
 is composed is of a lovely yellow brown, an alloy which the Japanese 
 Buddhists call “ Embudagon,” but which was rarely attempted by them. 
 It may be said that this was the first large bronze statue ever seen in 
 Japan, and that it had immediately great influence upon Japanese work. 
 
 It is possible that the colossal bronze-seated Buddha of Kanemanji, 
 which we are soon to describe, is also a Corean masterpiece of this 
 date. There is no record of the fact ; indeed, all tradition regarding 
 it is lost ; but it has almost as clear a golden tone in its alloy as 
 the Embudagon Kwannon ; and the folds of drapery about the 
 body and legs, though large and grand, are somewhat wiry and formal, 
 and like the lower portion of the Toindo Kwannon. It seems more 
 probable that it is a first Japanese experiment made with Corean material 
 and under the influence of Corean genius. 
 
 Let us pass over the Straits of Tsushima, and resume our study 
 of Japanese art where we dropped it at the end of the fourth chapter. 
 We had there watched Japan’s long series of experiments with bronze 
 statuettes culminate in the brilliant Trinity of the Angel screen. We 
 
 1 1 
 
92 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 make this the dividing line, because almost immediately after this 
 achievement strong Chinese imperial and Greco-Buddhist forces were 
 to sweep all such experiments away into new and wider channels. 
 
 The study of Chinese institutions begun by the Emperor Tenchi 
 was followed up by his successor, Temmu, and the latter’s widowed 
 Empress, Jito. The latter in 690 organized the ladies of her palace 
 into a corps of female officials. She also established a mint. But 
 
 her greatest achievement, though now ruling as a retired Buddhist in 
 the name of her son, was the drafting and first promulgation of the 
 great Taihorio code of laws in 702. These were based on a deep 
 study of Chinese precedent, and had for their primary object a just 
 redistribution of the land, which had been absorbed by the nobles, 
 among the agricultural population at a fixed rental. A separate soldier 
 caste, with special privileges and means of support, was devised. 
 Moreover, the Empress and her young protege held quiet receptions 
 of nobles and officials in the palace of Daikiokuden, quite in the style 
 of Chinese sovereigns. Confucius, too, was publicly worshipped for 
 the first time, along with Buddha. A student of the new Chinese 
 mysticism, En no Gioja, came over to Japan, but was not well 
 received. 
 
 These incidents are mentioned chiefly to call attention to the 
 enormous influence upon Japan which the vigorous Empire of Tang 
 was exerting ; and with it could not fail to intrude the new aesthetic 
 canons of the Greco-Buddhists. Already the clay Buddha of Udzu- 
 masa and the terra-cotta tablets must have been imported, and this 
 Corean bronze Kwannon of Toindo lay ready to hand as additional 
 motive. It was apparently in the western side of the Nara plain, 
 close up under the sand hills, and a little north of the present 
 town of Koriyama, that the first great experiments in Japanese Greco- 
 Buddhist art were made. Here stands Yakushiji itself with the 
 Toindo ; and just south of it lies Shodaiji, an institution founded a 
 little later, but probably on an early Buddhist site. Here, amid a 
 mass of broken statues and interesting refuse, I found in 1880 a 
 life-sized piece which seems to have been one of the original Greco- 
 Buddhist models, or at least experiments. It is like a great doll 
 of wood, apparently finished into surface with over-layers of modelled 
 clay. The Greekish modification of Indian drapery over the legs 
 is under-cut in deep, strong catenary folds ; the body, nude above 
 
Bronze Buddha at Kanimanji. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 93 
 
 the waist, shows strong markings of the primary muscular tracts ; 
 the long, tapering arm has been separately modelled and set into 
 the shoulder with a plug ; the neck is short, the head rather too 
 large, but semi-Greek in profile, and a projecting plug shows where 
 a top-knot was added to the Greco-Buddhist hair. 
 
 But our enumeration of the sources of Japanese Greco-Buddhism 
 would be inadequate without the famous frescoes that now completely 
 cover the inside surface of the four outer walls of the great Kondo at 
 Horiuji, five miles to the west of Koriyama. I have described this 
 first great temple of the Suiko age in Chapter IV. ; and there I mentioned 
 that a great fire about 680 ruined the first erections, with the possible 
 exception of the gate, the pagoda, and the Kondo. Some Japanese 
 archaeologists believe that these, too, are not the original structures, but 
 belong to the general rebuilding, which must have been achieved under 
 Greco-Buddhist influences coming from China ! I will not repeat the 
 arguments there briefly canvassed ; but go on to assert that the great 
 frescoes of the Kondo, whether the original building was old or new, 
 must surely have been painted at this time. The low pent-house which 
 runs about the lower story, injuring its effect, was doubtless no part of 
 the original architecture, but a device either added to the old building 
 to protect the frescoes from exterior damp, or added later to the new 
 building, as it was found that protection would be needed. In either 
 case, the interior of the Kondo presents a strange agglomeration of 
 styles ; the whole altar, most of the statues thereon, and the great hang- 
 ing baldachins being purely Suiko, while the frescoed walls behind them 
 and a few of the statues are purely Greco-Buddhist. 
 
 It seems good to call these elaborate paintings frescoes, since they 
 form one of the very few examples of mural painting on plaster which 
 have come down to us in Eastern Asia ; but it is improbable that their 
 method was pure fresco, that is, of the application of the pigment to a 
 wet surface : rather does it seem certain that the chipping off of the 
 
 colour shows that it was applied to the dry finish of the wall, quite as 
 it might have been painted over paper, silk, or wood. Some English 
 travellers have exclaimed before these Horiuji frescoes upon their likeness 
 to the wall paintings in the Adjunta and other Buddhist cave-temples in 
 Northern India. But it seems to me that between the two aesthetic 
 types there lies a wide gap. It is true that in both we find the flesh 
 afterward outlined in red, and that somewhat similar Indian types are 
 
94 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 found in both. But in all that concerns aesthetic classification, in spacing, 
 in proportion, in line dignity and solidity of colouring, and in the noble 
 presentation of spiritual beings, the Horiuji panels, though East Asian, 
 have far more merit than the more sensuous, squirmy, crowded and 
 over-ornamented Indian examples. In the latter little of Greek pro- 
 portion and suggestions remains. It seems fair to conjecture that, 
 granting the existence in Ghandara of great Greco-Buddhist frescoes, they 
 and the cave works may have slightly influenced each other ; the pro- 
 portion of the Greek element being far greater in the Ghandara. It 
 would then happen that the Horiuji paintings, derived from Ghandara, 
 would present certain features that Ghandara shared with Ajunta. It is 
 interesting in this connection to compare the best of the Horiuji 
 compositions with the classic frescoes unearthed at Pompeii ; and to 
 realize that here we have almost surely a real, though remote, genetic 
 connection. 
 
 The long band of Horiuji frescoing, broken only by the four doors 
 which cut the centre of the four walls — a band of some 300 feet in 
 length by 15 in width — is broken into separate quadrangular com- 
 positions of varying proportion, the largest of which show seated 
 Buddhas, some with down-falling feet, standing Bodhisattwas of tall 
 Greek type — not always stiffly in pairs as members of a trinity, but in 
 groups of two, four and more — and holy men as spectators in the back- 
 ground, quite as in the Ghandara fragments. The Buddhas’ halos are 
 circular ; rich painted baldachins overhang, and flying angels with 
 backward sweeping drapery descend from heaven with dropping flowers. 
 Other groups have only dignified Bodhisattwa without Buddhas. These 
 always have the great domed Greco-Buddhist top-knot, not as formal in 
 line as the sculptures, but painted wavy, as are also the loose locks that 
 fall on the shoulders, much as the hair falls in the Ghandara marble 
 princes. The colours are rich and deep, dark claret and green garments 
 for the Buddhas, and dark reddish or purple flesh tones for their faces ; 
 but gayer warm tints for the bodies and the faces of the feminine 
 types. 
 
 Who painted these unique frescoes we do not know. The temple 
 guess that it was Doncho, one of the Corean priests who came over for 
 Shotoku, is nonsense. It is hardly possible that any Japanese artist 
 who might have studied in China could so perfectly have mastered 
 an alien style. It seems far more likely that the author was either an 
 
Detail of Frescoes at the Temple 
 of Horiuji, Nara. 
 

Greco-Buddhist Sculptures in Stone. 
 From the Crypt of the almost vanished 
 Temple of Gangoji, in Nara. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN CHINA 
 
 95 
 
 imported Chinese master who had worked under Michi Itsung or some 
 other devotee of the Khotan style, or possibly a so-called “ Indian,” 
 that is, not necessarily a native of India proper, but an importation from 
 Khotan itself or from farther Turkestan. In either case we ought 
 properly to have described these works under the heading of Chinese 
 Greco-Buddhist art in the earlier part of this chapter. But because 
 of their relation to the history of Horiuji, and of their dominating 
 influence upon the Greco-Buddhist style in Japan, I have deliberately 
 postponed the account to this point. Enough to say that the proportion 
 and grace of these painted deities could never be made to coalesce 
 with the influence of such imported sculptural types as the Udzumasa 
 Buddha and the Toindo Kwannon. 
 
 The influence of these paintings and of the small clay relief upon 
 Japanese sculpture of the age of Temmu (673 — 688), is clearly seen in 
 some remarkable large reliefs in stone in the crypt of the almost vanished 
 temple of Gangoji in Nara. These are deeply chiselled out of solid 
 slabs of stone let into the wall. The chief of these consist of a very 
 beautiful eleven-headed Kwannon, and several Trinities. The style of 
 the Kwannon retains some trace of the bronze statuettes ; but the lines 
 are more suave and the proportions are newer. The figure has been 
 cut out of a niche, and stands in such high relief as almost to seem 
 detached. It is perhaps Japan’s finest piece of stone sculpture. The 
 Trinities are arranged in the regular Greco-Buddhist style, but the 
 spectators are omitted. The Bodhisattwa sway strongly at the hips. 
 Suiko Ghandara lions crowd up by the Buddha’s footstools. The flame- 
 shaped halo is retained from Corean models ; but within the Buddha’s 
 is a round Ghandara halo. In one instance, instead of a baldachin, we 
 have the sacred tree carved in flat relief, with concentric bands of leaves ; 
 a persistence into Buddhism of Han art derived from Mesopotamia. 
 
 But soon a new discovery in Japan lent weight to the coming change. 
 In 708, the first year of the Emperor Gemmei of the Wado period, copper 
 was discovered in Japan in large quantities ; and thus it became possible 
 to make bronze images of large size. For the statuettes of the preceding 
 age most of the metal had to be imported. Now it became no longer 
 necessary to limit the scale of work, for which the Greco-Buddhist models 
 demanded generous proportions. The imported Toindo Corean Kwannon 
 set the pace ; and thus in bronze sculpture we now have splendid statues 
 of life-size or larger replacing the statuettes. 
 
96 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 The style of this new and culminating bronze work may be described 
 as a synthesis between the new Greco-Buddhist ideals coming from China, 
 ■and the qualities of the statuettes themselves. We have seen what wonder- 
 ful delicacy of feeling and what finish of surface could be obtained in the 
 Trinity with the angel screen. It is possible that some of the more graceful 
 features of this may be due to a first partial introduction of the new Greek 
 forms. But Japan was rather too far removed from the Central Asian 
 sources to absorb Ghandara canons in their purity ; so that they may be 
 said to have acted rather in the way of enhancing, dignifying, and broaden- 
 ing the excellences already found in germ in the statuettes. With this 
 modification, Greco-Buddhist art, such as it is, really comes to take deeper 
 root in Japan than in China, just because the native genius was more 
 adapted to it. In China it only advances art one peg toward the Tang 
 culmination of 730. In Japan it becomes itself the very culmination of 
 the first period. 
 
 The groups of large bronze deities which belong to this culminating 
 age, Wado and Yoro, from 708 to 721, and which now remain for our study, 
 are chiefly four. The earliest is probably the great Kanimanji Buddha 
 already mentioned, which may possibly be Corean, or possibly made in 
 Japan of Corean metals earlier than 708. This we have already described. 
 
 The next group is the trinity of colossal statues now set up in the 
 Kodo or lecture hall of the temple of Yakushiji, in the western suburbs of 
 Nara. The history of this most interesting temple is obscure ; but 
 probably it was originally founded somewhat to the north of its present 
 site ; and it is said that this Kodo trinity was cast as its main altar-piece. 
 When the temple burned a few years later, it was rebuilt on its present site 
 about 716 ; and aesthetic taste having advanced with strides during the 
 short interval, the awkwardness of the old altar group caused their abandon- 
 ment to the secondary building or Kodo, the finer black trinity being newly 
 cast for the new Kondo. This first Yakushiji trinity, which is considerably 
 larger than life, show clear traces of its dependence upon the statuette 
 model. It is just an expansion of these to new scale, with an evident 
 effort to achieve new proportions and realistic modelling. In spite of such 
 criticism, the Buddha is very fine, the drapery falling over the shoulders 
 more in the Chinese manner than does that of the Kanimanji figure. 
 Nothing of that hard Corean fold line here remains. A very original 
 method has been tried in swathing the upper of the crossed feet in their 
 drapery ; but the legs and feet have apparently been made too insignificant 
 
The Bodhisattwa standing at the left of the Yakushiji Trinity. 
 
 From the Black Bronze Trinity at Yakushiji. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 97 
 
 and thin, in trying to get away from such an enormous exaggeration as the 
 Kanimanji Buddha gave them. The hair is not flat as in the latter, but 
 covered with wavy short curls. The support is an immense solid circular 
 lotos throne, which, while fine for statuettes, takes on a certain awkward- 
 ness from the excessive scale. The standing Bodhisattwa are impressive, 
 but somewhat fail in reaching perfect naturalness in the hip-swing. 
 
 This old temple of Yakushiji contains one more feature which I 
 ought to notice before coming to the Kondo, and that is the ancient 
 pagoda, which was saved from the fires that destroyed the Kondo and 
 Kodo a few centuries ago, and perhaps dates from Yoro. It is unique 
 in the varying breadth of its stories, achieving an original impression 
 in Buddhist architecture. 
 
 But perhaps the most powerful aesthetic grip that will seize the 
 astonished traveller in Japan will burst upon him as he turns to the 
 north, and enters the broad open doors of Yakushiji’s Kondo and faces 
 the forty-foot breadth of the great stone altar with its trinity of colossal 
 statues in shining black bronze, relieved against enormous boat-shaped 
 halos of gold. These halos are new, the original, undoubtedly of bronze, 
 having been probably melted in the great fire. Other figures of Yakushi’s 
 generals, of modern clumsy form and garish colouring, help to mar the 
 unity of the group. Moreover, the space in front of the altar of the 
 modern building is so narrow that no single front view of the three 
 wonders can be obtained. It is only by photographing them far at the 
 side that we can obtain them in a single composition, by no means 
 their best view. We must be content then to study each for itself — 
 premising that the whole group is made of a black polished bronze — 
 perhaps the same alloy heavy in gold called Shakudo, and often used 
 for small sword ornaments — as black as ebony, and which the con- 
 flagration could only slightly injure. 
 
 Taking the Bodhisattwa first — the Sun and Moon goddess, so-called, 
 who attend Yakushi as Kwannon and Seishido Amida — we may say 
 that every precaution has been taken to guard against the defects of 
 preceding examples, large and small. The figures, of perfect grace and 
 restrained sway, are neither attenuated nor stout, but of solid, sub- 
 stantial proportion, the head given dignity by the specially large 
 Greek top-knot. The muscular contours of the body are revealed with 
 perfect restraint. The drapery about the legs is far freer and purer 
 in fold than the Toindo model. The double curved systems of linked 
 
98 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 jewels, and of the thin mantles, are so perfected and harmonized as to 
 carry the beauties of the screen trinity up to the grandeur of the 
 new scale. They are, perhaps, the finest standing bronze figures of the 
 whole world. The chasing of the surfaces of hair and crown give a 
 splendid contrast of dusty colour with the liquid black of the flesh. 
 
 The Buddha is a splendid compromise in proportions between the 
 big head and legs of Kanimanji, and the weak features of the Kodo. 
 The lines of drapery have less decorative depth than the screen 
 trinity. The head is modelled into a splendid front oval, but gives 
 a sharp profile quite like the Udzumasa clay Yakushi. The flow of 
 the drapery over the left arm and across the left knee is as beautiful 
 as the rhythms in a genuine Greek statue. The left hand, too, is 
 as beautifully modelled as the Buddha’s of the screen, and, although 
 being webbed, of more realistic proportions. 
 
 A word must be added about the great massive bronze box or 
 throne, upon which the Yakushi sits, and over the front of which his 
 falling drapery pours. This is unique in Asiatic art, and hard to 
 classify, though it seems pretty clear that its elements must have come 
 in with waves from Chinese Tang concomitant with Greco-Buddhist. 
 The edge of the upper projecting band is beautifully done in vine 
 scroll-work, strongly recalling the grape-vine mirrors, and very close 
 to the grape-vine scrolls of later Greek work. The panelled rosettes, 
 lozenges and crosses of the four other bands, also in low relief, bear 
 relation to primitive designs found among the tribes that live along 
 the Amoor region, and which we find in some Han decoration. A 
 long low writhing dragon, in the middle of one of the side bands, 
 seems to be a transition trom the dragon type of Han to that of 
 Tang. But the most remarkable and unique features are the groups 
 of crouching figures, two and two, set within decorative Buddhist arches. 
 
 These show a most realistic representation of dwarfed figures of some 
 negrito race, nearly naked, and with enormous heads of fuzzy hair 
 like the Somali peoples in Africa, or the Negritos of Borneo, Australia, 
 or the Philippines. It seems as if these have been studied as types 
 of a lower world, sub-human, which Buddhism came to dominate, or, 
 as a theosophist would say, relics of a third race. It is probable 
 that the genius of the artist here substituted these realistic forms for 
 the Greco-Buddhist dwarfs or imps. But the most incredible feature 
 of all is the built-up pillar at the back, held by a grotesque figure with 
 
Yakushiji Black Bronze Trinity 
 
 seen in profile. 
 
99 
 
 GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 
 
 fish tails instead of legs. This seems indeed to be a deliberate re- 
 importation, based upon contemporary studies of Polynesian life, of the 
 principle in ornament of the totem pole. It is of course more 
 beautifully and conventionally rounded than in any Polynesian specimens. 
 
 Taking the Yakushiji group as a whole, it does not seem extrava- 
 gant to say that its aesthetic value would alone repay a student the 
 whole time and expense of a trip from America to Japan. What a 
 ripe genius its author must have been ! And fortunately we know him, 
 the third identifiable personality in our list of great Japanese sculptors, 
 coming nearly a century after Tori Busshi and Shotoku Taishi. He is 
 Giogi, called for his marvellous wisdom, “ Bosatsu ” or Bodhisattwa. 
 Not only was he an artist, but a great prelate, and a great statesman 
 and adviser of the Japanese emperors. Fortunately, too, we have his 
 portrait statue in wood, the work of his own hand, which, in spite of 
 its crumbling paint, reveals the same splendid plastic use of drapery 
 that we find in his Yakushi. The portrait is to be found in Saidaiji, 
 north of Yakushiji. 
 
 In order to understand how these brief periods of Wado and 
 Yoro really contain the first aesthetic flowering of the Japanese race, we 
 must remember that a great activity in literary form accompanied 
 these triumphs of sculpture. At this time lived the two supreme 
 masters of early Japanese poetry, Hitomaro and Akahito. The 
 Manyoshiu, the first great Japanese anthology, began as a private 
 collection in the family of Yakamochi Otomo, grew by accretion and 
 was published, probably between 750 and 760 a.d. The Kojiki, a 
 reduction from traditions of the religious annals of Japan, was com- 
 pleted in 712. The first critical history of Japan as a whole, the 
 Nihonji, was printed in 720. It was a wonderful outburst of intellect 
 and refined feeling, on its literary side almost pure Japanese, and 
 unrelated to the great contemporary Chinese literary outburst of 
 Tang. That is, Chinese ideals had not yet penetrated Japanese 
 literature, as they had Japanese Buddhist art. 
 
 To add new evidence of how this illumination worked toward 
 perfect and original art, especially bronze, we must point to the 
 Kagenkei, that wonderful hanging bronze drum, whicn is one of the 
 treasures of the Shinto temple at Kasuga. It is a circular bronze 
 drum suspended between the interlaced bodies of two dragons, which 
 twine upward from a stem which rests upon a lotos saddle on the 
 
ioo EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 back of a crouching dog-like figure, probably a Buddhist lion. The 
 modelling is all as vigorous and rich as a Benvenuto Cellini, with- 
 out any of his rococo exuberance. In restraint it is more like the 
 Mercury of John of Bologna. These are typical dragons of Tang; 
 and the working out of their scaly folds and of fanciful reptilian 
 
 legs is as realistic as if it had been mastered in long study at a 
 
 zoological garden. The concentric relief bands of the drum, covered 
 with rich scroll work, and its fine lotos centre recall the moonstones 
 of Ceylon and their antecedents in Mesopotamia. 
 
 But it should not be supposed that the aesthetic triumphs of 
 this day are confined to sculpture in bronze. Several other substances 
 lent themselves readily to the plastic genius of Japan, foremost being 
 the medium of clay, which had been used in various forms and 
 textures in China, in Khotan, in Ghandara, in Baktria, in Tanagra, 
 
 and in Nineveh. This Japanese clay is of a beautiful light silvery- 
 grey, unbaked, composed of sifted Nara earth mixed with finely 
 shredded paper fibre. It yields with ease to the thumb, takes a 
 
 polished surface that hardens with mere drying, and resists ordinary 
 atmospheric disintegration. 
 
 A large number of statuettes in this new material — invented 
 apparently for the very purpose of introducing the Greco-Buddnist 
 
 forms, and based upon such importations as the Udzumasa Buddha — 
 are found in several striking groups set with modelled landscape 
 background in the lowest story of the Horiuji pagoda. Here are 
 
 little Greco top-knotted angels sitting about, and Bodhisattwa mingled 
 with kings, saints and mediaeval monks. The Nirvana scene, among 
 others, is thus worked out into detail ; many of these clay figures 
 of priests in deep sorrow being naive and even comic, but fine in 
 
 action. The last is especially true of the man who throws himself 
 over backwards. These groups are probably early, and may date from 
 the very rebuilding of Horiuji. 
 
 Another and more striking set are the “ i 2 generals ” accompanying 
 Yakushi, life-sized statues which were originally set about the great 
 
 circular clay altar of Shin Yakushiji at Nara, These are 12 militant 
 figures in violent attitudes, some of them with spears, some with 
 swords, and some arrows. Their costume seems based upon the 
 primitive Khotan Bisjamons, with variations undoubtedly Chinese. 
 Here too must lie great play of Japanese fancy, for no two attitudes 
 
The “ Kagenkei,” or Hanging Bronze Drum, 
 at the Shinto Temple of Kasuga, Nara. 
 
A Mass of Broken Statues and Interesting Refuse, 
 such as was found by Professor Fenollosa in 
 the year 1880, at Shodaiji. 
 

IOI 
 
 GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 
 
 are in the least alike. The finest is probably the figure with the 
 
 long upraised arm. This temple was restored at the expense of 
 the Japanese Government several years ago, so that it is specially 
 interesting n^w to see the photographs taken in the early ’eighties 
 with the dim figures of gigantic Bodhisattwas looming up under the 
 dark apexed space of the octagonal pavilion. 
 
 Still finer in modelling and preservation are the four life-sized 
 guardians (Shi Ten O or “Four Deva Kings”) which are set upon 
 the great raised altar of the Kaidando (Baptistery) of Todaiji in 
 Nara. So vigorous is their action that they seem almost veritable 
 photographs of scowling Chinese knights in armour. So fine is their 
 modelling that the effect is given of perfect marble sculpture. The 
 hands have been broken and restored, and what they hold is modern. 
 But the faces, bodies and hair are nearly perfect. Especially fine 
 is the action of the figure which holds up a pagoda in his raised 
 right palm ; and his Greco top-knot is striking. Another has his 
 head completely covered in a fine Chinese helmet. All these figures 
 stand upon the bodies of misshapen brutal imps, the very ideal of 
 what our “ theosophists ” call an “elemental.” It is probable that 
 in these fine statues we have very close approximation to Chinese 
 originals ; and we can therefore feel that we are in them virtually 
 studying the art of early Tang. 
 
 Another single statue of the violent type is the Mace thrower — 
 Shikkougo-Shin, a kind of Buddhist Thor — kept in the adjunct 
 pavilion of Sangetsudo in the grounds of Todaiji. This shows the 
 utmost passion of battle in the face. The muscles and tendons of 
 the arms and of the elevated fists are worked to the utmost per- 
 fection of the veins. The lines of the flying drapery, though 
 somewhat broken, are so fine that we are inclined to place this as 
 contemporary with the culminating black bronze Trinity of Yakushiji, 
 and to conjecture that it may be the work of Giogi himself. The 
 original painting over the clay has been almost perfectly preserved, 
 giving detailed textures and patterns — the damascening of the gorget — 
 the scales of the waist piece, and the brocade arabesques of the close- 
 fitting shirt. 
 
 But the finest pieces that have come down to us, doubtless also the 
 work of the culminating periods Wado and Yoro, are the large, 
 even sometimes colossal, Bodhisattwa in clay ; especially the two 
 
io2 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 large figures with hands clasped in prayer, upon the great altar of 
 Sangetsudo. If one has been sceptical of any real Greek influence 
 
 up to this point, he will be converted on beholding these so-called 
 statues of Brahma and Indra (Bonten and Taishaku). This is 
 probably a misnomer ; for the figures are the most feminine of all 
 early sculpture, feminine in the sense of grand solid proportions that 
 bring them into a sort of rivalry with the Parthenon torsos and 
 the Venus of Milo. Of course we must remember, in the case of 
 these as in the case of the black trinity, that the ideal is necessarily 
 different from the classic, translating the suggestion of the human 
 into godlike proportion, rather than reducing the godlike to the 
 typical human. Nevertheless, the deep modelled drapery folds seem 
 as fine as the best of archaic Greek, and the low relief of the 
 knotted girdle is as delicate as the angels of the screen trinity. 
 The faces, too, have the sweet nobility of the little Bodhisattwa in 
 
 that statuette group, the profiles being especially beautiful. We 
 must rank these as the finest work of the day along with the Yakushiji 
 colossi. 
 
 We come now to the great age of Nara, which the Japanese 
 vaguely identify by the period name Tempei. But the age begins yet 
 earlier than Tempei, with the accession of the Emperor Shomu in 724, 
 who was destined to rule till his death in 748, which is also the last 
 year of Tempei proper. We should better designate this as the age of 
 Shomu ; but it is something of a mistake to regard it as an assthetic 
 
 culmination. No doubt it was Japan’s first age of really imperial 
 
 splendour : Shomu’s new capital, Nara, covering some thirty-five square 
 miles and having more than a million people. Shomu himself was the 
 nearest to an imperial autocrat that Japan ever saw. He was supreme 
 king, general, judge, and priest in one. Moreover, his reign was con- 
 temporary with the central part of that romantic Chinese reign of 
 Genso (713-756) which is the real absolute culmination of Chinese 
 genius. It was followed by the great decay of life and ideals under the 
 Emperor Kobun. Why, then, should we not regard it, as writers have 
 generally done, to be the first flowering age of Japanese genius also? 
 
 The difference in the cases of China and Japan — between Genso 
 and Shomu — is that the former was formulating and organizing new 
 forces from within, already superseding the somewhat alien Greco- 
 Buddhism with stronger nation growths ; but that the latter had no 
 
The Sangetsudo “Mace-thrower 
 
 at Todaiji. 
 
Large Clay Figure of a Bodhisattwa, 
 
 SOMETIMES CALLED “BONTEN.” 
 
 Temple of Sangetsudo. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 103 
 
 new elements from within to incorporate, and became partially cut off 
 from that new Central China of Tang which might have supplied new 
 motive. Hence, Shomu, who at once removed the national capital to 
 Nara, thought only of gathering up and enjoying the fruits of previous 
 contact with the continent. In his early years he abolished the practice, 
 begun by Tenchi, of sending Japanese students to study abroad. The 
 new literature had already given Japan a kind of self-consciousness. 
 China was herself partially divided between Buddhist and Confucian 
 camps. Shomu determined to reign in independent splendour as the 
 sole great Buddhist potentate of his day. His superstitious reign 
 reminds us somewhat of the early Chinese Emperor Butei of Liang. 
 
 Moreover, inspiration was already succumbing to splendour and the 
 temptations of imperial favour. The demoralization of Koken was 
 already beginning. The great poet Hitomaro died during the first year 
 of Shomu. The great artist Giogi had passed away. The nation was 
 rather cut off from a new supply of Chinese and Corean genius. Even 
 its Buddhist principles were not deeply and soundly enough rooted. 
 Culture was based rather on sentiment than on character. The young 
 Japanese nation could not know that luxury and success were really 
 the greatest enemies of supreme art. Yet the undermining forces did 
 not clearly reveal themselves during Shomu’s earlier years. 
 
 The use of clay, as an alternative medium for sculpture with bronze, 
 apparently did not last late into Shomu’s reign. A new and purely 
 Japanese substitute for it was now invented, whose greater tenacity and 
 lighter weight made it possible to build and move really colossal statues 
 from place to place. This was a method of hollow sculpture worked in a 
 kind of lacquer composition; A high wooden frame was first covered with 
 planes of coarse cloth soaked in glue, which could be made to harden into 
 the primary blocking of the statue. Over this was modelled by thumb 
 and spatula successive layers, progressively refined in texture, of a mixture 
 of lacquer juice with powdered bark. This could be made in the lower 
 contours as thin as paper, but deepened for the relief portions. The 
 lacquer dried to the hardness of rock, and could be finished in shining 
 black, gold leaf, or heavy oil paint. When finished, a life-size statue 
 weighed only a few pounds. This seems to have been the favourite 
 substance for artists, especially during the earlier years of Shomu. Its 
 danger lay in making the core of wooden supports too stiff to bring out 
 all the graces of action ; but this defect hardly appeared at first. Several 
 
io4 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 hundred statues in this form, large and small, whole or in fragments, 
 still remain in the great temples about Nara, especially in Horiuji, 
 Sangatsudo, Akishino, and Kofukuji. The Dembodo pavilion of Horiuji 
 is largely filled with such, mostly in gilt finish. The others are mostly 
 painted. The guardian Kings of Sangatsudo and some of the gilt 
 Bodhisattwa are eighteen feet in height. 
 
 One of the most beautifully modelled, hardly inferior to the clay “ Indra,” 
 yet showing the Shomu modification of the Greco-Buddhist top-knot in 
 locks that play loose about the domed excrescence, is the seated Bodhisattwa 
 owned by the Art School in Tokio. Here the pure plastic of the thumbing 
 is only surpassed by the Chinese indigenous clay Buddha. The somewhat 
 bronzy stiffness of finish that still lingers in the Japanese clay pieces is 
 here thrown away. But the very facility of execution leads to a certain 
 picturesque carelessness in the composition. 
 
 The Dembodo statues are mostly in gilded trinities, and a little smaller 
 than life. The best set of these has a grace and finish almost worthy of 
 Giogi and his black bronzes. The top-knot breaks with a special catch in 
 the centre part. In the Bodhisattwa, whose top-knot and left arm are broken, 
 the beautiful plastic play of the drapery over the shoulder give us the 
 feeling of a Roman emperor’s portrait statue. Since the day in 1880 when 
 I first discovered it, I have always affectionately called it “ Caesar.” The 
 slim painted composition statues upon the altar of the Chukondo at Kofukuji 
 in Nara, are of the generals of Yakushi and of priests. The broken 
 statues already illustrated are of this series. Their faces have a small 
 boyish Indian look which gives them a naive charm. Tradition has it that 
 their modeller was an Indian priest who came directly to the world’s new 
 Buddhist Constantine, Shomu, rather than to China. The finest priest’s 
 statue with the small Indian head is probably his self portrait. 
 
 To this early Shomu age, say of 724 to 740, belongs also the rare 
 humorous bronze group of two priests, one praying, and one walking 
 slowly and sanctimoniously with a censer. The drapery is of the very 
 finest cast and modelling. 
 
 But the true Japanese substance — as it was also the leading Chinese 
 substance — for Buddhist statues, and especially for those of Shomu’s 
 later days, was undoubtedly wood. We find wood used only exception- 
 ally and chiefly for the rare eleven-headed Kwannons, in the Suiko, 
 Yomei, and Seimei eras (593 to 66 7). In the following reigns, includ- 
 ing the Empresses Gemmei of Wado and Gensei of Yoro, wood remained 
 
Seated Lacquer Figure. 
 
 Now in the Tokio Fine Arts School. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 105 
 
 quite subordinated to bronze and clay. But by the early years of 
 Shomu’s reign, the eleven-headed Kwannon was promoted to stand 
 among the chief of Nara’s deities ; and for it the retained material of 
 wood was carved with all the new grace of Giogi himself. Here, too, 
 the feminine attributes of this favourite, almost one might say the 
 motherly quality ot her — corresponding on the one side to the fecundity 
 of the Ephesian Diana, on the other to the mediaeval Virgin of 
 Europe — became more strongly marked than in any Buddhist statue 
 outside of India. 
 
 The earliest, most beautiful, and most Greek of these wooden 
 Juichimans is the sumptuously-modelled figure of the Itsushi Island, in 
 Lake Biwa. Here the chief face is most sweet and beautiful, the figure 
 splendidly swaying, the contours of the upper nude body suggesting 
 rather than realizing the female bosom, the action of the hand in hold- 
 ing the large bottle fine. The profile is equally splendid, showing traces 
 of the antique depression of the thorax. All the drapery lines are as 
 graceful as the finest bronzes. This is the finest wooden statue, and 
 may possibly belong to the Yoro epoch. 
 
 Later in Shomu’s career, when he had become quite absorbed in temple 
 erections, his young wife, the Empress Komio, said to be the most 
 beautiful woman of Japan, entered into his enthusiasm, and is said at 
 times to have become possessed by the spirit of the eleven-headed 
 Kwannon, her person at such moments of inspiration glowing like gold. 
 Other tradition has it that she used this alleged piety as a cloak for 
 scandalous intimacy with one of Shomu’s priests. It is generally believed 
 that she allowed her unveiled person to be used as a model for a 
 Juichiman Kwannon, which is generally identified with the statue of 
 Hokkuji, that evidently belongs to Shomu’s middle or later period. 
 But this, though it has much effeminate grace and unique fancy in the 
 draperies that engulf the legs as in a whirlwind, does not seem quite 
 feminine or beautiful enough to have been made from the alleged model. 
 The Lake Biwa Kwannon, though the most feminine, would seem to 
 be too early for this episode. Somewhat less feminine, though almost 
 equally beautiful, is the eleven-headed Kwannon of the Toindo at 
 Yakushiji, which formerly occupied a niche at the side of the big 
 Corean bronze. The white priming of this gives the impression of 
 marble. The figure is so light and graceful, almost seeming to poise 
 against wind currents, that 1 have sometimes likened it to the most 
 
 VOL. 1. k 
 
1 06 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 graceful tall French Gothic statues upon the facades of Amiens and 
 Rheims. Indeed, this Japanese naturalization of far-away Greek types 
 so parallels the mediaeval unconsciousness of the classic tradition that 
 remotely conditioned its work, as to justify us in adopting for this 
 style, if not for the Greco-Buddhist art as a whole, “ the Buddhist 
 Gothic.” Mr. Cram has independently noted this parallelism in this 
 suggestive term. 
 
 But the wooden sculpture of Shomu was far from being limited 
 to such graceful feminine forms as Juichimans. Buddhas, Bodhisattwas, 
 Deva kings, priests, knights of Yakushiji’s, elementals, and a dozen 
 other forms, sought to realise plastic beauty under the carver’s tool. 
 As the reign passes towards its close, these forms grow stouter and 
 heavier, a proportion that, for male figures especially, is not without 
 ts dignity. These are found everywhere in temples throughout 
 Yamato province, the most notable being in temples erected or 
 re-dedicated in Shomu’s own Tempei, many of them being in a half- 
 ruinous condition. As temples fell or were burned, those statues, 
 or parts of them, which could be saved were transferred to neigh- 
 bouring sites. In this way we find some splendid heavy, semi-Greek 
 male figures in Todaiji, Shodaiji, Yakushiji, and Akishino. The Kondo 
 of Shodaiji is almost filled with them — knights, Indras, and Buddhas. 
 The sweetly stooping Bodhisattwa of Art at Akishino is a specially 
 well-preserved example. But to get a conception of the masses of 
 
 remains of such statues, it is necessary to see the photograph which 
 I took in 1882 of the rubbish heaps at the back of the Chukondo 
 altar, and the Tokondo also, at Kofukuji. Here the broken “bones” 
 of composition statues mingle with splendid contours of Buddha torsoes 
 or the armour of knights. It is possible that what remains to us 
 to-day is only a very small percentage of what once existed. 
 
 Here is perhaps the place to say a word upon the nature of the 
 Bodhisattwa in general as worshipped in this early Nara Buddhism, 
 and of its special adaptability for sculpturesque types. The general 
 Buddhist idea of a Bodhisattwa is of a being who has advanced so 
 far in the scale of wisdom and insight, and the renunciation of fleshly 
 ties, as to be just on the point of entrance into Nirvana and salva- 
 tion. Spoken of human beings, it means their last earthly incarnation. 
 But it comes to have a much more special sense in Northern 
 Buddhism : namely, a being who, though having the right to enter 
 
Three Humorous Imps. 
 At Kofukuji 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 107 
 
 Nirvana, deliberately renounces it, electing to work under the conditions 
 and possibly renewed temptations of the world, for the love of one’s 
 fellow-man or of the whole sentient world. It thus denotes a new 
 kind of renunciation, the renunciation of renunciation, or rather the 
 renunciation of salvation. In so doing it ceases to be negative and 
 self-seeking, entering upon a positive and masterful path of love and 
 help. The Bodhisattwa vow in Northern Buddhism, especially in the 
 Tendai sect, as we shall see in the next chapter, is a vow made as 
 early as baptism to lead the strenuous path of battling for the right, 
 to consecrate one’s career throughout any number of necessary incar- 
 nations to loving service. The Bodhisattwa idea, therefore, comes 
 very near to the Christ idea. 
 
 Now if a soul should, not rising in evolutional course from 
 man, but descending in special dispensation from a paradise already 
 attained, devote itself to such loving service without the need of more 
 than occasional incarnation , it would become a Bodhisattwa of a higher 
 type, still more Christlike — a perpetual Bodhisattwa, so to speak — a 
 great spirit making for love and righteousness, invisible to man, bu' 
 assisting him, whose answer to man’s prayer comes with every 
 
 accelerating throb of human devotion. Such a Bodhisattwa would become 
 worshipped as a sort of personification of the great moral or spiritual 
 principle for which he specially stood. Such a Bodhisattwa would be 
 Aizu, the spirit of love; Bisjamon, the spirit of courage; Jizo, the 
 spirit of pity, particularly of care for little children ; Manju, the 
 Bodhisattwa of wisdom, or spiritual interpretation ; Kwannon, the 
 Bodhisattwa of providence, sustenance, and salvation from physical 
 evil. So there are Bodhisattwas of fortitude, piety, church organiza- 
 tion, faith, domestic peace, and, as we have just seen, of beauty and 
 art. The simple attitude of the Suiko and Nara congregations may 
 be said to have regarded these virtues and graces, not as ethical 
 abstractions in their souls, but as living and gracious spiritual presences, 
 with just personality enough to pray to. It is the idyllic deification 
 of all the good in man and society. 
 
 Now to have turned this Pantheon of gods into an equally gracious 
 group of aesthetic types was just the kind of achievement that a great 
 fresh sculptural genius would be adequate for. Their semi-personality 
 made adaptable the Greco - Buddhist degree of achievement in per- 
 sonal realism ; while their vast generalization into moral types could utilise 
 
 k 2 
 
108 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 to the full the formal, preter-human beauty of sculptural conventions. 
 For such Bodhisattwa, abstractions named with worship, such gifted 
 sculpture as the triumphs of Yoro seems to offer an utterly sympathetic 
 form. These lofty serene presences in bronze, clay, and wood seem 
 themselves to be just the very personification of great principles that 
 make for righteousness. We shall see, in later chapters, how the 
 Bodhisattwa idea undergoes change or evolution toward new forms, which 
 equally well relate themselves to new arts. 
 
 The latter days of Shomu’s art carried the tendency toward heaviness 
 and coarseness to a much greater degree. It would seem as if the 
 drying up of spiritual grace reduced to gradual insipidity assthetic grace. 
 The order of 741 to build temples and found monasteries and Buddhist 
 colleges in every province of the empire, required hasty work to fulfil. 
 The great Chinese and Corean models became lost in the copying of 
 copies. As, in the decay of Roman art, the loss of spacing and fine 
 rhythms was not perceived. The standard of taste itself had become 
 perverted. 
 
 The growing stiffness and materiality are well illustrated in the large 
 painted wooden Kwannon, with body, head and flame halo, which stands 
 
 at the back of the Horiuji Kondo altar, not far from the attenuated 
 
 Corean Kwannon. It goes through the motions of being Greco- 
 Buddhist, but its graces and rhythms are hard and unimaginative. It 
 falls below the art of Yoro much as Syrian Greek falls below Attic. 
 
 Another phase of this decaying art is the grotesques. These are 
 
 exemplified in the Shi Ten O of Nanzendo at Kofukuji. Their clever 
 attitudes suggest the pompous energy of small conceited men. Their 
 bodies have now become so thick that the neck has disappeared within 
 the collar of the gorget. Still another and charming phase is given in 
 the sacred masks, mostly from the Kasuga collection, which mingle 
 prehistoric Shinto types, related to Alaskan and Philippine dance 
 masks, with Indian and Bodhisattwa types. Here are Greek comic 
 masks, side by side with the bird-snouts and the long-nosed murder 
 types of Pacific art. But the skill of their carving is the skill of 
 Tempei. And the much later masks of the No comedies are only 
 weakened adaptations of suggestions from these. 
 
 Still another phase of the late Tempei sculpture is the realistic 
 representation of child life and female life, whether dignified as Buddhist 
 forms or as mere portraits. For example, the little over-elaborate and 
 
Panel from the great Bronze Lantern in front of 
 the Dai Butsu Temple at Nara. 
 
\ 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 109 
 
 heavily bejewelled statues which the learned editor of Shimbi Taikwan 
 calls “ Soi, the Indian goddess of Fortune,” are manifestly modelled 
 after little fat Japanese girls, with one of the coiffures of the day, 
 the long hair falling over the shoulders in thick locks. These are 
 coloured like nature. And there are corresponding paintings of “ Soi ” 
 with flesh half-modelled, as in European and our supposed Khotan 
 art. Other paintings, more Buddhistic but not the least Greco- 
 Buddhist, show probably a mixture of Chinese and Corean traits. 
 These are only hair outlines, but all the drapery falls into hard, 
 wiry, formal curves, of no force and little beauty, which attract the 
 eye with a gaudiness of colour and minute patterns of colour on 
 colour which are much like the painted patterns on the clay Kongoji 
 and the colossal composition pieces of Sangatsudo. Between these fall 
 the drawings of the ladies upon the few screens that remain in 
 Shosoin. These have eyes near together, as in the Buddhist fat types, 
 but hair falling over the head in great bags, as in the sculptured 
 “ Soi’s.” Other fine portrait statues of this day are those of priests, 
 as of Ganshin Washo, the founder of Shodaiji, who is there worshipped. 
 
 One of the last great acts of Shomu, two years before his death, 
 was to decree and start the erection of a colossal bronze statue of 
 Roshara Buddha (the Buddha of Light), to be placed in a great 
 monastery erected on the plateau east of Nara, and at the foot of 
 Mikasa mountain. This was to be called “Todaiji,” the Eastern great 
 monastery, or, as the Japanese and foreigners have always called it, 
 “ The Daibutsu.” Shomu died in 748 — four years before its com- 
 pletion, but the plans were his. The enormous building of the 
 
 Kondo, some 300 feet long and more than 100 feet in height, has 
 been partly reproduced in the present middle-age building erected 
 after a destructive fire. The image itself sat 53 feet high upon its 
 throne. Its present ugly big head replaces the original which was 
 melted off in the fire. But even judging from the small model, 
 
 which remains, the figure was ugly enough at first. It apparently was 
 not only the inherent difficulty of designing for such an unheard-of 
 scale, and for such difficult construction, but the very taste of the day 
 was for fat and neckless types. Here both sources of monstrosity were 
 present. 
 
 But one really beautiful piece of work accompanied the building 
 and the solid casting of the Buddha, and that is the large bronze 
 
Iio EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 lantern which, some 20 feet in height, stands in front of the main 
 entrance to the Daibutsu-Kondo. The pedestal is of granite ; the 
 lantern itself a great octagonal birdcage of open-work cast bronze. 
 Upon the four unbroken panels stand in low relief the overloaded 
 but not ungracious figures of Bodhisattwa. Upon the four groups 
 of opening door panels fly downwards in clouds lion-like animals that 
 rise into relief like the so-called “sea-horses” of the Chinese grape 
 mirrors. We can hardly judge, after twelve hundred years of exposure 
 to weather, of the original finish of this unique bronze. 
 
 The whole wealth of a great and growing Empire had literally 
 been cast by Shomu into this proud creation of a colossus. For it 
 special taxes from provinces a thousand miles away and recently 
 wrested from the Ainus, now for the first time smiling with harvests, 
 had been collected, and stores of copper and gold from Japan and 
 Corea had been amassed in monasteries. Shomu was really master of 
 great works like an Egyptian Pharaoh. But one other big thing he 
 did before he died, and on his death-bed — the biggest thing of its 
 kind that any human being has ever done — he left by will the total 
 material contents of his palace at the time of his death as a present 
 to the new Buddha, and ordered to be erected a special storehouse 
 within the monastery grounds for the custody of these articles. 
 
 That storehouse is the famous Shosoin of Nara, erected in 749 
 and still existing ; and the articles now therein are by far the larger 
 part of the deposits of that year, as can be seen by comparison of 
 the original inventory. It is the greatest place of its kind in the 
 world, a unique domestic museum ; the only competitor being the 
 combination of Pompeii itself with the unearthed Roman treasures 
 stored in the Naples museum. But there the articles are only those 
 that could defy damp and heat — stone, metal, earthenware, and frescoed 
 plaster. Whereas in Shosoin every kind of article is represented, 
 however perishable : writing paper in rolls from Shomu’s own desk, 
 garments of every grade from his wardrobe, the perishable furs and 
 frail feather slippers of the Empress ; jewels ad libitum , including 
 infinite variety of stone and glass beads ; all the utensils of house- 
 keeping, pans for cooking, bowls for eating, spoons and knives and 
 forks, yes, and glass finger bowls ; bedsteads and couches, and vases 
 and boxes, and cabinets, and floss silk for embroidery, and accoutrement 
 for horses, and court banners, and rare manuscripts, and painted 
 
Painted Designs Designs painted on Leather 
 
 from Shosoin. from Shosoin. 
 
1 1 1 
 
 GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 
 
 screens, and metal mirrors, and musical instruments, and weapons of 
 war, and a thousand other articles of unique interest. Nowhere else 
 exists such an opportunity for studying the daily life and art of a 
 vanished civilization. Through it we know more of Nara life, and 
 reflected in it of Chinese life in early Tang, than most of us know 
 even of the China and Japan of to-day. 
 
 The Japanese are right to prize it as something sacred, for it has 
 been held as a kind of mystic legacy from Emperor to Emperor 
 since the day of its founding. Never has there been an era in the 
 
 imperial household when three commissioners with three sets of keys 
 have not been appointed its official custodians. It is true that in the 
 distractions and imperial poverty of the middle ages there were times 
 when the museum was not opened for many years, once during the 
 gap of a century. At that time storms and damp broke through 
 one part of the roof, and a portion of the perishable articles, un- 
 fortunately all but three or four of some 200 screens, then mouldered 
 away. But two out of three partitions remained intact with all their 
 contents. Very little has been added from age to age ; we have many 
 successive inventories to compare with the original. When the new 
 government came in with 1868 the exploration of this place became 
 an unparalleled piece of romantic work. Mr. Uchida, the chief 
 commissioner, made the first archaeological study of its contents and 
 constructed the present system of museum shelves and glass cases, in 
 which samples of all species of articles can be exhibited to those few 
 who have the favour of a visit. Nowadays the museum is opened 
 only once a year, for drying, and an imperial rescript is necessary for 
 each visitor admitted.* Some drawings were made by antiquaries in 
 the early nineteenth century, and a few such photographs were taken 
 for the government exhibit at the French Exposition in 1898. A 
 few copies are in the museum at Tokio and the imperial archives. 
 But for the most part the contents remain still unillustrated. As 
 imperial commissioner I had a chance to study these treasures on 
 three separate occasions in the ’eighties. And the little I can say 
 here is taken from my note-books of those years. 
 
 The value of the collection as a whole is perhaps more archaeologic 
 than aesthetic ; nevertheless a vast number of specimens of high 
 artistic beauty and importance are included, some of which I have 
 * This rigidity was afterwards considerably relaxed. — T he Ed. 
 
1 12 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 already described. What I shall now add refers mostly to these. Facts 
 of mere social interest — as for example that there are no chopsticks 
 in Shosoin, only spoons and forks ; and that stirrups and locks are 
 quite like European — cannot be dwelt upon. 
 
 The building itself is some ioo feet long, two storeys in height, and 
 raised 20 feet into the air on heavy open piling, which allows no damp 
 to arise from the ground. The unpainted wood of enormous trunks, in 
 being eaten with the slow oxidation of a millennium some three inches, 
 exhibits exposed surfaces of the toughness of iron. It is a more precious 
 privilege to climb about its rickety stairways than to ascend to the 
 dome of St. Peter’s. 
 
 The first impression one gets is of being in a second resurrected Rome, 
 of the continental scale of an Asia. Apparently the whole range of the 
 massive continent had poured its treasures into the lap of Nara : Babylon 
 and the Persia of the Sassanids, and India and Ghandara, and Annam, and 
 the Amoor, and of course China and Corea, all contributing substantial 
 quota. In how far these waifs are Chinese is a matter of growing interest. 
 Mr. Uchida and the archaeologist of 1868 were inclined to regard them 
 and most of the Horiuji articles (Horiuji was found to be almost a second 
 Shosoin) as Japanese products. But we can now be sure that much of 
 Shomu’s prized furniture was made up of gifts from continental sovereigns 
 or from unique importation. The beautiful glass and enamels came from 
 Persia and China. The glazed tableware pieces — yes, plates and cups and 
 bowls of a mottled yellow and green, in a kind of Castile soap pattern — 
 abound by the gross. Not a piece like this ware exists so far as I know 
 in any other Japanese or foreign collection of pottery ; so it is hard to 
 place. But it is probably Chinese of early Tang, based on the relics and 
 colours of Han pottery and glazes. 
 
 Other Chinese pieces of unique value are the biwas, or pear-shaped 
 lutes, across whose surface under the striking point of the strings painted 
 leather panels have been glued. The sunrise landscape elephant is one of 
 these. Another is the scene of lion hunting among the mountains. Still 
 other biwa are inlaid with delicate flower arabesques and birds of tinted 
 ivory. Lacquered boxes and other utensils inlaid with Chinese patterns in 
 pearl and ivory are common. We have already noted one Tang ornamental 
 piece with Taoist figures in a bamboo garden. And other remarkable 
 pieces are small slabs of marble, possibly tent weights, heavily carved with 
 fights between animals. The one here shown of a wild boar and a kind of 
 
Paintings on the Back of Musical Instruments called “ Biwa. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 1 1 3 
 
 hound is taken from a rude drawing in white made in the early 19th 
 century. This must be Chinese Greco-Buddhist modelling of early 
 Tang, as powerful and perfect as Egyptian animals of the old empire, or 
 even as Greek. Still other pieces are beautiful silver boxes and vases, 
 ornamented partly in relief, partly with patterns incised in the Greek 
 manner. Some of the shapes are so delicate as to recall Mohammedan 
 Persian art, say of coffee pots and hookahs ; and this is one ground of the 
 hasty assertion that the Corean Japanese art of the Nara period is based 
 upon Persian. Rather, to take a fine example — the large silver pitcher 
 with cover and handle — ought we to say that beautiful Eastern forms like 
 this, probably Chinese of early Tang, must themselves have been the 
 originals from which the late Mohammedan art of Persia and India was 
 derived. Sir Purdon Clarke, expert on Central Asian art, with whom I 
 discussed such problems at South Kensington in 1887, agreed with me in 
 Chinese attribution. 
 
 To analyse the present specimen we should have to say that its 
 shape is a refinement of Han bronzes and pottery, that its cover is 
 a relic of Pacific dragon modified by Babylonian drawing, and that 
 the winged horse so beautifully engraved on its side is an exquisite 
 specimen of Greco-Buddhist art. This horse I have myself traced 
 from an early Japanese drawing. We have already seen winged horses 
 in the Han reliefs, but these were strenuous and massive in their 
 lines. Here the wings are as European as those of the painted cherub 
 baldachi at Yakushiji. If not Greco-Buddhist, it must be Greek art 
 coming at this day by sea through Persian sources. 
 
 Another Persian controversy concerns the flower ornamentation of 
 the inlaid biwas. Here we have daintily carved pomegranate-like leaves 
 for all the world like those of modern Persian carpets and Indian shawls. 
 Mohammedan influence, one might allege ; yes, but too late in the day, 
 for the Arabs were still concerned with Egypt and Spain, and the 
 Sassanid dynasty of Persia did not fall before 637 a.d. Plenty of 
 Sassanid ornament there is in Shosoin and Horiuji, especially in the 
 patterns of Buddhist stuffs. But it is all, as we should expect, in the 
 form of debased Assyrian combined with debased Roman. Such 
 Sassanian art is well represented by the brass dish with concentric 
 circles in the British Museum. But of the flower style of the inlaid 
 biwas we have yet to prove the existence in any Mohammedan art 
 before the twelfth century. 
 
i H EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 But the greatest sesthetic triumph among the Shosoin pieces, and 
 incidentally the most interesting controversy, is found in the hundred 
 or more magnificent specimens of Chinese bronze mirrors. These 
 were formerly believed to be Japanese. Some are only six inches in 
 diameter, some as large as two feet. All are finished with a delicacy 
 of modelled relief on the back and a satin smoothness of surface that 
 match the angel screen of the trinity. Many of them are un- 
 doubtedly Tang design, with scroll-work and dragons and tortoises 
 exactly like the decoration of the Yukushiji bronze pedestal. The 
 controversial ones are the grape vine mirrors, already twice spoken of, 
 of which the Shosoin collection possesses a large number, of exactly 
 the same freshness as the undoubtedly Tang examples and as the 
 white snake trinity. It is incredible that thirty or forty pieces of 
 Han age should have lasted in full perfection through eight centuries 
 of Chinese change down to Shomu’s time. The only statable hypothesis 
 consistent with their Han origin is that some rare Han pieces had 
 been copied and played upon with infinite variation by artists of 
 Tang, or Nara, or both. It is possible that some pieces are Japanese, 
 just as the angel trinity is probably Japanese. But the type is 
 more absolutely Chinese than the latter, in which all the elements of 
 design are pure Buddhist. Not a Buddhist symbol enters into the 
 grape vine mirrors. Moreover, as I have said, not one feature of 
 this elaborate workmanship has any kinship with any other Han 
 design yet seen by me ; whereas in esthetic feeling it is in close 
 touch with all the more delicate phases of Greco-Buddhist art con- 
 temporary with early Tang — with Tang bronzes, Tang mirrors, Corean 
 statues, the angel trinity, the Yakushiji pedestal, the Todaiji lantern, 
 and the Yakushiji painted cherubim. 
 
 The final phase of Nara degeneration is most interesting to trace. 
 The Empress Koka, who ruled until 769, though a devout Buddhist, 
 could not check palace and temple rottenness, and had no new phase 
 of thought or action to substitute. The only hint of such a thing is 
 the first worshipping of Confucius in 767. Confucius had been given 
 posthumous nobility in China in 739. The Confucian party at the 
 Tang capital, headed by the great Han, master prose writer of the 
 Empire, had publicly, but in vain, denounced Buddhism. China was 
 already threatening to divide against herself. If the wreck had been 
 more serious in Japan history might have been changed ; as it was, the 
 
Outline of the Building known as Shosoin. 
 
 Mirror from Shosoin. 
 
 Silver Ewer Showing a Design 
 of a Winged Horse. 
 
 At Horiuji. 
 
GRECO-BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 115 
 
 Confucian worship, only sporadic, was a sign of returning intercourse 
 with China. For in almost the same year the Empress created her 
 Buddhist prime minister “ King of Religion.” The laws of Taiho, 
 guaranteeing the land to the people, were falling into disuse ; no re- 
 apportioning and re-appraising were ordered, and the selfish nobles 
 confiscated where they could. Such demoralization could end only in 
 disaster. 
 
 The art of the day shows the change : the bronze wooden statues 
 of Dembodo, without a real organic rhythm, all stiff as a board, 
 being typical Koken art. A last good phase is seen in the ugly 
 and awkward low-relief “ generals ” of the Tokando of Kofukuji. 
 Then follow the unspeakable atrocities of the large bronze Shi Ten 
 O of Saidaiji. 
 
 A ray of light comes from attempts at painting ; many of these 
 are fat and roly-poly, and of a misplaced gorgeousness. Yet there 
 is an attempt to introduce low relief in Amida’s Western Heaven, 
 with its bands of trinities and angels. The woven colossal Paradise 
 of Taimadera belongs to this day, as also the statue of the imperial 
 nun Chujo-hime, who was translated at her death to Heaven. Thus 
 to this day persists the Bodhisattwa club among the young men of 
 the village, who once a year dress as Amida, Kwannon, and the 
 twenty-five Bosatsu, build a great bridge over the court of Taima, 
 and cross with elaborate dancing to carry the statuette of Chujo-hime 
 to Heaven. A true relic of the Buddhist miracle dance is this, 
 which I saw in 1888, analogue of the Oberammergau performances 
 in Christian Europe. The Bodhisattwa masks are late beautiful 
 examples of Koken carving. The successor, Korin, did no better 
 
 for her few years ; and the whole fate of Japan lay with the power 
 
 to do new things of Kwammu, who succeeded to the throne in 
 
 782. Such is our brief account of the rise and fall of Greco- 
 
 Buddhist art in Japan. 
 
Chapter VII. 
 
 MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING IN CHINA AND 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 Eighth Century to Eleventh. 
 
 Loyang and Kioto. 
 
 I T would be a decided mistake to suppose that Greco-Buddhist art 
 served as more than a single short step in the climb of Chinese 
 genius toward its apex. It was a mere interlude in the perpetual 
 overlaying of the faith in China with form after form. It helped the 
 subsequent art, no doubt, by its training in proportion and in fine line 
 rhythms. But as a special aesthetic form it was forgotten in China almost 
 as soon as it had begun. We have now to see what were the real causes 
 of the further advance of Chinese art to the Tang culmination. 
 
 It must be remembered that in such a large, complex, yet loosely 
 jointed mass as the Chinese Empire, great movements are rarely single, 
 but overlapping with others, the germs of subsequent creation slumbering 
 along for centuries side by side with their antagonists. It is thus true 
 that all through the Greco-Buddhist days of the eighth century at least two 
 great earlier art movements never died out — one the love of pure land- 
 scape in poetry and painting, which had been fostered by the long 
 residence of the Chinese Court in the south, especially the Court of 
 Liang ; the other an art of religious painting, which itself had subdivided 
 into two main forms : a Northern or Tartar form in which the hair lines 
 were quite subordinate to colour masses, and a Southern form, originated by 
 Kogaishi (Ku K‘ai-chih), in which the flexible brush line played a powerful 
 part. Though little remains to illustrate either of these early beginnings, 
 we know from written history that all received some attention during the 
 formative years of early Tang. It was now, at the end of the seventh 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 1 1 7 
 
 century, new natural and spiritual forces acting widely throughout the 
 nation that tended to bring these half-neglected aesthetic styles more into 
 the foreground. 
 
 We have seen that the root of the exceptional genius of Tang lay 
 in the variety of its sources, and in their fertile reaction upon each 
 other when brought into contact at a common capital. The wealth, 
 too, of the empire had never before reached such height. Buildings 
 were grander, stuffs and clothing more exquisite, food more plentiful, 
 the people happier, engineering works more stupendous, than in the 
 Han dynasty or in any preceding period of Chinese history. The 
 Eastern capital, Loyang, in the ancient peaceful seats of the Hoangho 
 valley, became now rebuilt upon a scale which accommodated more than 
 two million people. Great public gardens and museums gave recreation 
 to the people. The private palace gardens were raised on mighty walled 
 terraces, pavilion crowned, that enjoyed far prospect over lakes and 
 bays — or sunk into cool shady wells where plum trees shot their scaly 
 arms into the shape of dragons, and ancient pines had been trained to 
 writhe like serpents through the interstices of water-worn stone. Great 
 jars of hard paste pottery covered with creamy glazes, and tiles of 
 deeper hue, probably purple and yellow — an art descended from the 
 glazed ware of the long extinct Han — gave brilliancy to the landscape 
 architecture. Pavilions rose above granite and marble foundations in 
 rainbow tier after tier : great banquetting halls, and blue silk awnings, 
 and heavy portieres shot with golden thread adding alike to the exalted 
 coolness and to the aesthetic transitions. A vast commerce had opened 
 up from the southern and eastern ports with the Indian Ocean and 
 even the Persian Gulf. Colonies of Arab merchants already had alien 
 settlements in the Chinese cities. Religious liberty was fairly respected, 
 for Mohammedan mosques and Jewish synagogues, and even temples of 
 Nestorian Christians, arose side by side in some of the more populous 
 capitals. Indeed, in these great days of early Tang, China had become 
 the metropolitan garden of Asia, surpassing the splendours of Khan or 
 Caliph at Samarcand and Damascus and Bagdad. 
 
 But beside these material advantages, the Chinese mind, and especially 
 the Chinese literature, must be said also to have blossomed into 
 luxurious perfection. Great scholars, Buddhist and Confucian, thronged 
 the receptions of the imperial court ; the greatest hand-writers of China 
 wrote mighty thoughts into exquisite manuscript ; the culmination of 
 
1 18 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 forceful dignified prose came with the memorials of Han wei Kung 
 (Kantaishi) ; and, more than all, the wonderful experiments in perfect- 
 ing poetic forms which had followed the beginnings of Toemmei and 
 Shareiwun in the South now came to their final blossoming in a host 
 of great poets who fired the various resources of form with their fresh 
 genius and unfettered taste. 
 
 The very centre and core of this mighty illumination of Tang was 
 the long reign of the Emperor Genso, who ascended the throne in 713, 
 after the Greco-Buddhist inspiration had spent its course, and who out- 
 lived the tremendous experiments of the Chinese soul to find perfect 
 form for expression that preceded the insurrections and disasters of 755. 
 Now it was that the very China of China began to take on her per- 
 fected institutions. The civil service examinations were broadened and 
 made compulsory as an anteroom to officialdom ; the University was 
 organized, the Boards of History and Morals purified, and the tendencies 
 of literature and art concentrated into that supreme achievement which 
 soon gives rise to canons. 
 
 The career of Genso (Hsuan Tsung) himself is most romantic and 
 pitiful. Set at the very acme of Chinese power and feeling, his good- 
 humoured weakness — and, as the later Confucian scholars would say, 
 superstitions and dissipations — led him into intertangled nests of palace 
 intrigue, and into a sort of aesthetic excess that well-nigh undermined 
 not only him, but his whole dynasty. If we are to believe the purist 
 censors who have denounced this age, it was almost as bad as the days 
 of Nero and the mediaeval popes. But we must remember that even 
 the China of this early day was already threatened with a duality that 
 has since become her fate and her curse, a growing antagonism between 
 the Confucian scholars and all other believers and thinkers, who entered 
 with joy and hopefulness upon a new life, new religious sanctions, and 
 a new art. It was a situation somewhat parallel to the split between 
 Puritans and Cavaliers that had declared itself in England by the reigns 
 of the first James and Charles. If Wycliff had been the prime English 
 sage of ancient years who had laid down full philosophic foundations 
 for British character, as Confucius had done for Chinese, and if the 
 Catholic love for gaiety and drama and art and light verse had come 
 as a passionate after-outreach for freedom, as the newer and newer 
 waves of idealistic Buddhism flowed into China, the parallelism would 
 be closer. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 1 19 
 
 But we may well suspect the Puritan chroniclers of China of 
 falsifying the record when they lay such deep stress upon the gap as 
 already existing in Genso’s day. It is as if we imagined Elizabeth and 
 her Court to take their nominal Protestantism with the same seriousness 
 as Cromwell and Milton. The age of Genso and the strength of its 
 whole illumination lie just in the fact that the stress and joy of genius 
 for the time quite drowned the muttering of the storm ; people acted 
 and wrote and painted, hardly knowing or caring whether they were 
 Confucians, Taoists, or Buddhists, weaving coloured threads from each 
 into their splendid fabric as the fancy suited. It was, indeed, a kind 
 of glorified Elizabethan age for China. 
 
 Among the satellites at this gay Court none were more in evidence 
 and more honoured than the lyric poets. Genso sent invitations far 
 and wide to the hopeful geniuses of the provinces. It was as if 
 Marlowe, Green, and Peale, and Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, should 
 have become the very bulwark and the intimate advisers of the 
 English throne. Rank and salaries and splendid clothes they received ; 
 and so highly was their real genius understood and craved that its 
 prime condition — freedom — was allowed. Rihaku, the lyric laureate of 
 China, openly lampooned the Emperor and his mistresses. He played 
 on a grand scale the roystering Lovelace and the scurrilous Herrick 
 
 to the long-faced Marvell of Kantaishi, or the passionate Vaughan 
 of Omakitsu. He tried, at times, the taste of their several styles ; and 
 
 the poetical wealth of the man and of his day is proved by the fact 
 
 that nature, man, ethics, Taoist fancies and Buddhist devotion, all enter 
 his verses as natural friends, and all pulsing with sympathy toward the 
 social betterment and freedom of man. 
 
 The great landscape poet of the day, who was also a great landscape 
 painter as well as statesman, Omakitsu Oi (Wang Wei), lived in a 
 beautiful villa with hillocks and lakes, a few miles from the capital. 
 Here his paintings of rural scenes in fine ink monochrome were 
 
 distributed to his friends, pictures which became the pride of later 
 
 collectors. But he was no Confucian pedant — far from it ; and the 
 
 attempt of late and degenerate critics of the present dynasty to 
 fasten upon him the narrow juiceless canon of their so-called 
 
 “ Southern School ” is absurd. It is also quite untrue that black-and- 
 white work began with him, and quite untrue that it was the fact 
 
 of working in black-and-white which distinguished the “ Southern,” 
 
izo EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 or “ Bunjingwa ” School, from the “ Northern,” or official. His style, 
 instead of being soft and soaky and blotchy — the trick of the modern 
 formalists — was strong and hard and scratchy, the brush strokes fall- 
 ing in incredibly varied forms, as we see in his great waterfall of 
 
 Chishakuin in Kioto,* the only important specimen of his work 
 preserved in Japan, or perhaps in the world. It was the spontaneous 
 literary form of Oi that led after centuries to a worn, pared-off canon 
 by which he became travestied and misunderstood. 
 
 His great friend and rival in the ink landscape school, borrowed 
 from the traditions of Liang, was the otherwise celebrated artist 
 Godoshi (Wu Tao-Tzu), who has left us the finest early specimens 
 
 of Chinese monochrome landscape in the pair owned by Shinjuan 
 
 Daitokuji in Kioto. Here, too, we can see that the very style is 
 scratchy and occupied with the setting of strong, crisp masses of 
 infinite variety upon sized paper or silk. The impressionism of blur 
 and accident came in at a far later day with the Confucian exquisites 
 of Sung (So), and especially of Yuen. I shall refer to these sporadic 
 ink landscapes of Tang again when I come to consider the landscape 
 art of Sung. 
 
 It is rather to the Buddhist art, and especially the Buddhist 
 
 painting of Tang, that we have to turn, if we are to follow our 
 plan of characterizing each age by its strongest, most creative, most 
 original work. The enthusiasm of Genso was all for Buddhism and 
 Taoism. These elements of personal freedom play the greatest part 
 in Rihaku’s imagery. And it was in this line that Genso’s (Hsuan- 
 Tsung) greatest artist, Godoshi, achieved first a national and then a 
 world-wide reputation. Let us now see how the several Buddhist 
 movements lead up to the culminating art of Godoshi (Wu Tao-Tzu). 
 
 Already we have marked how, in the Southern dynasties, the con- 
 templative school of Buddhism, the Zen, founded by Daruma, had 
 led to landscape art and literature, and to a more human rendering 
 of sacred scenes and deities. Now this Zen movement, although it 
 does not reach its creative apex until the following Sung, played 
 some part in the Buddhist art of Genso. But, as we have seen, 
 the Northern formal and tinted Buddhist art of Tartar tradition had 
 also its part to play. Indeed, for the moment the sects half blurred 
 
 * Modern Japanese critics are now inclined to think this waterfall a copy. — The Ed. 
 
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MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 I 2 I 
 
 their outlines, so as to let in freely all tentative elements that 
 might be found to have aesthetic efficacy. In brief, there is some- 
 thing of a union or “ pooling ” of styles. 
 
 Into this seething Buddhist mixture of the Chinese Tang capitals 
 was now poured a new and powerful solvent which had come into 
 China in the wake of the Greco-Buddhist art. This was the mystical 
 or esoteric form of the belief, which, founded on the philosophical 
 idealism of Nagajuna, Vasubandhu, and Asangpo, had incorporated 
 all the mystical psychology which seems to have been a part of 
 India since Vedic days, and had concentrated all these into a special 
 doctrinal discipline. This had been specially introduced by an 
 
 Indian heresiarch (?) about the year 640. By 700 it had grown into 
 a dominant sect, of great piety and wealthy patronage, with its 
 central sect located upon the famous Tientai mountain. Here the 
 
 success of the Indian teacher, as the Japanese call him, Tendai 
 Daishi, had set up a great school for the transmission of the 
 doctrine ; and the young aristocrats of Loyang were prostrated before 
 him in their efforts to realise the mystic union with divinity, a kind 
 of neo - Platonic ecstasy, which he professed. This great esoteric 
 sect, which ascribes magical power and direct contact with spirit 
 
 to the human soul, was called, from its central sect, the Tendai 
 sect. The mastery of self, the spiritual knighthood which it 
 
 preached, its Bodhisattwa vow, and the higher communion of the 
 saints, awakened extraordinary enthusiasm, much as a great leader of 
 Theosophy might do among us if he really worked great miracles, 
 really were able to identify thought and intuition, and to prove 
 
 his system in harmony with all healthy, moral, and social move- 
 ments, and only an expansion of preceding religious forms. With such 
 earnestness as this the Christian Scientists seem to move among 
 us to-day. 
 
 But the mysticism of the Tendai sect went to a range of psycho- 
 logical analysis which dwarfs the neo-Platonist. It assumes the 
 world to be real rather than illusory ; striving, evolution : a salvation 
 through process — a salvation to be achieved within the body of society 
 and human law — a salvation of personal freedom and self-directed 
 illumination — a salvation by renouncing salvation for loving work. 
 The opening of the inner eye to natural facts and spiritual presences 
 that are veiled from lower forms is not the aim but the incident of 
 
 VOL. 1. 
 
 L 
 
122 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 discipline. It is this, however, which gives the accompanying art its 
 vivid value and piercing imagination. The power to image forth truth 
 in forms of glowing vision, to see the very presences of Buddhas and 
 Bodhisattwas clad with dazzling light, to project angelic groups upon 
 the background of contemplation and to behold the inner circulation 
 of native affinities and sympathies working in intertwisted lines of 
 physical and moral law — the psychologic armies of elementals working 
 through storms of molecules and currents — all this is of the very 
 substance, not of poetry and music, but of visual art. 
 
 How different is all this direct challenging of co-operating spirits, 
 often as Mahatma or conquerors in the flesh, from the vague though 
 vast moral abstractions of the exoteric sects ! There it was but the 
 enhancement of a natural moral potency- — a vast abstraction projecting 
 into a Brocken shadow against the sky traits which might not be 
 highly reverenced if conceived as frankly human. Here it is the 
 actual presence of spiritual hierarchy : as if the devotee were a soldier 
 in the ranks privileged to see his captain and general occasionally 
 pass his tent, keenly inspect, and scatter glances of encouragement. 
 Man thus became, or thought he became, visible co-ruler of history, 
 with superman. He could foreknow the passwords and the plan of 
 campaign, and provide the restoratives of the hospital wards. It was 
 vision, concrete, inspiring, personal even, rather than abstraction. The 
 very electricity of these spirits could be seen pulsing through the flesh 
 as through the adamant of mountains. 
 
 And how perfectly the difference between these two visions corre- 
 sponded to a broad cleavage between sister arts. The exoteric worship 
 of the abstract principle needed body, yet a body as severe as itself. 
 Hence sculpture and ithe satiny hardness of bronze became the natural 
 mediums. But for flashing armies of light and colour, and the 
 enthronement of the general, and the piercing of hell and earthly 
 squalor, in short the whole normal entanglement of human function 
 in social background with a skein of spiritual forces about its head, 
 as the dog plays unconsciously his part in the master’s milieu — for 
 this transfigured life-panorama — only the art of painting ventures to 
 be adequate. There, the very rhythms of line may suggest motion 
 and transitory phases which are forbidden to sculpture. The latter 
 normally registers the permanent ; the former the process. Colour, 
 too, and light have endless range of suggestions, not only realistic 
 
Famous Kwannon. By Enriuhon (Yen Li-pcn) 
 Mr. Charles L. Freer. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 123 
 
 backgrounds but symbolic range of expressing well-nigh inexpressible 
 relations. Heretofore in these chapters we have dealt almost ex- 
 clusively with the severer form ; sculpture seems to come first within the 
 grasp of all religious peoples. But now we are to follow Chinese 
 and Japanese art into the greater subtleties of painting, the ripe stage 
 of infinite modulation in line and colour. It is not that sculpture 
 will be quite absent from any age, but it will never again become 
 the leader of creative forms. All this relates too to new phases of 
 temple worship, the more personal seclusion of the small shrine with 
 its painted insetting for an altar-piece, instead of the more public and 
 more dominating statue. 
 
 Chinese Buddhist painting comes down to us with the slim hair line, 
 derived originally from sculpture, filled in with richer and richer colouring, 
 until the severity of line becomes almost overlaid with the gorgeousness 
 of mass. As the Tang dynasty came in and incorporated the 
 Tartar style, which rather ran to decoration, the fine synthesis of 
 sculptural line with pictorial colour could well begin. The great 
 Tang Court painters who came before the culminating age of Genso, 
 like Enriuhon, (Yen-Li-pen) and Enriutoku, doubtless practised this 
 style. A type of it, which may be ascribed ultimately to Enriuhon, 
 is the great seated Kwannon, shrouded in rich lace, of which we have 
 dozens of replicas made during the Tang and the Sung dynasties. 
 This type in Japan is usually ascribed to Godoshi ; but I believe 
 that to be a mistake, quite like the mistake of ascribing, say, all 
 sixteenth-century Japanese paintings to Motonobu. The one name 
 we know is used to cover a multitude of styles. The largest and 
 perhaps finest replica of the Enriuhon type of Kwannon is the great 
 painted kakemono, ascribed to Godoshi, kept in Daitokuji. This may 
 well be of Tang workmanship, though not necessarily from Enriuhon’s 
 own hand. A smaller example, but of very beautiful workmanship, 
 probably Sung, is in Mr. Freer’s collection. This I shall now 
 describe, as giving a fair account, probably, of Enriuhon’s lost original. 
 The figure sits on a rough rock of blue, green, and gold in a cave 
 whose stalactites hang in points above her (or his) head. It is a 
 grand Kwannon, the Bodhisattwa of Providence or human sustenance, 
 and here, as in most Tang examples of this subject, wears a light 
 moustache. This, and the fact that the Sung Kwannons are 
 
124 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 markedly feminine, has led certain learned scholars to conclude that 
 Avalokitesvara was primarily masculine, and that the change was due 
 to a clerical error of gender in transcribing some Sanscrit or Pali term. 
 How shallow this view is can be seen from the fact that other previous 
 Kwannons, the Chuguji, for instance, of 620 and the eleven-headed 
 Lake Biwa (755), are markedly feminine. The truth is that a great 
 
 Bodhisattwa is in its own nature indeterminate as to sex, having 
 
 risen above the distinction, or rather embodying in itself the united 
 spiritual graces of both sexes. It is a matter of accident which one it 
 may assume upon incarnation. It just happens that Tang thought, 
 or preferred to think, of Kwannon as a great demiurge or creator, 
 
 while Sung preferred to lay stress upon the element of motherhood. 
 
 But let me proceed with my description. The lines are of hair 
 thickness; the shirt is caught over the crossed legs in the remains 
 of sculpturesque folds and openings, not unlike the Corean bronze 
 
 type of Toindo. Tartar Buddhist art retained something of this stiff 
 wiry drapery even down to Ming. But there is little of stiffness 
 above. The flesh is of gold, always a feature of the Enriuhon type, 
 and found thus combined with thick colouring in the costume down 
 to later times in Northern work. The head is shaped differently 
 from the Greco statues, being long and oval, with rather a narrow 
 forehead. The head-dress is built up into an elaborate tiara of 
 coloured gems and flowers. But the peculiar feature of this type is 
 the enshrouding of the whole body in an elaborate lace veil, painted 
 in thin tones of cream over the heavy colours, and which hangs 
 from the top of the tiara. It is the hair line contour of the veil 
 which gives the peculiar proportion and line system to these figures. 
 There is a kind of Gothic aspiring of all the lines to the tip of 
 the head. A crystal vase stands upon a jutting slab of rock on 
 
 the right. There are two halos, both circular, and both traced only 
 in a fine gold line — one small, for the head ; one large, for the 
 whole body. From the water at his feet grow rich corals and lotos 
 buds, in a Tang style derived from Babylonian Han. But a chief 
 feature of the thought, if not of the composition, is a small Chinese 
 child standing upon a rock in the foreground, with hands upraised 
 in prayer. The Kwannon seems graciously to bend his glance down 
 to it. This doubtless typifies man’s helplessness without supernatural 
 guiding — the reality of the primary transcendental relation. The 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 I2 5 
 
 colours are rich reds, carmines, orange, greens and blues, heightened 
 with touches of gold. There is no gold in the cream lace. 
 
 Perhaps here were best said what we have to say once for all 
 concerning the question of genuineness in ancient Chinese paintings, 
 and of the importance of copies. To the collectors and the museum 
 owners, in short to the whole range of the market aspect of art, 
 it is a vital question whether an individual work be ascribable to 
 
 the pen of any great master, or whether it be probably a copy of 
 
 some later date. The market value naturally rests upon this point. 
 But the aesthetic, archaeologic and historical value may be only 
 slightly lessened by an uncertainty. Great masterpieces that existed 
 in Tang, and before, became great models on which later masters 
 
 of Tang and Sung formed their styles ; and, though the ripe 
 
 personal styles of these latter might vary from these models, it was 
 part of the discipline and pleasure of work to make accurate copies, 
 or else transcripts with slight variation. These copies Time has so 
 
 softened that to-day they probably appear not very unlike what the 
 originals would seem if we had them, though doubtless something 
 of technical beauty has been lost. Yet, in the absence of the 
 
 originals, the aesthetic beauties and types of the copies become of 
 
 priceless value in determining and appreciating qualities that other- 
 wise would be lost for ever. 
 
 It is quite like the state of our present knowledge of great 
 
 Greek masterpieces of sculpture, which have mostly vanished. We 
 read in Pausanias of the beauties of Scopas and Praxiteles, and the 
 pictorial beauties of Polyclites’ Venuses and Apollos. We know that 
 these were all copied in countless replicas, some of which made their 
 way to the Roman palaces and villas. In a certain sense all later 
 classic art was remotely built upon the traditions of such models, just 
 as our postal cards and porcelains of to-day reflect Fra Angelicos, 
 Raphaels, and Bellinis. The case of Greek paintings is worse, for 
 even the sketch drawings and copies have mostly vanished, and even a 
 hint of the aesthetic value of that great phase of art has to be manu- 
 factured. Greek sculpture is not quite so conjectural as this, for in 
 addition to the slender stock of proved originals we have the 
 suggestions of a vast mass of replicas to build inferences upon. 
 It is only in this way, for example, that we know the type of the 
 Phidias Athene. 
 
126 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Now the case of ancient Chinese painting stands at present much 
 as does that of Greek masterpieces in sculpture. There are very 
 few originals of whose authenticity we can have documentary proof. 
 But there are a fair stock of pictures whose aesthetic excellences are so 
 supreme that we can hardly imagine where the greater power of an 
 original could possibly lie ; and so, as in the perfection of the Hermes 
 of Praxiteles for parallel, we take this markedly individual quality as the 
 very standard of the original. Such, for example, is the case with 
 the Mokkei Kwannon at Daitokuji. Now, from this standard we judge 
 the other claimants, identifying followers, and judging pieces that 
 exhibit slightly inferior execution of sublime conceptions as probably 
 replicas from this master. For, after all — and this is what dis- 
 tinguishes the real student of beauty in art, of the world’s great types 
 of beauty, from the personal pride of the mere collector — the supreme 
 thing in the world of art is conception. Only the greatest men can 
 create the supreme types of imaginative beauty. It is the followers, 
 lesser men, who approximate more or less closely to the details of 
 execution. When they copy a great work of their master, a conception 
 far beyond their own inspiration, there appears in their work, in spite 
 of its possible shortcomings in technique, a borrowed splendour which 
 far transcends the finest example of their independent creations. Thus 
 a fairly adequate copy of Mokkei or Kakei is a thousand times more 
 valuable for any real aesthetic study than a whole gallery full of 
 Ming originals. 
 
 And when we go back to Tang and pre-Tang, the case stands 
 differently only to this extent : that we, perhaps, have no originals at 
 all capable of documentary proof, and very few of which we can say, 
 like the Mokkei Kwannon of Sung, that no higher aesthetic accomplish- 
 ment along its special line is conceivable. Nevertheless, we have a fair 
 number of pieces in which we can feel that the conception is so fine and 
 the execution so high that we are face to face with at least a direct and 
 close transcript of the original splendour. And such pieces, however 
 overshadowed with the ultimate doubt, are of immeasurably greater 
 value for the student of beauty than undoubted originals of later and 
 inferior men. The case is thus not unlike that of many of the great 
 Greek sculptors. When we try to translate the bare words of Pausanias 
 into real images of the beauties of Scopas, Myson, and Praxiteles, we 
 derive what help we may from the finest extant fragments which 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 1 27 
 
 seem to embody their individual traits. The case is far more hopeful 
 than that of Greek painting, for there we have, in such dish-water 
 copies of copies as Pompeii presents, hardly a hint of what their real 
 aesthetic merit must have been. If we should unearth to-day or to- 
 morrow from long-buried ruins a group of encaustics immeasurably 
 superior to later Roman pictures, but without documentary evidence, 
 we should esteem it an unspeakable fortune, and should devote the 
 utmost effort to establish, on aesthetic grounds, the possibility that 
 here we had the replica of such and such a vanished masterpiece. 
 If, on the other hand, the few transcendent pieces of ancient Chinese 
 painting were lost to us, we should be in the same sad state as we 
 now are concerning Greek. We should never divine even a hint of 
 what a glorious school of art China had once possessed. The case 
 is just that of the sudden unearthing of the Greek masterpieces — alas, 
 hardly to be hoped for — for we have unearthed dozens of supreme 
 pictures which we are forced to relate back to the master conceptions 
 of Tang genius. It is in this sense, then, that we shall speak of 
 Enriuhon, Godoshi, Zengetsu Daishi, and Ririomin with at least as 
 much right as we speak of the styles of all Greek sculptors but 
 Phidias. 
 
 We do not know whether any great Tang masterpieces yet 
 remain in Chinese collections ; for an archaeological exploration of 
 China cannot even be said to have begun. But Japanese critics of 
 
 this and recent ages who have had the privilege of examining the 
 collections of Peking mandarins, or of deriving traces through Peking 
 dealers, assert that there is almost no probability of finding such 
 work in that capital. It is more probable that changes of taste 
 have so distorted the eye of modern China, that not a scholar of 
 Peking to-day has the least power of conceiving what an original of 
 
 Tang would be like. Modern Chinese alleged copies have about as 
 
 much weight as if a New York dealer in American impressionists 
 
 should mark one of these as based upon an original Giotto.* 
 
 In Japan, at present, we may still look for hopeful traces. 
 Into Japan have been imported for centuries — especially at first in 
 
 * Since this was written much has occurred in China which would have given the 
 writer a different point of view. — The Ed. 
 
128 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 the eighth and ninth centuries, later in the eleventh and twelfth, and 
 still later in the fifteenth century — what great masterpieces of China 
 could be seized upon. It is not probable that they always got the 
 
 supreme examples which they claimed ; yet, at the first at least of 
 these periods, Japanese artists and scholars of the ripest power made 
 the selections. Granting that most pieces extant in Japan came in 
 with Ashikaga importation in the fifteenth century, it was as keen an 
 eye as Sesshu’s that passed judgment on them, Sesshu who had travelled 
 for years as China’s honoured guest, and been recognized by the 
 Chinese Court as a greater artist than any of their contemporary 
 Ming. He must have had every opportunity to distinguish the really 
 great old masterpieces of China from shallow copies, just as an 
 American critic can distinguish to-day between a real and a sham 
 Rembrandt that a European dealer might send us. Indeed, Japan 
 was then herself the successor and leader of “ the Chinese school,” 
 and could command genuine examples. Most later Japanese tradition 
 as to genuineness and attribution has been based upon the Ashikaga 
 knowledge ot Sesshu and his compeers, quite as Ming traditions of 
 Tang had been based upon Sung criticisms. And we must remember 
 that in Sesshu’s day, a Sung copy would appear only 200 years old, 
 whereas an early Tang copy or original would appear 700. The gap 
 to his eye would be far greater than it would to ours, for after about 
 400 years of age all silks, barring accidents, become of nearly 
 equal tone. And just as Sesshu was able to sift the traditions 
 of Sung through Ming ; and the early Kanos, Masanobu and 
 Motonobu, inherited them through Sesshu ; land Tanyu, the great 
 early Tokugawa Court painter, inherited from Motonobu ; and 
 Kano Isen, the great eclectic painter and critic of 1840, based his 
 re-examination of the whole amount of evidence upon Tanyu ; so I, 
 in humbler degree, have tried to resift the accumulation of tradition 
 and fresh evidence with the critical instrument put into my hand 
 
 by Isen’s son and grandson, my personal teachers. It is in my 
 
 opinion the Japanese line of examples and traditions therefore, rather 
 than the effete and diluted Chinese, which must become the starting- 
 point of European evaluation. A certain school of young Japanese 
 
 of to-day, however — who came too late to be trained by an unbroken 
 line of feeling from the past, and who have almost forgotten the 
 great Kanos who worked under the Shogun before 1868 — seem 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 129 
 
 disposed to throw away all key of tradition and to reject all 
 evidence that cannot be proved to be documentary. In this spirit 
 
 they assert that no Tang masterpieces whatever exist, and of even 
 such a recent Japanese artist as Matahei, that he never lived. But 
 they make the mistake of rejecting the unrivalled documentary value 
 that lives in a work of art itself. To an eye for whom supreme 
 proportions and rhythms are eloquent, documents themselves that 
 may be forged are far more suspicious. Those European sinologues 
 who regard one Chinese inscription as good as another, unless they 
 have also the keen eye for artistic individuality, are at the mercy 
 of an unknown pen. It is a mistake not to build at least, how- 
 ever much we may modify the superstructure, upon the foundation 
 of contemporary tradition, a kind of living intellectual substance, 
 that came down from Sung through Sesshu to the Japanese of 
 1868. With this body of tradition thrown aside, a Japanese scholar 
 to-day is as far removed from Ming, and even Kano Isen, as 
 we are removed by the cataclysm of the Middle Ages from classic 
 tradition. 
 
 One more thing should be added of the copies which generations 
 of later Japanese artists have made from what they deemed Chinese 
 originals. In so far as these artists have been careful and skilful, 
 these replicas, even with modifications, are true lines of insight into 
 the past, as much so as those of the old Chinese copyists, down 
 to early Ming. It is quite different with the modern Chinese 
 
 copyists, for their taste is changed and their tradition lost. But 
 the Japanese are in some sense the true custodians of the secret — 
 and consciously careful copies made as late as Isen and Tanshin of 
 the 19th century, are of very great value. These artists had 
 practically the whole range of all the daimios and temple collections, 
 as we shall see in a later chapter. Further research will only 
 demonstrate the fundamental truths of those bases of criticism which 
 1 have just laid down. 
 
 It is time we returned from this digression to the great period 
 of Genso Kotei at Loyang. Here the great pictorial genius who 
 overshadowed the world was Godoshi (Wu-Tao-Tzu), whom we have 
 already noticed as a painter of landscape. Godoshi was first of all a 
 great Buddhist painter, who had to find ways of expressing the new 
 vast conceptions of his day. Such antique and hieratic forms even as 
 
130 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 the charming lace Kwannon of Enriuhon he wished to discard ; to 
 become more direct, more human, more like an . actual vision. For 
 this he determined upon a technique which had wrapped up in it 
 the whole future destiny of Oriental art. This was to go back to 
 the flexible brush stroke and thick line of Kogaishi (Ku-Kai-Chih), 
 expand its force, make it more flexible, more capable of passing in 
 a single stroke from a solid mass to a hair line, more able to 
 
 achieve passages of contrast between rough-edged strokes and smoother 
 sleek ones. 
 
 The power of the pen in writing had now advanced far beyond 
 the southern beginnings of Ogishi (Wang Hsi-Chih) and Kogaishi. 
 The Tang dynasty, and particularly the eighth century, is the very 
 culmination of power and beauty in Chinese writing. It is natural 
 
 that a similar force should pass into the line with painting. After 
 all, there has never been another painter’s tool in the world, brush, 
 charcoal, or burin, which compares in force, ease and gradation with 
 the great Chinese brush. To be sure it enwraps all painting in a 
 convention — the convention that the line which bounds things shall 
 be visible. But no art can be free from some convention. Its 
 
 characteristic beauties lie in the very terms of the convention. 
 Convention is not an inevitable restraint which we deplore, but the 
 fertile language of an invention which we joy to use. It would 
 be absurd to deplore that the ecstasies of music are limited by the 
 conventions of sound-relationships, nay, of the very instruments that 
 produce the sound. So fresco painting thrives on its technique ; the 
 beauty of perfect bronze work is inimitable in other material. So in 
 oil painting, the great craftsman gets beauty by the placing of his broad 
 flat strokes — the brushwork is the art. And in Chinese painting of 
 the grand school of Tang it is only another kind of brushwork. 
 
 Why should painting eschew line, in order for ever to make of itself 
 a kind of coloured sculpture ? It is not things that we want in art, 
 but the beauty of things ; and if this beauty dwells largely in their 
 line, their boundaries of space, their proportions and shapes, and the 
 unity and system of the line rhythms, it is a glorious convention that 
 can seize on just that and make supreme music out of it. As 
 Godoshi used them, the brush lines became great “lead lines,” much 
 as we use them in our best stained-glass windows, making the lead 
 supports carry the eye to the form elements of the composition. Only 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 1 3 1 
 
 the Godoshi lead-line is far more flexible and suave, in that it can 
 thin itself out to a hair when it likes. Probably the great early Greek 
 painting of Polyclites was of this sort, and line is primary in all their 
 vase-painting and mosaic. It does not follow, either, that because line 
 is so strong that colour and mass must necessarily be thin. Godoshi 
 would fill up his interspaces, the openings between the lines, with 
 strong patches of colour, relieved in deep mosaic effect one against 
 another, not necessarily quite flat, but relying more for their modu- 
 lation upon the turn of the line and the deepening of colour which 
 supported it than upon the eternal modelling of the colour, as with 
 hair-line or no-line painting. 
 
 It may suit some of us to cast slurs upon this as a “ primitive 
 method; and indeed, if “ripe” or “advanced” be defined by that 
 realism which always precedes decay, it is primitive. But it is the very 
 method of health. It is one of the noblest conventions of art, even if 
 not the only one. For the aim of real art evolution is not to come 
 nearer and nearer to a coloured photograph, but if possible to put more 
 and more grandeur and refined beauty into our spaces, our porportions, 
 and our systems of line rhythm. This is the very language of visual 
 art, as much so as tone is of musical. Therefore there is a certain primal 
 and universal energy in Godoshi’s design which has hardly been sur- 
 passed in the whole range of the world’s art. It establishes itself side 
 by side with Phidias and Michel Angelo ; not that its convention is 
 just like theirs, but that its space and line ideas possess a parallel 
 grandeur. It may almost be declared to be the world’s supreme type in 
 grandeur of delineation. And it must not fail of recognition that this 
 very grandeur of type and of porportion is indeed a relic imbedded 
 in Chinese art by Greco-Buddhist taste, even though the specifically 
 Greek form be changed. Godoshi’s art thus uses all that has come 
 down to it from the past — Pacific ruggedness, Han rhythm, the fine 
 sculpture of the early South, the rich colour of the Tartar North, the 
 dignity of Greco-Buddhism, and now the absolute pictorial form of 
 independent brushwork. 
 
 That Godoshi achieved mighty fame in his own day we have it 
 from contemporary records. We have glimpses of him as the idol of 
 the people, watched by them as he covered enormous wall surfaces with 
 great rolling or fighting masses of spiritual beings : panoramas of heaven 
 and hell, strange adventures from the life of the saints, flaming deities, 
 
132 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 and the wrath of gods upon the world, and the imperial splendours of 
 a great Buddhist Court. He is not like Michel Angelo toiling lonely 
 in the Sistine Chapel among a generation out of sympathy with his 
 sternness ; rather like Phidias satisfying ripe public taste with the highest 
 expression of its own beliefs. In the absence of newspapers such a 
 public art becomes a kind of organ for self-realization. 
 
 Some critics claim that no genuine pieces of Godoshi have come 
 down to our own day ; but we can come very close to him at a number 
 of points, close enough to understand his dominion over the Eastern 
 world, close enough to evaluate him in relation to the Western world. 
 There remain three or four main types of his design which have come 
 down to us in several more or less accurate copies. The first that we 
 shall consider is the lace Kwannon and child type. This may have been 
 an early thought of his, taking the conception of the very richly veiled 
 Bosatsu from Eriuhon and early masters, but translating it into a 
 magnificence of thick juicy line never before conceived. This type has 
 probably existed in Japan in more than one version. One of these 
 must have been seen by Kano Hogai in his early youth, for it was 
 evidently used by him in making up his two great versions of the 
 “ Creation of Man.” The version which I shall now describe, and 
 which was brought to America from Japan in 1904, is in the great 
 collection of Mr. Freer, and is doubtless the pen-work of some great 
 master of Sung. The superlative grandeur, however — far beyond 
 ordinary Sung reach and clearly Tang in flavour — proves that the 
 main elements of the design must have belonged to Godoshi. There 
 are rumours of another version, possibly older, concealed in one 
 of Japan’s great hereditary collections — all of which have not yet 
 been thoroughly explored. 
 
 The design, which is very large, shows a standing Kwannon of 
 great dignity and height, and enveloped in a lace veil, which descends 
 from Heaven upon a cloud-like mass that breaks into the actual foam 
 of water as it pierces space. This method of exhibiting water as 
 the pure elementary symbol of Kwannon is unique so far as I know. 
 Kwannon usually sits by the sea, she has holy water in a crystal vase ; 
 but to descend through space on leaping foaming water is a Godoshi 
 creation which Hogai has borrowed. The remains of a great cloud- 
 curtain pull aside at the top, half concealing the tiara, which in this 
 case is not pointed but heavy and square. This raised canopy of the 
 
Standing Ivwannon. By Godoshi (Wu Tao-tzu). 
 Collection of Mr. Charles L. Freer. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 r 33 
 
 curtain makes the figure seem more like an actual revelation, as in the 
 Sistine Madonna of Raphael. But to what does he — there is clearly a 
 moustache — descend ? This time to two boys who are playing in- 
 nocently upon a bright cloud, trying to plant fresh lotos flowers in 
 vases. These boys typify the originally spiritual nature of man, and 
 their occupation his naturally religious instinct. But rolling in from the 
 right is a sinister dark-green cloud, which seems like a crouching dragon 
 with a flat toad head. Godoshi has not deigned to represent an 
 actual dragon, as Cho Densu has done in his front-faced Kwannon. 
 The mere cloud is more suggestive of the coming evil and of man’s 
 dual nature. But the great gracious figure, looking down upon these 
 unconscious children with the hint of a beneficent smile, bears for them 
 salvation and spiritual sustenance. In his raised left hand he sways 
 the wisp of willow which in other pictures sits in a vase, as if 
 
 he were actually sprinkling his proteges with the water of baptism ; 
 and in his right he carries in a wicker basket a great tai fish as the 
 symbol of spiritual sustenance. Here is where I think I detect a trace 
 of Sung imagination. The Sung Kwannon with a fish is dressed as a 
 
 fisherman’s daughter. The tai here is too large, too much in evidence, 
 
 and its somewhat coarse symbolism is not in harmony with that treat- 
 ment which only suggested a dragon in the green cloud. Therefore, 
 I believe that this fish-basket did not exist in the Godoshi original, 
 
 but that the right hand took come other attitude, possibly pouring 
 water from a vase, as in Hogai’s version. But, leaving out this one 
 feature, I believe we have substantially the Godoshi creation. 
 
 Aesthetically the first noticeable feature is the magnificent spacing. 
 The vertical mass of the Kwannon, which dominates three-quarters of the 
 picture’s height, gets space from the large mass of sky on the left, 
 and breaks at the bottom into the horizontal masses of the water, 
 clouds, and boys, that form for her a kind of aesthetic base. This 
 sumptuous simplicity of spacing only the fish breaks. And the rhythms 
 of the transition are not graceful and decorative, but massive and 
 rugged. There is no obvious premeditated system of curvature. The 
 boys are drawn with naive simplicity, of a size which is a great gain 
 upon the little insignificant figure in the Enriuhon conception. Even 
 the lotos is spiky, scorning the pretty sculptural outlines of petals. 
 
 The drawing of the Kwannon, set at an angle to the spectator, is 
 superb. Not only the drapery but the flesh portions are full of 
 
134 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 life and movement. The two feet, swathed in crinkly masses of soft 
 stuff, sit with fine solidity upon the small lotos shoes. The raised arm 
 and hand with the willow are the most graceful things in art. But 
 perhaps nothing can surpass the fine rounded head, with its short nose, 
 its wonderful slits of eyes, and its lotos-bud of a mouth ; probably 
 the finest Kwannon face in all Chinese and Japanese art. 
 
 If we were to dilate upon all the intricate rhythms of the drapery 
 lines, of the splendours of crown, jewelry, and lace mantle, we 
 should have to expand this book to another volume. Of course 
 words quite fail, and yet it is worth pointing out that all which I 
 have said of t( lead-lines ” in general, and of Godoshi’s line in par- 
 ticular, is here magnificently exemplified. What the rhythm of such 
 
 flexible line may become is seen in the complicated yet easy knotting 
 of the loose end of the under-garment gathered over the abdomen. 
 Again, when the several kinds of drapery flow over the feet — under- 
 skirt, garment, mantle, and veil — there is line-wealth almost worthy 
 of the Parthenon female torsos. Here in the very photograph colour 
 is indicated : in the lines even, the relative forces of which, translated 
 from colour and texture with dark and light, exemplify well the 
 technical quality “ notan of line.” The drawing of the veil in cream- 
 white is a new thing, the lines being more thick, more forceful, 
 
 and more decisive than the gauzy suggestions of Enriuhon. That 
 
 still retains Indian feeling. This is frankly Chinese ; the whole pic- 
 ture, indeed, shows just how Chinese Buddhist painting takes rank in 
 spiritual force and expression far above Indian, or any other racial 
 species, in fact. For it is true that though a few Japanese painters 
 come somewhere near this ripe line-grandeur of Godoshi, they do not 
 quite reach it. 
 
 It remains to speak a word of the colour. This is far less 
 opulent and gaudy than the Enriuhon piece. A little strong red, 
 blue, and green are found on the boys. The Kwannon’s drapery 
 has subdued shades of these, tending to olives. Fine patterning, low 
 
 tone upon tone, overlies the garments. There is no gold anywhere, 
 
 not even on the crown and the jewels. All is suggested by firm tint 
 only. It is the flesh colour of the Kwannon, however, that dominates 
 all, being now an intimate grouping of rich, warm tones of purplish 
 reds, not unlike the tones that Abbot Thayer puts into his flesh, but 
 more glowing. Really, the colour is hardly inferior to the line. 
 
Godoshi " Shaka.” 
 
 Mr. Charles L. Freer. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 Another Godoshi type, preserved in several replicas by Yeiga, Cho 
 Densu, and Motonobu, is of a seated front-facing Kwannon. Some- 
 where may be hidden a Chinese original from which all of these were 
 taken between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and which is 
 not known to our generation. We believe the great Motonobu paint- 
 ing, formerly one of the greatest treasures of Marquis Hachisuka’s 
 collection, and now in the Fenollosa collection at Boston, to come 
 the nearest to Godoshi. This was a most celebrated picture in both 
 Ashikaga and early Tokugawa days, as is shown by the existence in 
 the Kano archives of a magnificent copy of it by Tanyu. I knew 
 this copy before the original turned up in the great emporium of 
 Yamanaka in Osaka, about 1882. It had been given away to a 
 retainer by the Marquis, as so many daimo treasures were given in 
 the sad parting of ten years before, when families of faithful retainers, 
 loyal through seven centuries some of them, were absolved from their 
 feudal vows and became citizens of a new democratic Japan. Treasures 
 like this soon found their way into pawnshops, and so, at a day when 
 the revived taste of a new aristocracy had not yet formed, into the 
 
 general market. I thus bought for twenty-five yen what would be 
 worth thousands were it sold in Japan to-day. 
 
 The noble figure, clothed in a single ample mantle of solid white, 
 shows flesh tints, and a little green at waist and in crown. The 
 
 severity of the composition is to be remarked. The veil has been 
 
 discarded. Jewels have been reduced to a minimum. There is nothing 
 but the lines of the one drapery, but these are most magnificent — like 
 the complicated massing of folds in a splendid marble statue. Only 
 
 the utmost care has been lavished on these brush lines, their purity, 
 their tapering, their length, their strength. The force in the stroke is 
 transcendent. What strikes one chiefly about these lines is their 
 angularity, very different from the rounded touches that Motonobu 
 frequently delights in. It is this unwonted dignity of the line systems 
 that leads me to ascribe the essential in the creation to Godoshi’s mind. 
 The background is naturally treated, a gap between two cliffs through 
 which two large circular halos are faintly seen. Waves plash up at the 
 bottom. Since similar landscape occurs in the Yeiga version, it probably 
 goes back to China, though the details have been modified by Motonobu. 
 
 We come now to the great Godoshi design of Sakyamuni (Shaka), 
 the last historical Buddha. This exists in at least two versions, one of 
 
136 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 which, the centre of the Tofukuji triptych, has always been held by 
 Japanese critics as not only a genuine Godoshi, but the standard of 
 Godoshi. 1 am inclined to believe it the genuine thing, partly because 
 the face is so much superior to even the great Sung heads. If a Sung 
 copy, it should be by Ririomin. It has influenced Sesshu and all the 
 great Japanese creators. The Buddha sits cross-legged on a rock, with 
 hands folded under his robe in one of the mystic and secret finger 
 symbols. (In.) The robe is of a quiet smouldering red that flames 
 up at the angles into orange. A fine lotos pattern is worked over this 
 robe, which in the gleaming orange portions heightens into gold. The 
 colour of the face is rich Venetian flesh. But the extraordinary power 
 lies in the line, the most spiky, splintery, modulating and solid of any 
 ot the Godoshi pieces. It takes on the very splendour of textures while 
 it stands as supreme decoration. The solid masses of the head, aided 
 by the rich notan of the colours, make it and the shoulders and the 
 hands rise up like great cliffs of mountains. There is something 
 elemental and ultimate about it. All that is small in one actually 
 shrivels before the original. As you sit before it, it grips you with a 
 direct spiritual power which no one of the early statues but Shotoku 
 Taishi’s Chuguji Kwannon possesses. This shows the very finest use of 
 the Tang lead-lines. 
 
 The other replica of this piece, of about the same size, is the great 
 Shaka owned by Mr. Freer — which will be in the national collection at 
 Washington, and which came from the collection of the Japanese artist 
 Zeshin, along with the Rakans by Ririomin. In probably was imported 
 into Japan at the same time with the Rakans, and was used with them 
 in temple service. The disposition of the drapery is exactly the same 
 as the Godoshi piece, and only the lines are a bit less juicy than the 
 Tofukuji piece, and the colour is colder. The chief difference, however, 
 lies in the head, which is more clearly of a Sung type, something like 
 the heads of Choshokio’s Shakas. That is, the face is more emaciated, 
 like a sorrowing Christ’s, and the hair is less sculptural, being scattered 
 into long fine locks tossing in the wind. The Tofukuji, if not the 
 original, is probably a Tang copy of it ; the Freer is probably an early 
 Sung adaptation, but probably not by Ririomin. Both are among the 
 finest paintings left us by any ancient race. 
 
 The other two paintings of the Tofukuji triptych, are a young 
 Monju with his lion, and a young Fugen upon an elephant : the 
 
The Monju of Tofukuji. 
 
 By Godoshi (Wu Tao-tzu). 
 

MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 *37 
 
 regular companions of the Sakyamuni Trinity in both the Tendai and 
 the Ten sects, as distinct from the Amida and Yakushi Trinities. Both 
 of these were probably historical personages, the Monju being identified 
 with an early Indian missionary to Nepaul. However this may be, 
 Monju is generally represented with a roll of scripture in one hand, 
 and a jewelled wand in the other ; and he symbolizes the power of 
 scripture, of inspiration, of divine interpretation. Fugen varies, some- 
 times holding a mace like Monju’s, sometimes an open book, or a 
 lettered scroll ; and he symbolizes the power of church organization, 
 of ritual, of the communion of the saints. So that we may regard 
 this well-known Trinity as a human embodiment of the original “ Three 
 Precious Things,” so often recurring in scripture and in prayer — “ the 
 Law, the Church, and the Buddha ” — corresponding indeed in a certain 
 real sense to “ Father, Holy Ghost, and Son.” 
 
 In this Monju of Tufukuji we have Godoshi’s most charming and 
 gracious figure ; a youth with beautiful Greek head, long hair falling 
 over his shoulders, and a splendid drawing of soft drapery not unlike 
 that of the standing Kwannon. The gold upon the jewels has probably 
 been retouched, detracting a little from the solid power of the presence. 
 The Fugen is more crabbed in line, and seems more like a copy than 
 the other two. But there is another splendid Fugen at Mioshinji, 
 
 which, though ascribed to the Sung artist Barin, can have no relation 
 to him except as a copyist. It is surely a design of Tang (To), 
 though possibly, on account of its unquiet lines of drapery — more like 
 those of Fugetsu — to be ascribed to a later date in Tang than Godoshi. 
 Even so, it has probably been originally based upon Godoshi, and 
 exhibits his power and presence. This is of an older man, square- 
 headed, with hair matted as if wet, yet swept forward in the same 
 spiritual draft that disarranges the drapery. The lines do not have 
 the Godoshi modulation. This piece has strongly influenced Sesshu. 
 
 Altogether we must regard Godoshi, whether as compared with 
 architects, sculptors, or painters, as one of the very greatest of the line 
 masters of the world. His figures do not look cheap, even when seen 
 in the same blow of the eye with photographs of Phidias and 
 Michel Angelo. 
 
 Of early Tang paintings, not related to Godoshi, there are many in 
 the form of Rakan pictures, nearly square, showing the doings of the 
 Arhats, or Buddhist saints in the flesh. Animals and primitive tree 
 
 VOL. i. 
 
 M 
 
1 38 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 drawing enter into these. The flesh is often outlined in red. The 
 composition is not elaborate. Yet there is sometimes a solid grandeur 
 about the spacing, and a very rich colour — working between blue, green 
 and strange oranges — which raise them to high rank.* 
 
 The aesthetic reign of Genso was disturbed in 755 by a great palace 
 intrigue headed by the powerful alien courtier whom Genso had be- 
 friended, and who is popularly supposed to have been in collusion with 
 the “ Helen ” of China, Genso’s lovely young comrade, Yokihi. In 
 the mad flight from the capital, Yokihi paid for her sins with her life; 
 and Genso was forced by his few faithful generals to abdicate in favour 
 of his son. The revolt was finally put down, but Genso returned, 
 a solitary old man, to a ruined capital. Rihaku and Toshimi have 
 left powerful political satires upon these disordered times, and later 
 poets have dwelt upon their pathos. The supposed perfect union 
 between Buddhism and Confucianism had shown the rift deep down in 
 the former. Puritanism was driven at least one stage toward self- 
 consciousness, and had now a weapon in its hand. 
 
 But, far away from the capital, on beautiful Tendai mountain, the 
 secret Buddhism of lofty rights and superhuman purification went on 
 under the great Daishi and his successor, Ejitsu of Toji. A peculiar 
 art grew up in those sacred regions, which partakes of the general 
 nature of Tang art, yet forms a special brand of it. I refer first to 
 the hieratic altar pieces, or Mandara (mystic circles), which, hung before 
 the advanced pupil or officiating priest, showed him the higher spiritual 
 categories in their proper involution and integrating, gave him a 
 detailed inventory both of the cosmos and ot the psychic, and helped 
 him in the verbal invocation. Such Mandara were brought back to 
 Japan by students from that island who had gone to China especially 
 to enrol themselves as neophytes at Tendai. Some of them are in 
 
 * The enumeration and location of other Tang (To) paintings in Japan were among 
 the things the writer left blank. He intended to supply these and all other deficiencies 
 when he could get to Japan again, have access to archives, and consult with old colleagues. 
 In attempting to follow out his wishes the editor went in person to Japan, remaining 
 through the spring of 19 10, and received priceless assistance upon all such points of doubt. 
 In this case, the one piece of information concerned a picture called “Tenjukoku Mandara,” 
 Tenjukoku being the “ after-name ” of the Japanese Prince “ Shotoku.” It is not even a 
 painting, but a very ancient piece of fine embroidery, said to have been done by the ladies 
 of the Tang court from a design by a contemporary artist. It is now mounted in the shape 
 of a kakemono, is quite a good deal rubbed and defaced, and is kept in the temple of 
 Chuguji at Horiuji, Nara. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 1 39 
 
 colour, some in fine gold lines drawn upon a dark ground. The lines, 
 though fine, have a certain thickening and pen quality which render 
 them objects of great beauty. Rich flower designs, largely of lotos, 
 and scroll work also in gold, surround the separate panels. The 
 central panel contains the spirit of the central category, the God of 
 the Shingon sect — a still more esoteric branch of the Tendai— Dai 
 Nichi Niorai, or the great Sun Tathagata. He is not even called a 
 Buddha. He is the central demiurge, in Bodhisattwa costume, but 
 with supreme power in the cosmos ; in short, to the spiritual universe 
 what the sun is to our system. The art is pretty close to imported 
 Indian, already working toward those forms which later become the 
 Gods of Hinduism. How strongly this kind of Tang art affected 
 Japan we shall soon see. 
 
 Another fine form of Tendai painting was the portraits of great 
 priests, from Nagergina downward, the man who had founded this 
 mystic ritual. These portraits are very characteristic of Tang, being 
 very strong, with flesh tint, and lined in simple powerful brush strokes, 
 generally of ink, that do not thicken to Godoshi’s scale, but remain 
 everywhere something like thick firm wires. In this respect they are 
 more like the Rakan of early Tang. Many such portraits were brought 
 to Japan by the new founders. Probably the greatest of all, and one 
 of the most powerful portraits of the world, is the painting of Tendai 
 Daishi himself, preaching, owned by the great shipbuilder of Kobe, 
 Mr. Kawasaki. Here the lines are of wonderful fineness, the features 
 transcendent, and the colour most delicate and beautiful. It is nearly 
 of life-size, and must be by one of the greatest Buddhist masters 
 of Tang. 
 
 But beside these works of painting in the eighth century, sculpture 
 still took an important place, even if subordinate. In the large 
 ceramic Buddha’s head, found by me in the ash barrel at Daigoji in 
 1884 and now owned by the Art School in Tokio, we have one of the 
 earliest relics of Tendai sculpture. Doubtless it formed a portion of a 
 complete ceramic Buddha which was destroyed, all but this head, in the 
 great fire of Daigoji in the twelfth century. After 1868 the priests were 
 tired of keeping the fragment, whose tradition was lost, and so had thrown 
 it away. It is not only most important because the rounded form of 
 the head and the somewhat flat features show us just the sculptural 
 type of head which Godoshi followed in his painting of the Tofukuji 
 
 M ?. 
 
1 4 o EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Buddha; but also because it is an authentic piece of hard glazed 
 ceramic belonging to the eighth — and probably the early eighth — 
 century. The clay is whitish, midway between pottery and true 
 porcelain. The glaze, which is used chiefly on the curls of the 
 hair, is whitish with a little green streaked through it. It is handed 
 down, but on tradition only, that there was real porcelain in Tang ; 
 and this piece seems tQ confirm it.* There was softer glazed ware 
 in several colours, cream, white, olive, brown, grey and yellow, 
 although in Shosoin there is no glazed ware but the mottled green 
 and yellow. The white, which seems either an ancestor or a contemporary 
 of the famous Corean white glazed ware, may well be an invention of 
 the later eighth century. 
 
 But another splendid form of Tendai sculpture was in wood ; and, 
 chiefly as coming down to our day, the strong portrait statues of great 
 philosophers and priests. Two of the finest are the figures, some- 
 what larger than life, of Vasubandhu and Asangpo, which formerly 
 stood together on the altar of Chukondo at Kofukuji. These are 
 sometimes considered by Japanese critics to be native and of a later date. 
 But in their transcendent simple style, faces of utmost power, Chinese 
 details in drapery, and realistic modelling as free as the finest Greco- 
 Buddhist, we can find no analogy with typical Japanese sculpture. 
 They are far grander, and have the force of the great painted portraits 
 of Tendai Tang. In spite of the peeling off of the paint which once 
 covered them, and of the broken hands, they seem rather to be actual 
 human presences than statues. 
 
 By the ninth century, under Genso’s successors Tokuso and Kenso, 
 belief in Buddhism again took strong hold upon the Imperial Court ; 
 but now there was no such naive unconsciousness of difference between 
 the two halves of Japanese genius. The leader of the Puritan Con- 
 fucians, Kentaishi, China’s greatest prose writer, and one of the best 
 of Tang poets, dared, though already under the Imperial ban, to write 
 strongly against what he believed to be degrading superstitions. In 
 the year 8 1 8 Kenso had ordered precious relics, reported to be some 
 of the very bones of Buddha, to be brought from India to China, 
 and he and his court undertook to worship them. Then Kentaishi 
 
 spoke out, and declared, in a rescript which has ever since been a 
 
 * Mr. Charles L. Freer of Detroit, one of the world's greatest experts and collectors of 
 ancient pottery, asserts that at this time there was pottery. — The Ed. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST PAINTING 
 
 I 4 I 
 
 kind of constitution for the Confucian scholars, that Kenso was 
 violating the sacredness of ancestral customs and would only bring 
 disaster on the empire. This was the first “ rift within the lute,” 
 which was destined to rise to an all-threatening problem of policy 
 in Sung, and to lead to a palsying of the Chinese mind in later 
 Ming. Now began a kind of see-saw between the two great Court 
 parties, now one triumphing, now the other. In 845, for instance, 
 many Buddhist temples were destroyed and the building of new ones 
 forbidden. Faction leads to internal revolt, and the end of the century 
 finds the Tang power tottering, with the capital again moved eastward 
 to Loyang. 
 
 The Tang paintings of the ninth century are a greater elaboration 
 of the style found in the ancient Rakans. The line is not as thick 
 as Godoshi’s, but thickens as if it were a wire ribbon seen at different 
 angles. The faces are a little coarse, the forms ungraceful, but there 
 is great wealth of colour, a Chinese vermilion being used which seems 
 to be almost as dark as crimson. The large Nirvana painting at 
 Tofukuji, ascribed to Godoshi, is of this age. Also the large 
 painting of Buddha preaching.* The Rakan pictures of this day are 
 carefully drawn, and have rich landscape backgrounds. The trees, 
 drawn in rich opaque colours like jades, are a manifest advance upon 
 the early Tang and pre-Tang Tartar trees. 
 
 Ink painting is also in vogue at this day, and the hieratic Shingon 
 style, which now uses exquisite opaque Tartar colouring for the original 
 fine gold lines. An example of this is the splendid Bodhisattwa of 
 the peacock at Ninnoji of Kioto. 
 
 By the tenth century the Kettan — a rising Tartar tribe from the 
 North-west — had almost annihilated the Northern provinces. In the 
 south, west, and south-east, localities were declaring their independence 
 of Tang. According to Chinese reckoning Tang is officially abolished 
 in 905 and a series of petty dynasties, each lasting a few years, brings 
 on an interregnum of great confusion between 905 and 960, which may 
 be called the “ interpolation of the 5 dynasties.” As in all such dis- 
 ordered times, the Confucians, with their ready organization, came to 
 the front ; and they now succeeded in 955 in having a large number 
 of ancient bronze Buddhas destroyed and cast into coins. It is this deep 
 
 * Probably the To painting in Chonoji temple, in the village of O’Toku-ni, 
 Yamasho. 
 
i 4 2 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 reaction in the Chinese mind which has led to so many destructions 
 and revolutions in art, and which has made Tang art of the great 
 Buddhist period so rare in China itself. 
 
 But in this very confusion a last independent phase of Tang art 
 flared up. The local geniuses of the provinces found expression ; 
 and even great Buddhist priests like Zengetsu have left us stupendous 
 conceptions. His great work is sets of the Rakan, single figures of 
 large size — the finest being the 18 Rakan of Kodaiji. The drawing 
 of tree forms here is gnarly and powerful to the last degree. The 
 line is the wire line of the early Rakan, but used with wonderful 
 originality and twisting into strange splendid systems. The colour is 
 more wonderful still, quite eschewing the bright reds, greens, and 
 blues of Tartar tradition, and confining both flesh and draperies to 
 strange quiet transparent tones of browns, olives, and unnamable 
 purples. All grace is lacking : the figures are elemental like great 
 lumps of rock ; the heads are often distorted ; yet a powerful realism 
 that can even deal minutely with textures remains. 
 
 It is a question whether the strange set of “Jewish” Rakans belongs 
 
 to this or the preceding century ; they are kept at Kataiji, at Higashiyama, 
 
 near Kioto. Though Buddhist and with halos the Semitic cast of 
 countenances is evidently intentional. These exceptional pieces may 
 have arisen by a mistaking in later Tang the officiators in the 
 half-ruined synagogues in China for Indian, that is, Western, types. 
 The Arabs hated Buddhism so heartily that they would hardly have 
 become mistaken for Rakan. 
 
 Taking Tang Buddhist art as a whole, we have seen how Greco- 
 
 Buddhism gave it an inspiration in the seventh century ; and how 
 internal causes carried it to a kind of culmination under Godoshi in the 
 eighth, from which point it rapidly declined through the ninth and 
 tenth centuries. The revival of art which now supervenes, though even 
 beginning during the five short dynasties, properly belongs to the 
 
 history of the all-conquering Sung that came in in 960. 
 

 Rakan Holding Wand. 
 
 By the priest Zengetsu Daishi (Kuan Chiu). 
 At Kcdaiji. 
 
Chapter VIII. 
 
 MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN. 
 
 Fujiwara. 
 
 M YSTICAL Buddhist art, or the arts of the mystical sects of 
 Buddhism (Tendai and Shingon as named in Japan), which 
 we have been studying in its Chinese phases of Tang and 
 Sung, was introduced into Japan from Tang in the eighth century. 
 In order to understand what a change this was for Japanese art, and 
 with what political and social changes for Japan this new art was bound, 
 we must go back to the end of Chapter VI., where I briefly described 
 the decay of the Nara life and art which followed after the death of 
 Shomu Tenno in 748. Under the Empress Koken many abuses were 
 practised, statesmen were exiled, priests exalted to high rank, and art 
 became coarse and traditional. The good days of Genso’s reign in 
 Tang were passing over China without leaving any contemporary 
 mark on the island capital. Quite a number of Japanese scholars, 
 like Abe no Nakamaro, were studying in Tang, but their pro-Chinese 
 recommendations had little weight. A great religious revival, that 
 of Tendai, was passing over China, filling even the ranks of the 
 court with the inspiration of spiritual knighthood, but it left Japan cold. 
 To be sure, one waif from the crest of this new wave had been 
 thrown upon Japan as early as 699. The hermit, En no Gioja, 
 was a Chinese disciple of the new cult, and, coming to Japan, had 
 tried to interest the people in his mysticism. But the devotees of 
 the older abstract views had denounced him as a magician, and 
 banished him to the mountains of Idzu. There he is said to have 
 practised his mystic contemplations, communing with nature and with 
 
i 4 4 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 the elemental spirits of rock and stream ready to respond to his 
 
 bidding. In this way he was a despised forerunner of mysticism, 
 afterwards honoured as a pioneer and often represented as a holy 
 hermit — as in the fine bronze group of the fifteenth century. But in 
 spite of the languid curiosity of a few persons concerning his doctrine, 
 the Nara Court was ready to go with the old worn-out formulas, 
 
 hardly virile enough in their moral generalizations or in their aesthetic 
 beauty to withstand the undermining of luxury. 
 
 So things went on in the luxurious capital of Nara, with a 
 decayed Greco-Buddhist art, until the year 782, when a new and 
 powerful emperor, Kwammu, destined to reign twenty-four years, came 
 to the throne. In his first thought he identified Buddhism with all 
 the abuses of his predecessors, and so he ordered that no more 
 
 temples should be built and that no more of the people’s land 
 should be diverted to temple support. Moreover, he conceived 
 
 that the city of Nara, although such an enormous mass of capital 
 was invested therein, was too much associated with old ways to be 
 
 longer retained, and so in his third year he sent a surveyor to 
 
 the neighbouring province of Yamashiro to look for a promising site. 
 Already his thought was that the new civilization of China — the 
 wonderful poetry, and painting, and laws, and court officers and 
 functions, the stately music, the universities, the diffusing of learning 
 throughout the Court — that all these ripe elements of culture — 
 
 should be carefully studied, and transplanted bodily to a new 
 
 Japan which he himself would create. Confucius was already 
 publicly worshipped. If the Confucian scholars of China had not 
 been such unmitigated Chauvinists they might well have transplanted 
 their own cult to the neighbouring state. But fortunately for Japan 
 these Bourbons considered China a divine essence apart from a 
 negligible world. It is interesting to see that the Japanese nature was 
 so far back, as now, ready to accept and incorporate every element of 
 any foreign civilization that could be put to the national advantage. 
 
 Kwammu, in short, was to his day what the illustrious Mutsuhito, 
 already in the 39th year of his reign, is to the present. Thus we can 
 say that he stands at the commencement of a second great era in 
 Japanese civilized history — the first having been opened by Shotoku 
 Taishi nearly two centuries before — a second period both of general 
 culture and of art. This second period was marked by a strong upward 
 
Portrait of a Priest. By Kobo Daishi. 
 

MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 145 
 
 wave at the close of the eighth century. We have only to note that 
 
 it is contemporary with the culmination of the parallel Tang wave. 
 
 Now it happened that just as Kwammu was meditating these 
 sweeping changes, a great Japanese genius — a young man who had been 
 studying for years with Dosui, the hierarch of the mystical Buddhist 
 sect on Tendai mountain — returned to his native country fully prepared 
 to become the apostle of this powerful new doctrine in its island world. 
 This is the man known to us as Dengio Daishi, who, whether he could, 
 as alleged, perform physical miracles or no, at least had that reach of 
 mind which enabled him to appreciate, utilize and direct the forces 
 
 involved in Kwammu’s projected reforms. His first step was to convince 
 Kwammu that it was really the Tendai spirit that lay at the basis of 
 China’s greatness, and that it would be a most powerful makeweight as 
 a new court Buddhism against the effete Nara sects. Thus what might 
 have been a too thorough Chauvinizing of Japan was diverted by 
 Dengio into a kind of mystical theocracy such as never existed in China 
 or any other Buddhist kingdom. In 788 Dengio, foreknowing Kwammu’s 
 decision concerning the new site, built his first cathedral church, 
 
 Enriakuji, near the top of Mount Hyei, which rises from the waves of 
 Lake Biwa, thus trying to reproduce the isolated conditions of Tendai 
 itself. But Dengio and Kwammu were working in perfect accord ; and 
 in 794 the capital was formally transferred from Nara to the new 
 Yamashiro site, at the land base of Mount Hiyei. Here a fine valley, 
 some five miles wide, had been selected, sloping gradually to the open 
 South from foot hills, and flanked on East and West with lofty 
 mountain ranges. Here the ground was laid out as much as possible 
 like the Chinese capital of Genso, with fine North and South running 
 thoroughfares crossed regularly with broad avenues from East to West. 
 From a large rectangular tract in the centre of the North side arose the 
 many buildings and garden hillocks of the Imperial palace. In a few 
 years the population had deserted Nara, and adapted themselves to these 
 more spacious accommodations. Canals faced with stone carried fresh 
 water from the mountains through the city. Within twenty-five years 
 a considerable portion of Central Nara had relapsed to its original rice- 
 fields ; but Kioto could boast of more than a million citizens. It was 
 the thousandth anniversary of this great removal which the Japanese 
 celebrated by an international exposition at Kioto in 1894. The new 
 buildings erected at that time, the Taikiokuden, were intended to be a 
 
146 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 close approximation to the style of Chinese architecture which Kwammu 
 himself used. 
 
 A few years later, in 806, a second great prelate came back from 
 China to Japan with the prestige of a much longer study on Tendai 
 mountain than Dengio. No doubt this Kuki, or Kobo Daishi, was a 
 tar more powerful religious genius than Dengio, as also a far greater 
 artist. He founded the special and concentratedly mystical sect of 
 
 Shingon, as supplementary to Tendai. This was the first great sect 
 originated by a Japanese. Kobo is said to have performed most 
 
 startling miracles before the Kioto court; and he probably did a still 
 more wonderful service in inventing the Japanese syllabary, a phonetic 
 semi-substitute for the difficult Chinese writing. He was likewise a 
 great metaphysical philosopher, Professor Inouye of the Imperial 
 University holding that we shall eventually find his work to be the 
 ripest piece of speculation in all Asia, building superstructures upon 
 Vasabandhu and Asangpo, as these build both on Buddha and on 
 the Vedas. Had he arrived upon the scene a few years earlier he 
 might have made more effective and more liberal the very reforms 
 undertaken by Dengio. As it was, he removed his first Cathedral 
 seat far away from Kioto to Mount Koya in the Southern part of 
 
 Yamato in 816. He travelled also all over Japan, even to the 
 
 barbarous North, founding monasteries on his way. He was more 
 for the people, and less for an Imperial theocracy. 
 
 A special mission to study in China was sent in 803. The Tokaido 
 highway was opened eastward as far as Hikone. The whole East 
 
 of Japan had finally been won from the Ainos in a big battle in 801. 
 Special Chinese court ceremonies were adoped in 820. In 827 Kobo 
 had become so powerful in the palace that at his request the Emperor 
 ordered the bones of Buddha to be brought to him at the palace. 
 Meanwhile several histories of Japan and books of law had been 
 compiled. Ono-no Takamura, the friend of Kobo, and who painted 
 his portrait, was sent as special student to China in 836. 
 
 But perhaps the greatest service of Kobo Daishi to Japan was 
 that he introduced Tang art, and especially Tendai art, into Japan; and 
 with such firm ingrafting that it became thoroughly naturalized, even 
 if slightly modified. It was Kobo who personally brought back 
 hundreds of paintings, among them the great portraits of the founders 
 of mysticism, and the largest specimens of the magic Mandara, which 
 
Laughing Angel with Biwa (Detail). 
 By Kobo Daishi. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 147 
 
 are found in somewhat dilapidated condition at his favorite Kioto 
 temple, Toji. Toji has always been the great Shingon temple of Kioto, 
 as Enriakuji has been the Tendai, and Daitokuji the Zen. Kobo 
 made himself the intimate friend of all the young Japanese who aspired 
 to Chinese learning, among them the famous Ono no Nakamura; and, 
 being a great painter and sculptor himself, he taught them to create in 
 the strong Tang style. Indeed from his day it has been part of the 
 discipline and function of every Shingon priest both to paint and to 
 carve Buddhist altar pieces. The first school of the new civilization 
 is therefore a school of priestly artists with Kobo at their head. 
 
 It should be added that in 864 a third great Japanese prelate 
 returned from Tendai and founded a branch sect of that name at 
 Miidera of Otsu, near Lake Biwa, which has maintained to this day a 
 hierarchical organization separate from that of Hiyei-zan. This man, 
 Chisho Daishi, was almost as great a man as Kobo, but more of a 
 recluse. Perhaps the highest Mahatmaship of Japan has been practised 
 in the temple which he founded. My first great teacher in Buddhism, 
 
 Keitoku Ajari (Ajari is Bishop) became the hierarch of this sect just 
 
 before his death, and my fellow-pupil, Kwanrio Ajari, officiates to-day 
 as Archbishop of Miidera.* Chiso, like Kobo, was also a great painter 
 and also brought back with him many Chinese Tang portraits and 
 models. Other prelates followed during the century, such as Jukiku 
 
 Daishi, but these three (Dengio, Kobo, and Chisho) may be called 
 
 the founders of mystical Buddhism and its art in Japan. 
 
 The art of the inceptive stage of this new period, roughly the 
 ninth century, may be said to be a mixture of the new Tang style 
 with the somewhat over-decorative traditions of the old Nara style 
 that could not be at once wholly discarded. Moreover, the very 
 predominance of the Shingon, or Mandara, among the general Tang 
 styles in Japan tended rather to encourage the effeminate tendencies 
 of Nara art than would have the style of Godoshi had it then been 
 known. This tendency was partly counteracted by the strength of the 
 portrait style as introduced from Tang. In sculpture is found the 
 same double tendency — a strength in portraiture and in militant types, 
 but an effeminacy in carved Buddhas and Bodhisattwas and other 
 
 *The Ajari Kwanrio, having already appointed his young successor, has taken the 
 name “ Keiyen ” — under which he still presides over the important Archbishopric of 
 Miidera. 
 
1 48 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Mandara deities. Yet, in spite of all conservation, it can be said 
 that the art of the days of Kobo is more nearly like Chinese than the 
 more culminating art that comes a little later in Kwanpei and Engi. 
 
 The transition from Nara art to Kwammu art is probably 
 given us, in painting, with the splendidly-preserved representation on 
 silk, and in brilliant colours, of the eleven - headed Kwannon 
 seated, formerly at Horiuji, and now in the collection of Marquis 
 Inouye. It is possible that the grace of this fine piece is an 
 example of Shomu work in Tempei, rather than of Kwammu. But 
 in sculpture undoubted transitions are the big, heavy, standing 
 Buddha of Miroku in Todaiji, so fat and clumsy that it looks about to 
 burst, and the large seated fat gilt trinity upon the altar of Bisjamondo 
 at Seirioji. 
 
 Perhaps by Kobo Daishi himself, and with the transition to the 
 new Tang type much more complete, is the great painted triptych 
 of the coming of Buddha in glory through clouds filled with Bodhi- 
 sattwa. This uses full colour, rather than gilding, and there are 
 traces of the Greco - Buddhist manner, but nothing of the hard, 
 wiry, Corean lines of Tempei painting. The effect is broad and 
 
 the notan fine. The side panels with Bodhisattwa playing on instru- 
 ments are beautiful and naive. In some faces the effect of laughing 
 is given. 
 
 Other paintings by Kobo Daishi are the portrait of Ono no 
 Takamura in Koninji, at Yamato, and the large, standing figure of 
 Jizo in the Fenollosa collection at Boston. Quite like him, and very 
 Tang in style, are the portrait of Kobo and the front-faced standing 
 Jizo by Ono no Takamura. Several paintings remain ascribed to 
 Chisho Daishi, the strong yellow Fudo of Nara shrine and the 
 strange Fudo with many doji (boys) at Miooin, in Koyasan, which 
 is very much like Tang. 
 
 Many sculptures are attributed to Kobo, one of the most probable 
 being the great Fudo of Toji. This is the first time that this subject, 
 a distinctly mystic motive, has been mentioned in our history. Fudo 
 is a type of the apparently violent beings in the spiritual world who 
 take rank with Bodhisattwa. His flesh is blue, he has torches in 
 his mouth, his face writhes, he holds a sword in his right hand, a 
 cord in his left. This seems related to the more terrible Shivaistic 
 deities of modern Hinduism. To the thoughtless foreign commentator 
 
Early Chinese Buddhist Painting. 
 Collection of Mr. Charles L. Freer. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 149 
 
 they are one and all abominable relics of “devil” worship. But 
 Fudo may properly be called the Bodhisattwa of the will, of 
 self-restraint, the power to cut out temptation, to bind the unruly 
 passions. Fudo means “The Unmoved,” and he is usually represented 
 as surrounded with a halo of fire, which he does not feel. In the Toji 
 statue, the square logs of his throne are really a pyre of wood for 
 flames. Jizo, too, is a new Bodhisattwa type, this time gracious and 
 peaceful, the guardian of little children and of travellers, the descender 
 into Hell, where he intercedes for the souls of infants. Japan is full 
 of wayside shrines to Jizo, whose stone images are almost covered by 
 votive offerings of pebbles by travellers. One of the most striking 
 of these early Jizos is cut, life-size and in high relief, out of a 
 mountain ledge on the little path across the Hakone mountains from 
 Ashinoyu to Hakone. This is said to have been carved by Kobo him- 
 self on his journey to the North ; yet, though the conception is 
 primitive Tang and mostly of Kobo, he would hardly have spared 
 time for its execution. It is more likely that it was afterwards prepared 
 from his drawings. 
 
 But probably the most powerful sculpture of this day is found in 
 the militant spirits, Bisjamon’s Shi Ten O and Yakushi’s generals, often 
 very large carvings in wood, and with fine spirit and motion. These 
 are much fuller of drapery than the corresponding Chinese work of the 
 seventh century. There is little of the effeminacy and merely decorative 
 quality of Tempei sculpture. It is all robust and large and realistic, 
 deeply carved, with the bigness of Tang feeling in it. It is hard to say 
 whether some of the finest examples may not be originals from Tang. 
 Typical specimens are found in Nanyendo of Kofukuji, in Toji, in 
 Koyasan. 
 
 The study of ornament too in smaller articles is of great interest ; 
 boxes and vases of lacquer and metal, and stuffs. Of this there is 
 much in Koyasan and at Saidaiji. 
 
 The ripe harvest of all this Chinese sowing comes on slowly, 
 after three generations, with the advent of the Emperor Daigo in 898. 
 His glorious reign lasted down to 930, of which 22 years are 
 reckoned under the famous era, Engi (901-922). This period named 
 “Engi ” must doubtless be reckoned the high-water mark of Japanese 
 
1 5 o EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 civilization, as Genso’s “ Kaigen ” had been that of China. Never 
 again would either China or Japan be quite so rich, splendid, and full 
 of free genius. In Japan, however, it might not be quite correct to 
 speak of this as a supreme culmination in art , since it is only the 
 second apex of five nearly equal mountain heights. But in general 
 culture and in luxurious refinement of a life which equally ministered 
 to mind and to body, not only not in Japan, but perhaps not in the 
 world, was there ever again anything quite so exquisite. Shomu’s day 
 at Nara had been great, but it was a childish though over-grown 
 patriarchship. Genso at Loyang and Pericles at Athens had seen 
 stronger, more daring creation. The later Florence of the Medici 
 was to surpass it in sheer intellectual force and the Hangchow of 
 
 Sung in naturalness and vitality of art. But in a delicate aristocratic 
 culture on a scale comprising a vast city, and whose finest essences 
 are original poetry and music, nothing before or since probably has 
 possessed a more perfect flavour. It was like the production of a 
 wonderful, unique, and unheard-of flower whose shape and colour 
 transcend the limits of all known species. 
 
 I have already intimated that this great world of palace culture 
 was in some real sense a theocracy ; and this is another feature which 
 differentiates it from all the world’s great illuminations. Athens and 
 
 Florence were frankly pagan. Loyang and Hangchow were half- 
 
 pagan. But the Kioto of Engi practically worshipped in one vast 
 temple, without decay of heart or intellect. Here, indeed, the mystical 
 Buddhism of Tendai and Shingon came to its social throne ; nowhere 
 in China did it take such absolute root and bear such luscious harvest. 
 It may be said that Dengio on his Mount Hiyei, if not Kwammu by his 
 Kamo river, had foreseen much of this. The compact between these 
 two founders, the spiritual and the temporal, was one that the successors 
 of the former would enforce. The Tendai prelate was to be the 
 Emperor’s adviser and father confessor, the vicegerent on earth of 
 those very spiritual forms that should guarantee the Imperial throne. 
 Before Gods and the archbishop should the Mikado kneel ; while armed 
 monks from the populous monasteries should if necessary defend the 
 temporal sovereignty. It was a sort of compact between Church and 
 State, not at all unlike that which Charlemagne was to make with 
 Pope Leo the Third, and curiously enough only six years later. 
 
 Kwammu founded Kioto in 794, and the great Charles of Germany 
 

 Wooden Image of Fud6. By Kobo Daish: 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 151 
 
 signed the convention of Rome in 800. It may be no great 
 strain of analogy to designate this duplex authority which thereafter 
 underlay Japanese civilization as “The Holy Kioto Empire.” It is 
 true that Tendai Buddhism was in time partially superseded ; and it is 
 true that for 700 years feudal Shoguns, who had often scant respect 
 for priests, sheared the Mikado of all real power. Nevertheless, in 
 some weak but real sense the “ Holy Kioto Empire ” lived down to 
 1868, when many princes of the Imperial blood, like Prince Kitashirakawa 
 at Ninnoji, were officiating with shaved heads as imperial incumbents 
 of great Tendai and Shingon abbeys at the old capital. It was through 
 the early Kioto centuries, however, that the strength of this double 
 power ran through society like the fire of a holy wine ; and it was in 
 Engi especially that it reached its highest power. There in the heart 
 of Kioto to-day, under the roof of an ancient temple gate of Daigo’s 
 palace, can still be seen the far-away peaks of Hiyei-zan dominating the 
 devoted city and testifying eloquently to the pride with which the 
 Tendai pope must have looked down upon his Imperial puppet. 
 
 For there were several things that the far-sighted Kwammu forgot 
 in laying his wise plans for empire. He had chafed against Koken’s 
 Nara hierarch, Dokio ; he had resented the cupidity of the Nara 
 nobles, who had gradually and surreptitiously neutralized Tenchi’s 
 fine laws of land distribution to the people. He had intended to rule 
 as the new father of a great people relieved from their abuses ; and 
 doubtless Dengio was equally sincere in good intentions. But neither 
 of them could foresee how the new Chinese ranking of Imperial 
 ministers as a court entourage , strengthened with a caste allegiance 
 to the theocratic power on the hill, would soon lead to the throttling 
 of imperialism with oligarchy. Four estates you may say there were — 
 the Emperor, the people, the nobles, and the clergy. The Emperor 
 and the people should have been strong enough then to build the 
 Japanese nation , which was delayed till 1868 ; for the village organi- 
 zation of the farmers and the artisans, for which indeed the Taihori 
 laws had been chiefly drafted, was not yet far in abeyance. But 
 a working combination of a vast civic aristocracy drawing its wealth 
 from country estates with the ramifications of a perfect administration 
 would be well-nigh too powerful. 
 
 This aristocracy was vested largely in one vast family, the Fujiwara, 
 which had trained its hundreds of collateral houses upon a single grand 
 
152 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 scale of policy and education. A well managed family in Japan is 
 always an imperium in imperio ; and the early history of Japan is largely 
 a record of civic, or even civil, struggle between rival houses. Thus 
 the Soga family, the first great patrons of Buddhism, had been 
 supported by Prince Shotoku in their fight with Moriya. It was only 
 a little later that the great minister Kamatori, the reputed founder of 
 the Fujiwara, fell into deadly feud with the jealous Soga. It was 
 against this very growth of the aristocracy that Tenchi’s and Morimune’s 
 laws had been directed. Nevertheless in Nara times the old land- 
 grabbing had crept back and the Fujiwara clan was rising to con- 
 siderable wealth and influence. And when Kwammu in his new 
 Kioto assembled his courtiers about him into a consolidated cabinet 
 with subordinate bureaus and a large officialdom, the scions of the 
 populous Fujiwara were there in large numbers, ready to fill the 
 posts. Especially had this house been eager to follow all the new 
 currents of learning that had filtered in from China and Corea. They 
 were trained scholars as well as statesmen ; and now they threw them- 
 selves with solid enthusiasm into the union of learning with the personal 
 ecstasy of the new mysticism. It was they who became the principal 
 pupils of the Tendai hierophants ; they the artists, the poets, the 
 musicians, the dancers — nay, the Confucians also — who should realize 
 in their own lives a mingling of the best in both China and Japan. 
 They were “aristocrats” in a literal sense. It was a government 
 by the best. This is why we call this second great period of 
 Japanese civilization, centred at Kioto and lasting down to the twelfth 
 century, the Fujiwara epoch. 
 
 But it was not till just before the culminating period of Engi 
 that the inner significance of this aristocratic predominance began to 
 be felt. The nobles had begun with supporting Kwammu in his 
 alliance with the priesthood. It now became clear that the Fujiwara, 
 in this alliance, were about to overweigh the Emperor. In 88 1, 
 the head of the Fujiwara house, a man of vast ability and ambition, 
 Mototsune, became prime minister, with a strong backing of his 
 house in subordinate offices. By 884 his cabinet became so powerful 
 that it dethroned the reigning Emperor and put up his son. In 892, 
 Mototsune’s daughter was married to the Emperor Uda. This was 
 the beginning of a series of such marriages, through which the heads 
 of the Fujiwara clan became grandfathers of a whole line of Emperors. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 153 
 
 The dangers of this one-sided supremacy were of course apparent to 
 the other nobles ; and one of these, Sugawara no Michizane, through 
 his talents and learning, which really surpassed the Fujiwaras’, rose into 
 rival rank. He was the great Chinese scholar of his day — a great prose 
 writer, a great historian, a great poet in the Chinese style of Tang — 
 following Rihaku and Omakitsu — a great painter, a man of staunch 
 integrity, an incorruptible statesman. Such a man really stood in the 
 way of Fujiwara ambition ; and through a romantic series of Court 
 intrigues he was eventually removed by banishment. His story has 
 since entered into many a novel and play, and forms the theme of the 
 great panoramic paintings by Nobuzane spoken of in the next chapter. 
 His soul has been promoted to the rank of Shinto deity, and he is 
 worshipped to-day, under the name of Tenjin, as a sort of Japanese god 
 of letters. 
 
 The Fujiwara, from this time onward, really reigned supreme for two 
 centuries. And one of their methods of controlling the Emperors was 
 in that alliance of the church which urged them as they grew to manhood 
 to take holy orders, shave their heads, retire to a monastery and leave 
 the young prince to the guidance of his ministers. If a great man he 
 might still exert much authority, but only through channels which were 
 controlled by the church. This was not quite a new procedure ; but 
 as an almost compulsory measure under Fujiwara custom it became a 
 new instrument. Uda became the first type of these retired Emperors 
 in 889, and was given the complimentary ecclesiastical title of Ho-o 
 (that is pope). The real power was of course held by the Hiyei-zan 
 prelate. The young Daigo, grandson of Fujiwara Mototsune, was now 
 the civil Emperor, and his long reign is both a sign of and establishes the 
 Fujiwara domination in its perfect form. Daigo is the great Emperor 
 of Engi, and under him the splendour of literature and art rise to their 
 zenith. 
 
 In is worth while here to say just a word more about this Fujiwara 
 culture. On the physical side it reached its splendour with enormous 
 palaces — enormous in extent rather than height — and fine gardens in a 
 style not more than half Chinese. Silks of the richest texture and colour 
 were worn in many layers whose edges were tinted into gradations. Gold 
 and colours and ivory and bronze and pearl were used to finish the 
 interiors. Music became a passion — a mixture or alternation of 
 Chinese music and Japanese music — demanding a department of music 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
154 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 with a minister of state at its head, who also supervised the Court 
 dances, which were reckoned a part of music. These dances were 
 pantomimic, dramatic, and composed on historical or romantic 
 
 themes. Nobles themselves, and refined Court ladies, at first took part 
 in the dancing. Later a chanted text was added, sung by aristocratic 
 choruses. Other kindred dances were the Buddhist miracle pantomimes 
 already noticed, and the Shinto Matsuri dances, which the nobles also 
 affected ; for one of Kobo Daishi’s great works had been an effected 
 union between Shinto and Buddhism, through which they exchanged 
 deities. It was largely through the retention of Shinto — pure Japanese 
 ideality, nature and family worship — that Japan, even in her Chinese 
 copying, remained so largely herself. 
 
 In literature, for example, though Chinese poetry was known 
 and practised, as by Michizane, the pure well of native speech — in 
 its polysyllabic sound wealth, its loose verbal construction, and its 
 host of little particles, so utterly removed from the solid, trip-hammer 
 metre of Chinese — bubbled up too copiously for serious soiling. In 
 905 the poet Tsurayuki presented to the Engi Emperor the second 
 great national anthology, the Kokinshu, in which so many of the 
 thousands of supreme masterpieces are by Court ladies and priests. 
 Ono no Komachi becomes Japan’s romantic Sappho. Narihira plays 
 the part of Theocritus, or at least a Byron. The archbishop Henjo 
 blends Buddhist ecstasy with pure Japanese nature feeling. From 
 these days the Fujiwara lords and ladies were all trained as poets, 
 and among the intellectual pastimes of Court ceremonies, parties and 
 picnics were minnesinger contests and the capping of verses. 
 
 Prose, too, took on splendid romantic forms, especially in the great 
 novels of life, the Monogataris, largely written by the Court ladies. 
 Certainly the Geni Monogotari, by the lady Murasaki, is almost the 
 most perfect picture of refined contemporary life that the literature 
 of any race has left us. Without any deep-laid plot it contrives 
 to describe every phase of public and private life, showing especially 
 how men and women are almost equally educated and stand on 
 terms of perfect social equality. It may seem strange to some that 
 any race of Oriental women can ever have been as free as are 
 ours to-day. Chinese subordination of women played no part in an 
 aristocracy which was training its daughters to an intellectual emulation 
 that should prove their fitness to be Empresses. The subjugation ot 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 155 
 
 women through feudal violence did not supervene till the twelfth 
 century. The very individual training of the new Buddhism allowed 
 women to essay the spiritual emancipation. Orders of Shingon nuns 
 had been founded even by Kobo Daishi. In 990 the Empress 
 herself becomes a nun and starts an order of retired female popes, 
 parallel with the shaved emperors. It seemed a natural process in 
 this naively refined society that men and women who had plunged 
 in youth into social and domestic joys and responsibilities should 
 leave the emoluments to their children and devote their waning 
 strength to the more inward ecstasies of divine vision. Thus, 
 throughout all their strange lives Fujiwara men and women worked 
 on equal terms and indulged most romantic intercourse. All these 
 thousand involutions are revealed to us in the pages of the 
 
 Monogotaris, through which we can know the Engi age as minutely 
 as we can know the material side of Tempei through the Shosoin 
 Museum. 
 
 But, after all, the core of this wonderful life is chiefly explained 
 by its religious enthusiasm. Recent Christian visitors to Japan have 
 observed of this remarkable race that, in spite of modern Confucian 
 agnosticism, they seem to be a people “ on fire with religion.” This 
 passionate idealism nobly displayed itself in the sacrifices of the 
 recent Russian war. It was the same divine flame, but reddened a 
 thousand years ago with a stronger Buddhist tinge, that made Fuji- 
 wara lords and ladies feel even the most gorgeous human life to 
 be only a threshold for an actual spiritual life. This intermingling 
 of social and spiritual interests sounds a key-note. To make and 
 administer sound laws, to effect hospital, charitable, and university 
 organization, to play a bird-like part in the variegated paradises of 
 court and villa, to beautify the person, and flash poetry as foun- 
 tains do water — was only to play naturally what the gods wished 
 done upon the hardened circumference of heaven, for, after all, the 
 earth is only an outlying province, and the very best of the flesh- 
 bound soul is in touch with the central molten life of Paradise. 
 Thus men do their most menial functions in the very eyes of 
 gods, and there becomes practically no difference between a 
 palace and a temple. The two architectures are the same. The 
 lovely little shrine of Biodoin at Uji, which, dating from the next 
 century, is almost the sole architectural Fujiwara remainder, exhibits 
 
 N 2 
 
156 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 in its corridors and pavilion wings the type of a private villa. Its 
 interior finish of black lacquer inlaid with plates of gold, silver, 
 ivory and pearl realises on earth the flashing splendour of heavenly 
 mansions. You come out of the palace robed in trailing purple 
 mixed with trailing hair, and you enter the palace with the shining 
 pate and the girded Keisa of a nun. This double life permeates 
 the habits and thought of all classes down to the very people. The 
 temple worship of our day, the processions, the banners, the incense, 
 the breathless exaltation of the shrine, all these are only ghostly 
 echoes of the religious passion of Fujiwara. 
 
 To realize the ecstasies of the inner vision that alternated with 
 the outer, we must realize the individuality of this worship. It was 
 no mere force of sacrament, no sentimental evangel of brotherhood. 
 The young soul had to win the spurs of its knighthood alone, in 
 struggle, in effort to feel and see, in invocation to the gods to tear 
 his heart open — alone before the altar in his cell, or his own chamber 
 shrine. To pray to the spirit beside your bed was as much a part 
 of life as to sleep. But you entered the holy presence naked, with 
 bared motive, with discounted pretensions. Some one of the great 
 Bodhisattwa was selected by your preceptor as your most fitting 
 guardian presence, and to him, or her, you made your first trembling 
 prayers, sniffing the rich smoke of incense, learning to tinkle in time 
 your gilded bell, and twisting your fingers into the magnetic language 
 of the in. You gaze into the white, round mirror on which is 
 painted in Sanskrit the golden breathing “ ah-h ! ” and you watch 
 while its surface deliquesces, expands to an infinite crystal sphere, in 
 which floats the living soul ot the deity you have invoked — Kwannon, 
 perhaps, who now is so white that she burns out the dross in you ; 
 or Jizo, who melts you into the torrent of his own pity ; or 
 Amida, who lets you sit as calm in his sun as if you were an 
 atom of helium ; or Aizu, who kindles your passion till it bursts 
 and reveals itself as no-passion ; or Fudo, who ties you to the stake, 
 and lights the pyre, and cuts out your heart, and you sip in the 
 glorious pain as if it were a holy draft. These and many more you 
 will see to-day, as you travel through Japan, standing as statues, or 
 niched as painted altar-pieces, in the side chapels of monasteries, under 
 some wayside shed, or still in the chambers of the old-fashioned. 
 Such a motley collection of deities that have glared to the prayers of 
 
Waterfall, 
 
 Kanawoka. 
 
*57 
 
 MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 
 
 a hundred generations is that which I once saw in 1884 in a chapel 
 at Udzumasa, since destroyed. Here you might see the whole 
 Pantheon, seated or standing, gilt or in colour, and before them the 
 small, square lacquered altar, with silver mirror and gilded apex, 
 and four candlesticks which burn lights of four colours, and the small 
 square mat, where you might sit and make of yourself a purged 
 circle immune of the devil. 
 
 I say and illustrate all this, not only because we cannot otherwise 
 quite realize the Fujiwara life, in which all men were great priests, but 
 
 also because, in this mutual heightening of the inner and outer vision 
 
 is found just the very key to the soul of Fujiwara art. The art of 
 the priests in the temples went on much as in the inceptive days of 
 Kobo Daishi ; but now in Engi arose for the first time, among the 
 
 same educated nobles who danced to flutes and sang lyrics to flowers, 
 
 a class of lay masters who gave their whole professional career to 
 painting, and that chiefly to Buddhist painting. The founder of this 
 new Court order, and the founder of the first professional family of 
 artists, was Kose no Kanawoka, a courtier who was specialized for 
 painting by Daigo, as Godoshi had been in China by Genso. It has 
 been customary for writers upon Japanese artists, whether native or 
 alien, to commence their account with Kanawoka as the “ father ” of 
 the art. But as we see him he is only the central spirit of the 
 second stage of the second great period of the art. Unfortunately 
 myth has been busy with his name, and it is difficult to penetrate 
 back to his personality. No doubt he was the friend of Daigo, 
 Michizane, Narihira, and the Lady Ono no Komachi. No doubt he 
 shared in all the refinements and passionate enthusiasms of his day. It 
 is difficult also to identify his work, which has come down through later 
 troubled ages as hardly more than a tradition, quite as the Tang 
 Godoshi has come. And in the same way we must try to identify his 
 work by approximation. We can see the kind of excellence that the 
 whole Kose school arrived at. A large number of very fine paintings 
 have been preserved in temples from the Fujiwara age, and are mostly 
 ascribed to Godoshi by their custodians. If we follow the clue of 
 regarding the very best of these as our best available standard, we shall 
 come the nearest to the truth. For it will not avail here, any more 
 than with the relics of Tang art, to throw away all tradition. As we 
 shall see in a later chapter, the tradition of reproducing and judging 
 
1 58 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 the mystical Buddhist painting finally passed into the hands of the late 
 Tosa school, and from this to its branch, the Sumiyoshi ; just as the 
 professional criticisms of Chinese work fell into the hands of Sesshu, 
 and to the early middle and late Kano. The last Sumiyoshi, Hirokata, 
 who died in 1885, was for years my teacher in Tosa and Buddhist 
 
 painting, as Yeitoku had been in the Chinese and the Kano. It was 
 
 from Hirokata that I derive the traditional views of a thousand years. 
 
 What sources had Kanawoka from which to derive the elements 
 of his style ? On the one hand he possessed the two priestly styles of 
 Tang, coming down through Kobo and Chisho Daishi’s : that is the 
 delicate Mandara style, and the large wired portrait style. He had the 
 inspiration which came from the large architecture and the brilliant 
 
 decoration of his day. He was a spacer. We have it on record that 
 he was chief among the landscape gardeners of Engi. Moreover, the 
 break-up ot Tang itself was bringing in refugees from the Eastern 
 Chinese provinces, who doubtless imported some traces of the contem- 
 porary styles of later Tang. In 935, during the five short dynasties, 
 men from the coast cities of Go and Etsu arrived with what is called 
 in the record “ tribute.” This may be only a phrase flourish, or it 
 may mean that in the distracted partitioning of the Tang empire, 
 
 those ancient seats which centuries before, in the troublous decay of 
 Han, had furnished immigrants in a quite parallel way, were even 
 anxious to transfer their allegiance from petty tyrants to the great 
 island Emperor. Again in 957 commissioners from Go arrive in Kioto. 
 This is only three years before the happy reuniting of the empire under 
 Sung ; and it may well be that some of the earliest Sung artists had 
 their work represented in importations of that time. But by this time 
 Kanawoka had probably left his artistic inheritance to his sons, Kanatada 
 and Ahimi. 
 
 The more important question is how far had the great work of 
 early Tang — yes, even the very central work of Godoshi himself — 
 became familiar to the Japanese of Daigo’s day. It had apparently not 
 been closely influential upon Kobo Daishi. But constant intercourse 
 between Kioto and central Tang must have brought in the thick strong 
 pen style of Godoshi along with the poetry of Rihaku and the prose 
 of Kantaishi. The very comprehensive scholarship implied by such a 
 career as Michizane’s can hardly have been unfamiliar with such 
 an important ornament of Genso’s Court. Rather are we inclined to 
 
Painting in the Godoshi Style of Kanawoka of one 
 of the Shi Ten O, formerly at Todaiji, Nara, now in 
 the Fenollosa-Weld Collection, Boston. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 159 
 
 believe that Kanawoka deliberately undertook to play something of the 
 Godoshi part to his master of Engi ; and to him we are disposed to 
 ascribe the full naturalization of a strong Godoshi penmanship, and 
 of a strong Godoshi-like realization of his subject. Two theories about 
 Kanawoka’s style have apparently conflicted in recent years : one that 
 it was most minute — in short the very hair-thick gold-lined style which 
 we know to have been prominent a century later with Yeishin Sozu ; 
 the other that of the Sumiyoshi’s, that the characteristic Kanawokas 
 have a fine thickening Tang line, a little more wiry than Godoshi’s 
 but much more masculine than Tang ninth-century work. With the 
 latter theory I agree, merely adding that it is not unlikely that Kanawoka 
 may at times have personally effected a sort of synthesis between these 
 two systems. Painting altar pieces as he did for Shingon temples, he 
 probably thinned his line without making it effeminate ; but indulging 
 in warriors, battles, and scenes from Hell, he probably employed the 
 most that he knew of Godoshi’s powerful lead-line stroke. There is 
 also reason to believe that he knew even of the ink monochrome style 
 of Godoshi and Omakitsu. 
 
 Of the pieces which may be reckoned as possible Kanawokas are 
 several strong seated Fudos, with his two doji or attendant boys. Of 
 one of these, a copy by Sumiyoshi is here given in outline, showing the 
 Kanawoka lead-lines. Another, in which there is possibly later handling, 
 is the fine Fudo that was first noticed by Dr. Anderson of England at 
 Daishoji, in Shiba of Tokio in 1879, an d which is now in the Fenollosa 
 collection at Boston.* The beautiful standing portrait of Shotoku Taishi 
 as a youth, owned by the temple Nennaji of Kioto, has always been 
 believed to be one of the authentic pieces. It expresses a nobility of 
 fine line, colour and expression not to be found in later Tosa work. 
 The great painting of lotoses and wild ducks, which strangely enough 
 has from old days been ascribed to Godoshi by the traditions of Horiuji, 
 its owner, is a most interesting piece of relatively secular work and 
 in almost pure Chinese style. The lotoses are as finely drawn as if 
 in the throne of an altar-piece. It is possible that we have here the 
 direct influence upon Kanawoka of contemporary Chinese artists of the 
 five dynasties, such as Joki. The relatively free-lined work of Kanawoka 
 is well illustrated by the beautiful Monju formerly in Koyasan, and 
 now owned by Mr. Freer. The ink school is probably represented by 
 
 * This Fudo was formerly owned by priests at Kamakura and sold by them to Daishoji. 
 
160 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 the broad strokes and clouds of the great thunder gods and dragons 
 owned by the Anju-in, temple of Bizen, of Kuni Tomi Village. 
 But what I call the Godoshi style of Kanawoka is finely shown in the 
 large and unfortunately much-defaced paintings of nearly life-size 
 Shi Ten O, formerly one of the great treasures of Todaiji in Nara, 
 and now in possession of the art museum in Boston (Fenollosa 
 collection). A head of one of these is here shown, which exhibits the 
 
 crumbly touch of the broad lead lines, and suggests the deep Titian- 
 
 like colour of the powerful face. The great sweep of the draperies 
 into the scalloped edges of the Tang cloud is like the great 
 Tang-like militant statues of Nanyendo. It was this phase of the 
 Kanawoka style which was carried over to the Shingon temple of 
 Daigoji in Yamashina, where I found the porcelain head, and where 
 a great school of powerful Buddhist painting in the Tang style was 
 inaugurated. 
 
 Of Kanawoka’s sons a few ascribable designs are extant. To Ahimi 
 was given the fine Chinese Rakan in the Sumiyoshi collection of copies; 
 and Kanetada may be the author of the great Bisjamon, photo- 
 graphed from the set of the twelve deva in Koriuji of Kioto. 
 
 Another Bisjamon, of identical touch in the draperies, but of stronger 
 Godoshi-ish drawing in the red devil under foot, is in the collection 
 at Boston. By him too is probably the fine Jizo brought by Mr. 
 Wakai to Paris, and reproduced in M. Gonse’s “ L’Art Japonais.” 
 This was formerly in the pope’s temple of Enriakuji on Hiyei-zan. 
 This grouping of the twelve devas is a new Buddhist subject brought 
 in with the Shingon sect by Kobo Daishi, and soon popularised in 
 Japan. Many of our old friends appear here in other dress, as this 
 same Bisjamon, the Sun and Moon spirits, and the deva of Fire and 
 Water. The pictures or statues of these twelve are required on the 
 occasion of a baptism in the Shingon sect ; also a screen is required, 
 which shows an old-fashioned coloured landscape, the idea apparently 
 being to sit in the presence of Nature. One of the oldest of such 
 screens, now at Toji, may possibly be by Kanetada. It shows hills 
 and trees in solid green, the trees drooping in the old Chinese Tartar 
 style, something between the trees of the Shosoin screen and later 
 Tosa landscape. This quality of landscape, hardened a little by gold, 
 is also found in works by the grandson, Kose Kanemochi. The Benten 
 in Boston is one of these. In the garden background we probably 
 

 One of the Hell Series, 
 
 "Emma’s Judgment.” By Kanawoka. 
 Copied by Hirotaka Sumiyoshi. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 161 
 
 see something of the style of Kanawoka’s gardens. Kanemochi also 
 is said to have left one or two secular designs of Fujiwara life. 
 
 The great-grandson of Kanawoka, fourth of the Kose line, and the 
 best known after Kanawoka, put more delicacy, grace and realism into 
 his work. His Jizos are very delicate and noble in feeling. (One 
 in Boston.) His Monjus and Fugens are in many places. In short, 
 his style becomes an imitable type — a sort of fixed Kose type for 
 the Fujiwara remainder, in which it is hard to distinguish the master 
 from his followers. Of his semi-secular works is the screen painted 
 with scenes of Court dancing in colours. The musicians in gorgeous 
 costume sit with drum, fife and sho-o at the back before a heavy 
 curtain. A large mass of Hiyei-zan monks, muffled with white to 
 their mouths, stand about on the right. Doubtless they are fully 
 armed beneath their free grey robes. There are ferocity and deter- 
 mination in the small exposed parts of their faces. In the centre 
 dances a young boy, dressed probably in ancient Chinese costume, 
 and with a long white train curving on the ground. But the greatest 
 work of Hirotaka is the remainder of what was once a series of 60 
 large paintings showing the doings of beings in “ The Ten Worlds,” 
 still kept at Raikoji of Sakamoto. These are very varied in subject, 
 for the scenery includes Heaven, Hell, the animal world, the world ot 
 deva, of elemental spirits, of ordinary humanity, etc. This appears 
 a splendid chance for realistic work. The best of those which 
 have not been lost or destroyed deal with scenes from the many parts 
 of the Buddhist Hell. The splendour of fire, the gorgeousness of the 
 panorama, where green and red devils actually are shown keeping up 
 the fires by shovelling in great black lumps that can be no other 
 than coal, perhaps reflect a weak tradition of what Godoshi did with 
 a similar subject on the walls of Changan. The piece which we here 
 reproduce is the upper portion of the judgment hall, where Emma, 
 the king of Hell, sits horrible, red-faced, listening to the incriminating 
 evidence dished up for him by clerks and attorneys. The scene 
 
 quite mirrors an ancient Chinese Tang court of criminal justice. 
 Below the steps is the magic mirror which reflects truly the heart 
 of the accused, whatever be his verbal defence. Here one of the 
 attorneys points in glee to its testimony of murder, while the victim 
 crouches at the foot of the steps. Below is the courtyard where 
 condemned prisoners are being dragged away or tortured. The style 
 
162 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 of drawing and colouring here is a fine Chinese of Tang, translated 
 into a growing Kose formalism. In the scenes of human life and 
 strife, such as for instance the armoured knights in the battles of 
 Hell, the movements of horses and the fleeing of peasants, we have 
 a first suggestion of the kind of moving composition which will 
 become familiar to us in the next chapter as “ Tosa.” But the 
 movement of the brush is much stiffer than that of Tosa, the limbs 
 and armour being as precisely drawn in fine modulated line as if it 
 were part of a hieratic altar-piece. 
 
 The tenth century went out without any decisive modification of the 
 Fujiwara regime at Kioto. The Emperors were mostly puppets, the 
 Empresses mostly the daughters of the dominant house. The type of 
 culture was the relic ot what had been learned from Tang more than a 
 century before. For Tang had now long fallen, and the Sung come in ; 
 but as yet the Sung, far more restricted in empire that the Tang, was 
 more concerned in consolidating its conquests at home than in com- 
 municating with outlying peoples. The danger of such a state is a 
 threatening stagnation. Poetry begins to show weakness and repetition. 
 The Monogataris are poorer ; painting more effeminate. The growing 
 luxury of the ruling caste is breeding personal ambition and mutual 
 jealousy. Revolts, like the rebellion of Masakado, have to be put down. 
 The priestly estate is becoming unruly and jealous of its pampered 
 allies. How carefully was maintained the vicious circle of the Fujiwara 
 tyranny is proved by its prohibition of all intercourse with the new 
 Sung powers of China. It was afraid of new and liberal ideas. The 
 Sung men were reported to be free-thinkers. On the one hand, in 1034, 
 Japanese students in the Kioto University were being forced through 
 examinations in the Confucian classics. By 1069 Chinese students in 
 the Kaifong University of Sung were being prohibited from the use of 
 Confucian classics by order of the great reformer Oansaki. What an 
 anomalous change of positions. One of the Japanese nobles, curious 
 as to the other world’s doings, attempted to escape to China in 1047, 
 was apprehended, and banished for his audacity to the island of Sado. 
 
 But nature never stands still, and it is hard to make man do so 
 either. 
 
 Forces were already at work to disrupt Fujiwara, such as the gradual 
 rise of a military class. Armies had often been raised and officered 
 by Fujiwara partisans ; but as these armies became a standing force to 
 
A Buddhist Trinity : Amida with attendant Bodhisattwa, 
 Kwannon and Seishi. By Yeishin Sozu. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 163 
 
 operate against the barbarians of both North and South, their general, 
 though nobly loyal, came to possess hereditary power. The Taira family 
 of generals had been founded as far back as 889. The rebel Masakado 
 was a Taira. The Minamoto family of generals came about 100 years 
 later. 
 
 The complicated and expensive ritual of the dominant Buddhist sects, 
 and the growing worldliness and ambition of Enriakuji, led in the 
 early eleventh century to several attempts at simplifying the religion — 
 making it more popular, bringing it home to the hearts of all men. 
 
 This was the work of several Tendai priests like Eikwan, who started 
 the movement to make the worship of Amida dominant, a movement 
 which eventually became a separate organization in the Jodo (free land) 
 sect. The paradise of Amida was no new thing in either China or 
 Japan. The whole miracle play of Taimadera had been based upon 
 it in the Nara days. But earlier representations had been woven or 
 painted in elaborate colours only. Now the mystic vision of the reformers 
 wished to discard the elaborate rituals of Fudo and Kwannon and focus 
 all force into the invocation of the central Amida, the Buddha of 
 boundless light, who was seen in ecstasy as a form of dazzling light, 
 surrounded by a gorgeous company of Bosatsu, all equally luminous. 
 Such light — curiously like what the neo-Platonists of Alexandria say of 
 the luminosity of their vision — was too intense for colour ; nothing but 
 the splendour of gold could suggest it — gold not only in the flesh, but 
 in the draperies down to the last detail of pattern. The movement 
 was only an intensifying of the mystic tendencies of the age ; but it 
 led to something of a new departure in art. The growing effeminacy 
 of Tang line could now be erected into a new canon ; for brushwork 
 cannot thicken freely lines made with gold paint. Moreover, the 
 method was rather of applying the gold in finely cut strips by glue, 
 or of painting fine lines in glue and affixing the gold leaf. The figures 
 were to be rendered more worshipful by an incredible suggestion of 
 delicacy, rather than of power through delineation. It was in some 
 sense a return to suggestions of the fine line gold Mandara figures of 
 early Tang ; but those had always been done with a brush filled with 
 gold pigment, and were hardly more than outline. In another sense, 
 it was a kind of return to the delicate hair lines of Nara painting. In 
 any case, it was a distinct reaction against the alien Chinese feeling of 
 early Fujiwara, a mixing of national elements, a school of real Japanese 
 
1 64 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 art arising at this end of the Fujiwara regime. It is this which has 
 been in later days dignified by a significant name, the Yamato school. 
 It must not be supposed, however, that there was any violent change, 
 or that Chinese elements were really discarded. Japan never makes a 
 complete change of any sort. She always recovers herself and unites 
 organically past with present. 
 
 The new school of art was really led by another great priest, 
 
 Yeishin Sozu, who possessed at once a childlike belief in the truth 
 
 of his own visions and a pictorial genius adequate to fixing them 
 
 as a revelation for others. In this respect he is not unlike our 
 own Fra Angelico of San Marco in Florence. And, curiously 
 
 enough, their almost identical visions of the angel host are drawn 
 in lines of similar delicacy and dominated with gold. Yeishin generally 
 used more gold than Angelico ; though other artists of his day mingled 
 colour in nearly Florentine proportions. 
 
 Examples of Yeishin’s work are not so rare as Kanawoka’s. 
 
 H is favourite subjects are the Amida golden trinity, Amida’s descent 
 in glory — Amida’s paradise — the happy life of the musical angels. 
 One that was probably quite new with him is the appearance of 
 the Amida trinity as colossal suns rising over the edge of the 
 Eastern mountains. There is a superstition yet existing in Japan 
 
 that on a certain night in August true believers in Amida can see 
 this effect with their mortal eyes ; and it is said that in remote 
 places crowds sit up the night for it — gazing with possibly self- 
 hypnotic eyes into the luminous East. 
 
 A fine front Amida trinity by Yeishin is here reproduced. 
 The attendant Bodhisattwa, Kwannon and Seishi, bend graciously at 
 either side of his feet, as if to invite his arrival. The gold is so 
 evenly distributed in microscopic pattern as to present in small 
 photographs an almost continuous blaze. A fine radiation of light 
 from Amida’s body is rendered in thin gold pigment over a dark 
 blue ground. Another fine trinity, two-thirds turned, is in Boston. 
 Chionin in Kioto is one of the great temple centres of this Jodo 
 worship and possesses several fine examples ; as the great descent 
 of Amida and his angels in an expanding fan-shaped cloud sweep- 
 ing across the face of Hiyei-zan, spotted with cherry blooms, toward 
 the little pavilion in the corner where Yeishin has naively depicted 
 himself as sitting. It is a vision of great originality in spacing, 
 
■ 
 
 Sunrise Amida. By Yeishin Sozu 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 165 
 
 and of a new splendour in gold and colour, wherein the Chinese element 
 is almost obliterated. The Japanese foliage of the mountain side is 
 drawn realistically, in a style half-way between Kanawoka’s gardens 
 and Tosa landscape. The angel panels, hinged for shrine doors, 
 remind us strongly of the musical angels of Angelico on the gold 
 doors at the Ufizzi. Gracious figures they are, of childlike happiness 
 and innocence. The most splendid sunrise Amida is the famous 
 triptych of panels in Kin-kui-kio-miyoji Kurodani of Kioto. Here 
 
 the pure oval type of Yeishin at his best is conspicuous. To the 
 actual cord that issues from the Amida’s gold breast many Emperors, 
 famous warriors and great priests have died clinging. Before its 
 majestic purity even the foreign spectator is hushed into a kind of 
 awe. Another sunrise with more elements of colour is in Zenrinji, 
 Kioto. Here the two Bodhisattwa have already crossed the mountains 
 to welcome from the front the rising Amida ; and a whole congre- 
 gation of spirits, led by two small queenly figures in the foreground, 
 throng through the valleys below. 
 
 This new movement in art led, about 1000, to the separation and firm 
 independent founding of two professional Buddhist schools that would 
 otherwise have remained branches of the Kose. I refer to the Kasuga 
 and Takuma families. The early work of the latter is not very 
 easily identified ; but we know that the whole interior of the lovely 
 shrine at Biodoin, already referred to, and which was built in 1051, 
 was painted by Takuma Tamanari. These show visions of life in 
 Paradise, but are mostly defaced. The real splendour is in the 
 unspoiled ceiling and baldachin, whose inlaying has been already 
 described as typical Fujiwara luxury. 
 
 The Kasuga school, said to be continuous in family blood with 
 the late Tosa, was founded by Motomitsu, whose work seems so 
 closely affiliated with both Hirotaka’s and Yeishin’s that we are 
 almost bound to believe him at first a Kose pupil who learned closely 
 to follow the vision-seeing priest. The family name Kasuga probably 
 denotes that he officiated as Court painter to the much patronized 
 Shinto shrine of that name in Nara. A fine example is his enthroned 
 Kwannon in Toji, where the halo is made up of inlaid lozenges of 
 gold. The delicious minute tracery of his gold draperies, as also of 
 Yeishin Sozu’s, is exemplified in the fine Amida of the panel triptych 
 at Boston. The gorgeous twelve paintings of the Juni Ten at Jingoji 
 
1 66 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 of Takawo — one of Kobo’s picturesque foundations — I have ascribed 
 to him. Here the colour, gorgeous yellow-greens and oranges spotted 
 over deeper oranges and purples, is a new expanded glorification of the 
 sort of colouring found on the new Tempei painted altar-pieces. Here 
 there is again exemplified that semi-conscious return to Nara art as a 
 pre-Tang native type suggested by such names as “Yamato” and 
 “ Kasuga.” Motomitsu is also said to be the author of a secular 
 painting ot wrestlers — Kose-ish, and of no great merit. 
 
 But one ot his most striking works is the unique profile view 
 across some of the pavilions of Amida’s gardens, owned by Mr. Freer. 
 Here we get an added suggestion of the light Fujiwara architecture ; 
 here outlined in gold. The little gold figures of the trinities sit about 
 on the floors receiving as guests their angel friends, or work and teach 
 at the open casement windows of the upper storeys. Now they take a 
 walk down the fine curves of the garden, or stoop at the edge of a 
 pond to pluck the gold lotoses. 
 
 Others of the Kasuga family are the priest Chinkai — noted for his 
 Monjus — the inheriting son Takayoshi, and the grandson Takachika. 
 By Takayoshi, or some unidentified pupil of Yeishin, are the best of 
 the great gold and coloured Paradises owned by Chionin. The style is 
 not so free and naive — lull of unexpected line feeling — as with either 
 Yeishin or Motomitsu. The crowded figures are more based upon the 
 hieratic Nara traditional composition, which was itself based upon a 
 pre-Tang original of about the year 600. 
 
 The third generation, Takachika, shews a decidedly weak effeminacy 
 in even this late Fujiwara movement. His line is reduced to the 
 finest hair’s-breadth, his faces are like doll’s, their eyes and mouths being 
 drawn with single microscopic lines. Yet the gold in his altar-pieces, 
 and the over-delicate colours, as in his Fugen at Boston — seem more 
 like a film deposited by the breath than by any kind of handwork. 
 The famous illustrations to the Monogotaris by him, showing a secular 
 painting of Fujiwara life in its last stage of weakness, are more cele- 
 brated for their naivete and historical interest, and for their delicacy of 
 colour, than for the beauty of their figure drawing. It is a pure 
 
 convention which makes the thin black stream of a woman’s hair flow 
 down the sides of these dolls ; but their charm was great enough to 
 influence the late Tosa art of such a remote age as Tokugawa, and 
 even the art of Korin. In short, the decay of Fujiwara art implies a 
 
Temple of Biodoin. 
 
MYSTICAL BUDDHIST ART IN JAPAN 167 
 
 complete break-up of the tradition of at least a noble form and pro- 
 portion that came from early Tang. Now, as in Takachika, the figures 
 may be but seven heads high ; in contemporary Takuma they may 
 rise to eleven and twelve. The Chinese key even to the Japanese 
 efflorescence is lost. 
 
 But before closing this chapter it is necessary to refer to a very 
 interesting revival of sculpture which accompanied the late Fujiwara 
 renaissance of Yeishin in painting. Of course, sculpture, the pre- 
 dominant art of the Nara age, had never wholly died away, for there 
 was always some demand for wooden altar-pieces. These at first, as we 
 have seen, tended to follow Tang models. Later, during Engi, we 
 find occasional carved Buddhas based evidently upon the semi-Japanese 
 proportions of Kanawoka. But these are exceptional ; since the very 
 inwardness of the new visional worship led to small altars before which 
 the neophyte dreamed, entirely different from the vast spectacular 
 platforms covered with statuary of the Nara day. In Shingon and 
 Tendai — still more in Jodo — the altar tends to be only a separate 
 receptacle for a central closed shrine, with space for candlesticks and 
 vases. Even these became relegated to a table in front of the shrinking 
 altar. So no room was left for large statues. However, in the days 
 of the Yeishin revival there was a thought to get back to Nara 
 sculpture, though in smaller pieces ; to have a Yamato school in statues 
 also ; and elaborate altars were prepared with smoothly carved gold 
 Amidas, to take the place, at times, of the painted altar panels. A 
 great sculptor too arose, contemporary with Hirotaka and Motomitsu, 
 who lent genius to the school, namely Jocho, who left behind him a 
 tradition parallel with the waning Kasuga. Jocho is the first great 
 
 sculptor of lay origin, as Kanawoka was the first professional painter. 
 
 Though he went back to Nara for some of his types, he modified 
 
 them, no doubt to conform with the more rounded proportions of the 
 deities painted by Yeishin. Typical of his work is the profile Amida. 
 It is dumpy and sleek as compared with Yakushiji bronzes, but sweetly 
 peaceful and sleepy. It is well to note here that the great gold 
 
 Amida statue in the centre of the Hoodo of Biodoin, as well as the 
 Gothic flame halo — all covered with gold — is the work of Yeishin 
 Sozu, working as sculptor in the style of Jocho. The fine set of small 
 militant figures, imitated with changes from eighth-century Yakushi 
 generals, and kept in the Tokondo of Kofukuji, is by Jocho. In 
 
1 68 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 the best of these is seen some of the finest action in Japanese art. 
 
 The general in helmet gazing down his arrow to test its straightness 
 
 is almost as fine as the clay Shitenno of Kaidendo. In the fine pro- 
 portion and action of these figures we see reflected the best features 
 
 of Kose drawing, derived from Kanawoka. Still more in the manner 
 of Hirotaka is the fine carved pocket shrine with opening covers 
 showing in high relief Monju riding sidewise on his lion. This is, 
 perhaps, by a pupil of Jocho. Another one of the very late Jocho-ish 
 sculptures is the violent action of a stamping devil with a spear. 
 
 Just here we should perhaps notice typical Fujiwara bronze work in 
 the mirrors with fine flower and butterfly patterns and the inlaid lacquer 
 of stiff* scroll design. There the gleaming plates of pearl well illustrate 
 on a small scale Fujiwara interior decoration. Other wooden utensils 
 of the day are painted in similar scrolls. 
 
FROM THE TWENTY ROLLS CALLED 
 “MIRACLES OF KASUGA ” 
 
 BY TAKAKANE 
 
 Owned by the Imperial Household of Japan 
 

 G HJJ/.D a i J 071 YT>iav/T 3HT. MOflG 
 " ADU2/.H GO 83LJO/vflIK" 
 
 cV/J.'A! >i/-T 7 cl 
 
 * VC A'l ^ ; : ! 
 

Chapter IX. 
 
 FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN. 
 
 Kamakura — The Tosa School . 
 
 I F Hegel’s theory that all forms of existence tend to pass into 
 their opposites needed historic confirmation, a better example could 
 not be found than what happened to Japanese society in the twelfth 
 century. It is as if a cataclysm had suddenly set a new Japan at 
 the antipodes of the old. The revolution of 1868 which destroyed 
 the Feudal system was more rapid indeed, but not more decisive 
 than the one of seven hundred years earlier that inaugurated it. 
 
 Yet, as in all such strangest extremes of change, the causes were 
 natural, weighty and cumulative. No phase or school of art in 
 
 human society, however beautiful, but contains within itself the germs 
 of its own destruction. The longer and finer it has been, the more 
 violent becomes the disruption, the more striking the reaction. So 
 
 with the ultra-refined aristocratic idealism of Fujiwara : in spite of 
 its beauty, its culture, its power, its cunningly devised alliance of the 
 ruling estates, it could not master, tame or fully allow for that 
 unruly demon of selfishness in man, who when he finds forms 
 
 inconvenient incontinently smashes them. With all its benefits to the 
 land — its proposed peace, its unique enlightenment — this regime had 
 been, after all, the selfish aggrandizement of a single noble clan. So 
 
 long as great men could rule that clan it bade fair to rule the world. 
 
 But if as the clan expanded dissensions should arise among its 
 members its power would quickly totter. As a fact, some small 
 dissensions began as far back as the tenth century. In 934 Fujiwara 
 Sumitomo had revolted against his fellows, but had been quickly put 
 down. Through the rest of the tenth and through most of the 
 eleventh centuries the system reigned supreme. It had to encounter, 
 vol. 1. O 
 
170 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 however, the growing opposition of the religious estate. The priests 
 of Enriakuji, forming an army in themselves, sometimes came down 
 to the Kioto civil court to interfere and threaten. The causes of 
 
 dissension were religious as well, and there were battles between the 
 
 hooded monks of Nara and Otsu. In 1 1 1 3 the temple-castle of the 
 Tendai popes upon the hill declared war upon Kioto, but suffered 
 
 defeat. In 1143 the Nara priests, following the cue of one of the 
 Fujiwara factions, attacked and burned Enriakuji. The Enriakuji 
 armies retorted by burning the entire city of Otsu. 
 
 The whole first half of the twelfth century was thus filled with omens 
 of decay and disaster in Kioto. The Fujiwara factions, divided hope- 
 lessly, called in not only the mountain priests, with swords hidden 
 under their robes, but undertook to throw the Imperial estate into the 
 melting pot by setting up rival emperors as figure-heads for each ; thus 
 splitting the whole nation with the crevasse of a divided loyalty. This 
 happened in 1157, and it was now necessary for the standing armies 
 and their generals, who heretofore had held themselves loyal to the 
 Fujiwara civil ministers and the Imperial seal which they wielded, to 
 choose sides. In fact the Fujiwara of both sides, enervated by centu- 
 ries of luxurious and peaceful living, were far from erecting themselves 
 into adequate warriors. They were rather like the astute politicians of 
 fifteenth century Italian cities, who employed mercenaries to do their 
 fighting. And it now, indeed, became a matter of life and death to the 
 leaders who could offer the largest bribes to the ablest generals. In the 
 great civil war of three years that ensued — called the Hogen Heiji 
 war — both sides fought with the ferocity of rankling family feuds. 
 Kioto became a cockpit, with the centre of operations now on the flanks 
 of Hiyie-zan, now in the Western side of the valley. The palaces, the 
 wealth, the books, the temples, the treasures of art — the luxurious and 
 aesthetic institutions that had accumulated through peaceful centuries — 
 were now almost as suddenly and utterly swept away as was San 
 Francisco in her three terrible days of earthquake and fire. 
 
 The sanguinary quality of these campaigns and the nature of govern- 
 ment power which soon built itself upon the ruins of the Fujiwara has 
 now to be explained in the new factor of the standing military, which 
 would seem to have had no legitimate footing in the complicated circle 
 of the oligarchy. In early Nara days there had existed no separate class 
 of soldiers. From the age of Jimmu Tenno downward the army was 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 171 
 
 theoretically the whole nation, just as it is with the semi-savage hordes 
 of the Pacific Islands. The emperor was their natural general first of 
 all — a great war chief — who only gradually, and hardly before Kwammu’s 
 time too, took on much of Chinese Imperial isolation. It was the very 
 cordon of Fujiwara courtiers drawn so tightly about the emperor that 
 quite obscured his military function and made it necessary, for purposes 
 of local campaigns, to appoint substitutes in the persons of national 
 generals, subordinate to their civil administration. As vast cities rose, 
 too, with the industrial classes; and as the fields of disturbance — wars 
 chiefly waged against the half-subdued tribes of North and South — 
 became located farther and farther from the populous centres, it became 
 imperative to organise standing armies under these generals, who should 
 live permanently near the frontiers, without the necessity of difficult 
 marches through hundreds of miles. 
 
 Such a general indeed had been appointed in the very first years of 
 the new Heian capital, by the need of making a tremendous effort to 
 dislodge the still powerful Ainos of the East, who held the mountain 
 passes about the base of Fujiyama. It was these primitive inhabitants 
 of the land who had been heirs of many of the Pacific traditions and 
 arts, and in the already conquered provinces had contributed relics and 
 names to their western congeners with whom they amalgamated. But 
 few dwellers of the Yamato race — Corean, Malay or both, and perhaps 
 at first not so superior to or different from their despised predecessors — 
 yet lived in the dark East and North. So Tamura Maro received for 
 the first time the title of “ Sei-i Tai Shogun,” “great barbarian-conquering 
 general,” which title was held by the Tokugawa Shoguns at Yedo, down 
 to 1868. He conducted a successful campaign for eight years, in the 
 course of which he seized and opened the great Hakone mountain high- 
 way to the fertile plains of the North East. One of the great dramas 
 of the later No is based upon his deeds. 
 
 In 854 and 857 there was further trouble with barbarians on both 
 the North and the South. The inhabitants of Lower Kiushiu and even 
 the island of Tsushima were in some kind of revolt. It does not 
 clearly appear who these Southern barbarians, often spoken of, were. 
 That they had affiliation with people from China seems clear from the 
 fact that their armies were sometimes reinforced from the mainland. 
 They were probably the remains of primitive races, officered by Chinese 
 refugees or pirates. Even hostile parties from Corea are said to have 
 
172 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 come over in 894. There was fighting with Coreans again in 935. 
 By 994 the troublesome bands in various parts of the empire are called, 
 in the annals, “ Robber Western Barbarians” ; they invaded Japan in 999. 
 In 1020 it is expressly said that barbarians from the South East of 
 China attacked the province of Satsuma. In 109 1 the enemies against 
 which the armies proceed are officered by Japanese generals who have 
 revolted from Fujiwara allegiance. In 1135 the enemies are spoken of 
 as “pirates.” And by this time, too, the Northern armies were encamped 
 far up beyond the plain of Musashi in the mountain depths (Oka). 
 It was the possession of the Eastern plain, doubtless — the granary of 
 Japan— which overthrew the Aino power, made it possible for the 
 soldiers in the intervals of fighting to till the fertile lands and store 
 up supplies for later campaigns, and eventually gave the preponderating 
 power to the Northern generals. 
 
 But the Fujiwaras had been shrewd enough to create several families 
 of generals, each to be held in a sort of clan bond with hostages at 
 Kioto, and whose individual members should enjoy only limited com- 
 mands. Prince Takamochi had been given the family name of “ Taira,” 
 as far back as 889. Taira generals descended from him ruled in the 
 North. One of them, Masakado, who held court near the present site 
 of Yedo, then a wild swamp in a province but recently conquered 
 by Tamura, became so impressed with his far and independent sources 
 of wealth that he actually revolted, not only against his Fujiwara 
 overlords, but against the Mikado, calling himself an independent 
 Emperor. This is said to be the only case of such supreme treason 
 in Japanese history ; a fact probably due to the enormous advantage 
 of the Mikado’s divine (Shinto) descent, which could be much better 
 utilized through craft than assumed or ignored. Other generals, some 
 of them Taira, more loyal or more politic, defeated and killed Masakado. 
 Strangely enough, his spirit is still worshipped as the Shinto deity, 
 “ Kanda Miyojin,” in the heart of modern Tokio. 
 
 In the last years of the tenth century a general of the newly- 
 prominent Minamoto family, Mitsunaba, had supplanted some of the 
 Taira in the North. In 1051 the beautiful shrine of Biodoin was 
 built by Minamoto Yorimichi, who now took rank, though so near 
 Kioti, as a powerful noble. It was at this time, between 1053 and 
 1066, that the rising influence of the two families, Taira and Mina- 
 moto, brought them into something like rivalry. At the same time, 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 173 
 
 in spite of Fujiwara precautions, the power of each family tended 
 to centre in a single clan head. The loyalty of the junior members 
 of each house and of their soldiers, half agricultural, half campaign- 
 ing, became hereditary, because a necessity in the petty trickeries 
 and conflicts that were arising. It is not strange that the half-wild 
 soldiers, cut off* permanently from the traditions of city life and only 
 dreading the strange far-away name of Fujiwara, sharing the perils 
 of campaign with their trusted leader and in times of peace receiving 
 largesse from him out of accumulated stores, should come to have 
 their loyalty take on the intensity of a passion. It is just here, 
 and especially in the camps of the Minamoto, who had come to 
 hold the whole North-East, that first arose that code of exaggerated 
 feudal loyalty and honour that five centuries later played such a 
 brilliant part in Tokugawa legend and character. Through centuries 
 it hardened into an institution and love, like the almost insane love 
 that Napoleon’s soldiers felt for their semi-detached campaigner in 
 Italy and Austria. 
 
 Such was the unstable state of the armies and their generals when 
 the bitter feuds among the Fujiwaras called them in as decisive 
 factors in 1153. There had already been causes of growing enmity 
 and rivalry between the two clans of leaders. Minamoto Yoriyoshi, 
 who had spent all his life in baiting Tairas, had died in 1082, and his 
 still greater son, Yoshiiye, had been sent by a Fujiwara minister 
 in 1091 to put down two rebellious Tairas. 
 
 The Tairas then tried to turn the Minamotos against each other. 
 Yoshimitsu had become the single head of the clan before 1127. 
 But just here the head of the Taira house, Tadamori, rose into 
 great prominence by his brilliant and successful campaign against the 
 pirates of the South-West in 1135. Kiyomori had become his 
 successor as head of the Southern armies in 1153. Yoshitomo had 
 
 become the hereditary leader of the Northern Minamoto in 1127. 
 As a crisis drew near in Fujiwara dissensions both of these ambitious 
 generals, smarting with several generations of heated rivalry, began to 
 assemble the pick of their troops to the neighbourhood of Kioto. 
 When the crash came it was they and their captains who let the 
 violence of their civil campaigning derive far more from professional 
 
 hatred than from any real loyalty to the Fujiwara factions who paid 
 
 them, or to the puppet Emperors which it became their respective 
 
174 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 policies to acknowledge. Thus it was that when the holocaust of 
 Kioto in the Hogen Heiji war ended with the triumph of the 
 Taira’s employees, it was not the Fujiwara remnants who found 
 themselves reinstated in the old family power, but a new military 
 tyrant, Kiyomori, who for the time used his noble patrons as his 
 puppets, just as they were using the Emperor. Minamoto Yoshitomo 
 was defeated and killed, and his retainers dispersed in flight to their 
 seats in the far North. Kiyomori began to rebuild Kioto, and as 
 
 military dictator devise new laws for its governing. The puppet 
 Emperor of the Fujiwaras died in 1165, aged only twenty-three, 
 and his successor immediately made Taira Kiyomori prime minister, 
 thus elevating him over the heads of the Fujiwara. In 1171 Kiyomori 
 married his daughter to the Mikado as legitimate Empress. Thus a 
 general of the army, lawless and uncultured, had learned to play the 
 same political game taught him by the cultured Fujiwara, in whose 
 hands, indeed, it had been less disastrous to the nation. In 1179 
 Kiyomori had banished the old ex-Emperor, Go-Shirakawa, who had ruled 
 before the Hogen Heiji debacle. The Fujiwara were thus reduced to 
 a handful of clerks, and Kiyomori and his family enjoyed the sweets 
 and splendours of power in peace at Kioto for twenty years, from 
 1160 to 1180. In this time they borrowed much of external cul- 
 ture from their enemies, built fine palaces and wore rich clothing. 
 This intermediate age can be called the age of Taira domination. 
 
 It is now important to question what had become of the fine 
 arts of Japan during the last stages of Fujiwara weakness, and during 
 the Taira ascendency. The connecting link is the secular painting of 
 that last Kasuga artist of the Fujiwara, Takachika, of whom we spoke 
 at the end of the preceding chapter. He gives us pictures of this 
 over-ripe society indeed — but in a formal weakness as decadent as 
 the reality. What particularly contrasts with the powerful times to 
 follow — in fact, the work of his own sons — is the minuteness 
 and absence of all dramatic instinct in his hair line. It is beautiful, 
 but forceless. It breathes an atmosphere, but one that is of incense 
 and calm waiting. With what a shock the “ Praetorian Guards ” of 
 Minamoto and Taira must have burst into these sleepy precincts. 
 Their tough swords would have cut such flesh like cheese. 
 
 The real founder of a new style, that strikes just an antipodal 
 note, was the priest Kakuyu, better known by the title Toba Sojo. 
 
6 
 
 Battle of the Bulls. By Toba So} 
 

FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 175 
 
 He could look at all this Imperial ruin falling about him and laugh. 
 He it was who determined to relieve the dire distress of the 
 Emperor Toba-in* by making panoramas of humorous sketches, 
 largely of animals — horses, bulls, dogs, frogs and goats — acting 
 as if they were human beings. Doubtless some sting of Buddhist 
 satire lay behind the seeming joke. The work was dashed off in 
 almost pure line, but with a racy vigour and sweep of motion that 
 make it live. A number of rolls of these historic drawings are 
 preserved in the little temple of Kozanji among the hills to the 
 north-west of Kioto. These are reckoned among the great treasures 
 of the lEmpire. We reproduce here the famous “Battle of the 
 
 Bulls,” which illustrates well Toba Sojo’s extraordinary power, and 
 seems, in spite of its simplicity of line, to realize the utmost 
 impression of shock. 
 
 What this new work actually accomplished was something like 
 half a dozen revolutions. It is the real beginning of secular art in 
 Japan, as opposed to the religious forms, sculpture and painting, 
 with which alone we have been engrossed so far in this work. It 
 is the first important display of humour since the decadent statues 
 of Nara. It employs bare black and white instead of Takachika’s 
 illuminated colour. It gives us an absolutely new line, flexible like 
 the Buddhist, thickening like Godoshi’s, yet as far removed from 
 lead lines as flesh is from metal. It infuses juice into Takachika’s 
 delineation without becoming abstract penmanship. 
 
 What it does is to give us flexibility of muscles in action ; and 
 here is one of the greatest of the revolutions — motion. The mystical 
 Buddhist art gave us splendid poses, the suggestion of freedom to act, 
 especially in Godoshi, Ririomin and Kanawoka. Still, upon the whole 
 it was a statuesque art, dramatically grouped, yet with severe dignity. 
 But Toba Sojo has thrown dignity to the winds, yet gives us a full 
 impression of life. In all these points he foreshadows qualities that 
 are to become dominant in a new school for the next two centuries. 
 
 Another important work of Toba Sojo is the “ Shigi-zan Engi,” 
 kept in the temple on the top of Shigi mountain in Yamato, to the 
 north-west of Tatsuta. This, too, is humorous, narrating the miracle 
 by which a whole storehouse full of rice is said to have been carried 
 
 *The name of this Emperor while reigning was Sutoku, after retirement he was known 
 as Toba-in. 
 
iy6 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 up through the air to the needy abbots during the time of a siege. 
 Here we get the wonderful crisp short stroke of the coming Tosa, 
 
 done with a soft yet free pen, in human figures and their draperies. 
 
 The efforts of an aged, fat Fujiwara lord to mount his horse are 
 humorous indeed. 
 
 The other chief innovator, who worked at first in Kiyomori’s 
 time, was a scion of the hitherto reigning aristocratic house, Fujiwara 
 Takanobu, who, like so many of his relatives, is found in this and 
 the succeeding age ready to turn fine education and ripe talents to 
 good use in earning a living. These threadbare nobles, whose 
 ancestors had been the literary lights of ages, writing for power, 
 fame or imperial patronage, now had to set to in earnest, and pen 
 
 it away for daily rice. It is only fair to say that they did it with 
 such fine dignity as to win new encomiums from their rivals. The 
 
 tales of these poor “ kuge,” emperors and nobles alike shabbily 
 neglected by a new brutal race of lords, afford one of the chief 
 romantic motives of the middle ages, in story and in plays. 
 
 Takanobu’s work is rare ; but one of his important pieces is 
 the elaborate set of large paintings in the Boston Art Museum, 
 narrating the whole romantic life of Shotoku Taishi in separate 
 dramatic scenes. This set was the most important heirloom of the 
 Sumiyoshi family at the death of its last patriarch, my teacher 
 Hirokata, in 1885. To save it from the possible wrangling of heirs, 
 and to leave ready money to his estimable widow, he, on his death- 
 bed, sold it to me. His signature, painfully affixed to the receipt, 
 is treasured by me as his last autograph. It is only next in impor- 
 tance to the Keion roll, in the Tosa paintings of the Fenollosa 
 Collection. It was regarded by generations of Tosas and Sumiyoshis 
 as the typical example of Takanobu in Japan. 
 
 In its drawing of hundreds of men, horses and other animals it 
 is not so racy and free as Toba Sojo’s, retaining something of the 
 stiffness displayed by Kose Hirotaka in the secular portions of his 
 “ Scenes of Hell ” at Sakamoto. But the strokes are softer and freer 
 than the latter, less like a design in wonderfully graded wires, flowing 
 together more like small and continuous streams. The action and 
 grouping are both striking, and a new special effect is produced in the 
 individuality of the faces. Here no trace remains of Chinese Buddhist 
 countenances, as found in Kose; rather it is the every-day type of 
 
Portrait of Yoritomo. By Takanobu. 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 177 
 
 Japanese countenance, veritable portraits, as seen about him in the 
 Kioto streets. The effect of realism is further enhanced by the 
 revolutionary convention of discarding all attempts at archaeological 
 accuracy in costume. To reproduce the dress and armour of his 
 vivid exciting days was enough for Takanobu, even though his 
 subject reverted to six hundred year old scenes. In this innovation 
 he is followed by the whole line of Tosa artists. He has retained 
 colour in this work, and, unfortunately, the use of silk, the frailty of 
 which has led to some defacement. The landscape backgrounds are a 
 naturalistic modification of the Kose, as found in their Japanese altar- 
 pieces : green and blue mountains in free running strata — as may be 
 photographed to-day in Kioto suburbs — and fine curving trees of purely 
 Japanese varieties. In this respect of landscape, also, Takanobu is the 
 forerunner of Tosa. 
 
 But perhaps Takanobu’s greatest contemporary fame was found in 
 his portraiture. With a few telling lines he could bring before us 
 the very individuality of the passing notables. A group of such 
 portraits on silk, large seated figures, is still kept at the temple 
 
 Jingoji in Takawo, one of Kobo Daishi’s erections. Of these the most 
 important, historically and assthetically, is the only great authoritative 
 portrait of Minamoto Yoritomo, the son of that Yoshitomo defeated 
 by Kiyomori in 1160, and whose unique deeds in the age that 
 immediately supervened we have now to narrate. 
 
 The Fujiwara had been overturned and the rude Taira had 
 supplanted them. Very well, then, we are perhaps on the verge of 
 
 a new and modified court age at historic Kioto. So, no doubt, 
 
 thought the Taira lords who were giving themselves up to unwonted 
 dissipation. But it was a short and vain dream. There was an eaglet 
 abroad, two fledglings in fact, escaped from the Minamoto nest which 
 Kiyomori had thought to annihilate. When Yoshitomo and the flower 
 of their clan fell, his wife, the famous and beautiful Tokiwa Gozen, 
 with her two little sons Yoritomo and Yoshitsune, fled from the environs 
 of Kioto and tried to make their way to the fertile plains still held 
 by her friends in the North East, and where she knew the education 
 of those who should avenge their father would be in safe hands. 
 
 Kiyomori had already issued an edict of proscription for the sons, whose 
 
 family valour he knew he would some day have reason to fear. Spies 
 were hounding them past Lake Biwa and through the central mountains. 
 
178 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Then it was that the devoted mother made that supremely romantic 
 sacrifice of Japanese history: of diverting Kiyomori’s attention from her 
 fleeing boys by offering herself as a mistress to her husband’s slayer. 
 The ruse succeeded, and Yoritomo, with his younger brother, spent 
 the twenty years of Taira domination in their family fastness of the 
 far North, nerving to extraordinary deeds their young arms and souls 
 and consolidating and replenishing the scattered wealth and power of 
 their once conquering clan. There were Tairas who foresaw what was 
 coming and tried to prepare for it. But the majority of them were 
 given over to the luxuries of the day and minimized the danger of 
 attack from so remote and barbarous a region. 
 
 There is no space for me here more than to hint at the amazing 
 series of terrible events which convulsed now not only Kioto but 
 the whole of Japan, between 1180 and 1192. The Hogen Heiji 
 war had been child’s play to it. It was now civil war on a national 
 scale, waged in unheard-of bitterness, and for enormous stakes that 
 were now fairly estimated by both contestants. It was playing not 
 only for the wealth and power of the hopelessly lost Fujiwara, but 
 for a new Imperial organization ; a contrast between the ancient West 
 and the newly arisen East : between Chinese city institutions and the 
 
 purely Japanese feudal life of the camps; between prescribed ceremony and 
 priestly formula and the rude individuality of the sword-wielders ; between 
 town and village ; between the reign of law and the reign of life. Yoritomo 
 founded his new capital of the North East at Kamakura, on Suruga 
 Bay, not far from the base of Fujiyama, from which he could direct 
 naval operations, as well as the Hakone military road it commanded. 
 His brilliant brother Yoshitsune, and his uncle executed a rapid 
 series of campaigns which eventually gave them Kioto. The Tairas 
 retired in hasty caparison to their great sea-stronghold near the 
 present Kobe — where a great naval action was fought between thousands 
 of warships. The Tairas fled farther South toward Shimonoseki, taking 
 with them their boy Emperor, the grandson of Kiyomori. In 1184 the 
 
 Minamoto put up their faction Emperor, Gotoba, at Kioto ; and 
 
 following the enemy defeated them in a second Japanese Actium in 
 the Straits of Shimonoseki. It is all a stupendous tragedy of most 
 picturesque setting and chivalrous incident, an epic indeed of richer scope 
 and significance than Agamemnon at Ilium, and which has also yielded 
 
 rich story for native prose, verse and drama. Then came Yoritomo’s 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 179 
 
 unfortunate jealousy of his young brother Yoshitsune — idol of the 
 Minamoto-ed nation — his murder in 1189; Yoritomo’s crafty scheme 
 of reorganization on the basis of a Minamoto adherent as local lord in 
 every prominent capital, surrounded with a camp of Minamoto soldiers, 
 1175; the supplanting of Kioto as administrative capital by Kamakura; 
 the investiture of Yoritomo by the Emperor with the title “ Seitai 
 Shogun,” 1192 — a thing that meant perhaps little to the Emperor, but 
 everything to Yoritomo and his successors for seven hundred years. 
 For though military and provincial in form, it now meant, if not source 
 of authority, totality of executive power in fact. The poor old Emperor 
 signed away with that name, if not his birth-right, at least the whole 
 revenue and prestige of his court. The palace became a barren prison, 
 where Imperial relatives and decayed Fujiwaras still received pretentious 
 Chinese credentials of ministry, but quite devoid of function. It is to 
 these shorn courts, rather than to Yoritomo’s new one, that the artists 
 of the Tosa school became attached as underfed court painters. Kama- 
 kura was never a seat of high culture, producing but few noted authors 
 or artists, though it often availed itself of Kioto talent. The real 
 power in the state, nevertheless, was feudal ; and it is this innovation 
 of a full-fledged feudal system, the work of Yoritomo, that from now 
 on conditions life in Japan, even the life and motives and names of 
 the Tosa artists at the Mikado’s court. 
 
 It is worth while here to stop and describe at length some of the 
 characteristics of this first form of the feudal system, because they so 
 strongly reflect themselves in contemporary art. In the first place it 
 must be remembered that Japan had been practically cut off from 
 China since the fall of Northern Sung to the Tartar Kins in 
 1127. Its relations with Sung had never been as close as 
 with Tang. But with Tartars in the North, and the Southern 
 Sung hardly able to hold their own against both Kin and 
 Mongols, the Chinese were as little likely to renew the intercourse 
 as were the Japanese. The feudal system was to be a purely insular 
 institution, owing nothing to continental inspiration. And after 1280, 
 when the Southern Sung also fell before the Mongols and China became 
 ruled by a Tartar Emperor, indifference was succeeded by open hostility. 
 Thus Japan was left to reorganize herself as best she might with native 
 material. Yoritomo had begun the parcelling out of the North as military 
 fiefs to his captains as early as 1175; this he now extended to the whole 
 
1 80 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 country. Castled towns arose in a hundred central districts. All men 
 with hopes and ambitions wished to range themselves under some local 
 leader. The peasants tilled the land on rental ; all trace of the Taihorio 
 laws had vanished. Society tended to disperse to the provinces, or to 
 Kamakura, leaving Kioto half deserted. 
 
 Plere came in a reaction in architecture. Citadels arose with bases of 
 faced stones and towered superstructures of heavy beams and plaster. 
 Within the large enclosures stood residences for the daimyo families 
 and storehouses for munitions of war. This feudal architecture of the 
 castles is partly based upon the style of circumvallation of Chinese cities, 
 and is not unlike the famous Thibetan Potala of Lhassa. 
 
 For private law society fell back upon the unwritten rules of the 
 primitive village organisation, with its head-man, and its germ of a town 
 council, and the rough recognition of ordinary human justice. It was this 
 preservation of waning forms that the modern codifiers of 1890 seized 
 upon in order to make an important factor of purely native institutions. 
 
 A profound reaction took place upon Japanese character also. The 
 formal, courtly manner, the deference to rank and precedent, the welcomed 
 yokes of intellectual and of priestly sanction, were suddenly replaced by 
 the bare physical and mental efficiency of a man. He who could think 
 quickly, and plan resourcefully, and act firmly — any such might rise from 
 the ranks to castle power. For these unstable social units were pitted 
 against each other in constant local strife, which a somewhat loose allegiance 
 to Kamakura could not wholly check. It was a day when all pretences 
 and conventions blew thin, and man’s worth for man — individuality, that 
 is — came out into relief. Then, indeed, was laid that foundation of 
 Japanese quickness and adaptability which has amazed the world in their 
 recent struggle with Russia. It is just because China has been slowly 
 throttled in the silken meshes of her own culture, which Japan has for 
 seven hundred years been cutting her way through to freedom, that the 
 two races to-day invite such strange contrast. 
 
 It is this flashing of vivid personality lighting up the 
 Kamakura annals that makes this disintegrating epoch so absorbing 
 in interest. European writers in general have spoken of it as a sad 
 age of anarchy, superstition, cruelty and ignorance. And indeed, it 
 has many points of analogy with the German feudal system into which 
 Europe broke up with the decay of the Carolingian Empire. Yet 
 it was out of the manhood vigour of both, rather than from a bare 
 
Cl** 
 
 The Castle of Kumamoto. 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 181 
 
 Imperial renaissance, that the hope of the future was to spring. For 
 literature itself now becomes romantic. Fairy tales, and ogres, and 
 gallant or desperate adventures, sometimes even to free oppressed 
 ladies, enter into their crude novels. There is almost no scholarship 
 except at the Kioto court, and nobody cares for any. It is a 
 striking confirmation of the dominance of this new state of individuality 
 that just here, in the early part of the thirteenth century, begins to 
 arise a native and secular drama — and that, too, a comedy (Kiogen) — 
 out of the buffoonery of farmers at village festivals. This was taken 
 up by the new nobility, and even by the priests of the Shinto 
 temples, and erected into organizations of professionals who acted on 
 permanent stages. For in all forms of literature, as in life, it was 
 now life itself — man himself — who became of interest to all classes of 
 man. The subjects of romances were no longer the languorous 
 ecstacies of silken lords and ladies, as in the Fujiwara “ Monogatari,” 
 but often the triviality and even the ribaldry of common life. This 
 is the real root of what has persisted till to-day of essential 
 democracy in the Japanese. Even the recent Tokugawa formalism of 
 two hundred years has passed over like a shadow, leaving the coolie 
 as good a citizen, and a citizen as interesting to all classes, as he 
 was in Kamakura days. 
 
 It was natural that religion also should feel the same levelling 
 personal impulse. Just as the palace labyrinths and perfumed 
 embroidery had been relegated to ash-heaps and junk-shops, so the 
 mystic ritualism and the papal insolence of the Tendai regime had 
 to yield to the new demand of a simple faith for simple folk. The 
 Shingon discipline of self-purification was too high, too long, and too 
 inconsequent for men whose time was chiefly occupied in carving up 
 their enemies. Like the fierce Spanish conquistadors, the Japanese 
 knights of helmet and mail wished to kneel with tears to a faith 
 that did not require them to think deeply. So it was now that 
 three or four great priests arose — contemporary with St. Francis of 
 Assisi in Italy, and with the Gothic churches, who went about 
 preaching simple faith to the masses — Saigio, and Shinran, and Nichirin. 
 (Saigio died 1198 — Shinran, 1262 — Nichirin, 1282.) Then it was that 
 the only purely Japanese sects of Buddhism arose by a protestant 
 simplifying of Tendai, Shingon and Jodo philosophy and ritual. All 
 you have to do is to believe in Amida — said these newer creeds, 
 
1 8 2 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 and he will save you. Belief itself — mere personal surrender — is 
 the primary thing. Great masses, and complicated genuflections, 
 and altars hidden from the people — all these have not half as 
 much efficacy as good hortatory sermons. On this account temple 
 architecture became changed. In old days services had gone on in 
 
 the small encrusted sanctuary whether a congregation participated or 
 not. The Pantheon of gods needed constant pampering ; the people 
 
 did not so much matter. But now that all gods but Amida were 
 
 thrown out — Amida who would take his faithful to live for ever in 
 his own golden Paradise — and that service was directed to the people 
 rather than to Heaven, the size of the building had to be vastly en- 
 larged and the furnishing simplified in order to accommodate the 
 
 congregation. Hence the great open, matted, many-pillared front spaces 
 of the Honganji temples as we study them to-day. Monastic orders, 
 too, of itinerant monks arose simultaneously in Japan and Europe — 
 mendicant orders, who passed in chanting files from castle to castle, 
 collecting rice in their black wooden alms-bowls and carrying the news 
 of the day and their oral traditions of learning from house to house. 
 
 In such a new world as this it was inevitable that the profoundest 
 sort of reaction would seize upon visual art also. Individuality would 
 necessarily be its key-note ; thus democracy in subject, dramatic group- 
 ing and the motions of violent action. Already the germs of all these 
 things had been given form in the early paintings of Fujiwara Takanobu 
 and of Toba Sojo, who had introduced the “ makimono,” or library 
 panorama. Here was room for continuous crowded scenes of street 
 pageantry, of fairs and temple courts, horse-races and cock-fights, the 
 servants sweating and joking in the kitchen, councils of grey-robed 
 monks, humorously travestied, and every possible stage of camp-life and 
 active war. Art was a kind of journal, unprinted, that circulated about 
 in the Imperial Court and sometimes found its way into the scattered 
 courts of the daimyos. For the Emperor and his portfolioless ministers 
 seem to have found a sort of desperate pleasure in watching the Saturn- 
 alia of a life about them in which they could play no part. Rolls were 
 multiplied of illustrated biographies, often becoming the treasures of 
 temples whose priestly founders they celebrated. The incipient prose 
 epics that were slowly maturing from the mists of myth that hovered 
 around great deeds needed colour illumination. In short, the Tosa 
 makimono becomes a sort of Bayeux tapestry, with a meagre interlude 
 
Detail of the Hell Panorama. By Nobuzane. 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 183 
 
 of verbal explanation. Yes, what Sesostris sculptured on the rock tents 
 of Egypt, and Nebuchadnezzar spread in glowing tiles upon the walls of 
 Khosabad, such immortalizing of local heroism did Keion and Mitsunaga 
 perpetrate upon frail sheets of parchment paper. 
 
 The drawing of the art is minute and vivid. The swing of action 
 is a primary requisite, then the sweeping of the lines of many actions 
 into great general line-currents that give motion to the crowded 
 compositions, so unlike European Renaissance battle pieces — Jules 
 Romano’s for instance, whose horses and men squirm in all directions, 
 with no unified transference of masses. This the West finds only in 
 Greek art (the Battle of Darius), and recent French cavalry charges 
 (Aime Morot). But in Japan it forms the backbone of the picture. 
 Colour, too, realistic but not too gorgeous, adds vividness, and its 
 spotting of light and dark passages lends savour and accent even to 
 the motion. It is an art not at all unlike primitive Greek painting, 
 especially as shown in the figures of horses and men in simple colour 
 and spotting upon Greek vases. We may assume that such mosaics 
 as the “ Darius ” had finer antecedents in mural pageants. The colour 
 is probably richer and more varied in the Japanese. In form, too, we 
 might perhaps say that the rushing personages look as if bombs had 
 been exploded under the feet of figures on the Greek vases. Another 
 analogue is the contemporary early Italian Gothic frescoing of the 
 Giottoesque school. In those squares, crowded with mounted officers 
 and spectators of crucifixions, which fill the plastered arches of Assisi 
 and Padua, we see something like Tosa richness of grouping, even if 
 without Tosa vividness of motion. If we could have an art that 
 would combine modern French scientific drawing of motion with the 
 picturesque crowds of Cavalcatori , we should strike somewhere near 
 the battlepieces of Keion and the street scenes of Mitsunaga. 
 
 Perhaps the very richest period was that which followed Yoritomo’s 
 triumph, Kenkiu, which lasted about ten years after 1 1 90. Then 
 probably Takanobu still lived, and his great son Fujiwara Nobuzane 
 was rising into notice. Then, too, the sons of Kasuga — Takachika, 
 Mitsunaga and Keion — were coming to ripe age. These three may be 
 said to form the second and greatest generation of the Tosa artists. 
 I use the word Tosa here only in an inaccurate generic sense, because 
 the name was not actually given to the school until somewhat later, 
 with the son of Mitsunaga, Tsunetaka. The Kasuga family then 
 
1 84 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 became the Tosa family without discontinuity. I ought to say that 
 in these relationships I follow mainly the recension of genealogies 
 which has passed current in the Sumiyoshi branch of the modern 
 Tosa. Some of the younger Japanese scholars are disposed to throw 
 
 all such traditions to the winds : to declare that we do not know 
 
 whether Nobuzane ever lived or was a painter, or whether Mitsunaga 
 had anything to do with Takachika, or was the brother of Keion. 
 
 But all such disputations must be at this stage of the game rather 
 
 of an academic interest to a few Japanese scholars than of service 
 to the world. For, after all, whether their names were Nobuzane or 
 Mitsunaga, or Henrique or Brooks, their works remain — to study, and 
 delight in, and classify, and use as the mirror of a rapidly gliding 
 history. Until the extreme school can give us something more positive 
 than denials, it will be the safest guardedly to follow the Tokugawa 
 scholarship of the Sumiyoshis who prepared these lists for the use of 
 the Shogun’s court. Especially is it well to follow their canons of 
 criticism and ascriptions of remaining examples, since it is these which 
 have practically determined the labelling of all the modern re-collections 
 of Japan. Most pieces have changed hands, from house to house and 
 from temple to house, since 1868 ; and since Sumiyoshi Hirokata’s death 
 these have been mostly identified, according to his traditions, by his 
 fellow-pupil with myself, Yamana Kwangi. It is Yamana’s certificates 
 that are found to-day with Buddhist and Tosa pieces in all Japanese 
 collections, and attached to much that has recently come in to Europe and 
 America. It is proper to say that my own expert attribution of pieces, 
 whether of those in the Boston collections, or in the hands of Mr. Freer 
 and others, has been made along identical lines with Yamana’s, and 
 that most of the pieces in the Fenollosa collection at Boston passed 
 under Hirokata’s own criticism before 1885. There may exist other 
 schools of Tosa criticism, but none, I think, with such claim to authority. 
 
 Of the three greatest men I shall take Nobuzane first, though perhaps 
 the youngest, because his style is most individual. In his makimonos, 
 kept at Kozanji, and representing the transmission of the Kegon doctrine 
 from China through Korea to Japan, he comes nearest to the style of Toba 
 Sojo. The design is solely in black-and-white, and relies chiefly on a 
 light, nervous, flowing line. A great storm-dragon pursues the ship of the 
 commissioner. The waves are beaten flat, and lightning shoots in key-like 
 forms. The type of the dragon remains essentially Tang, in spite of the 
 
Detail from Kitano Tenjin Engi. 
 
 By Nobuzane. 
 

Detail from Kitano Tenjin Engl By Nobuzane. 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 185 
 
 Japanese brushwork. One of the finest passages is a scene in China where 
 boatmen land on a shore, and porters, themselves laden, drive on over- 
 laden bulls and horses. There is nothing so pathetically real in rustic art, 
 except Millet’s peasants. Here, however, is also a touch of humour, 
 which Millet always lacks. 
 
 Another of Nobuzane’s greatest sources of fame was his portraits. 
 A Fujiwara by birth, he knew all the members of the fallen generation, 
 and has left us most interesting sketches of their individual faces. He 
 also has left the best ideal portraits of the thirty-six chief poets of the 
 vanished age. That he made light of his own misfortunes is seen in his 
 humorous painting of a social gathering in an old battered hut, where 
 he, as host, with companions dressed in homespun, drink and dance away 
 their sorrows. A servant bearing a jug of wine breaks through the 
 rotting floor. 
 
 But the greatest work of Nobuzane in makimono form, if not the 
 greatest of the whole Tosa school, is his long panoramic account, in nine 
 wide scrolls, of the life of Michizane, the learned anti-Fujiwara minister 
 of Engi. These are worked out in a kind of demonaic line, so 
 powerful and individual that the drawing at times seems childishly 
 distorted, as in Whistler’s roughest work. Yet the effect is most intense ; 
 I have sat before these stupendous rolls again and again, with the flesh of 
 my back creeping as during a Wagner opera and tears standing in my eyes. 
 The physical and spiritual excitement of it is greater than of any work I 
 know. Yet much of this supreme effect is lost in the photographs, since 
 it is also the unique colouring that helps to produce the charm. It may 
 be said that the tones, though ranging through all shades of dull pinks, 
 mauves and olives, are in the main a terrific contrast of luminous oranges 
 against blues so dark that they seem actually blacker than black. This 
 depth is got by scumbling powdered ultramarine over glossy inks. Of all 
 impressionistic work in the line of story-telling this is the world’s greatest. 
 
 And it tells a story, indeed, which realizes Fujiwara tragedy with an 
 intensity wholly Kamakuran. Michizane was born and brought up to 
 archery and letters and music, like any proud child ; we are shown it 
 all in the first roll. Then comes a long procession of nobles in litters 
 or on horseback passing to a temple to celebrate his coming of manhood. 
 Nobuzane takes this occasion to make his horses leap and prance as 
 no European but Rubens has ever conceived. The finest prancing 
 horse is spotted in chocolate and cream, with scarlet trappings. In the 
 
 VOL. 1. p 
 
1 86 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 monastery yard we are treated to a genre scene which recalls the money- 
 changers and hucksters in Solomon’s temple. It is true that at the 
 far end, on the broad verandah, sit a fine group of lacquer-hatted 
 gentlemen and veiled ladies in every tone of soft garment, from creamed 
 grape-juice to amethyst, who decorously listen to the old priest droning 
 away at his beads under the latticed awning. Every figure is indivi- 
 dualized in pose and turn of head. But down below, in the yard, we 
 
 have a motley group of servants, small boys, acolytes and nuns, who 
 are eyeing the crowd or joking with each other. The small boy 
 leaning on a pile of hats is a strong bit of drawing. Bales of cotton 
 under a gorgeous tarpaulin typify offerings. The singular hooded 
 
 priests from Hiyei-zan stand back in a group. Behind all is a richly 
 comic passage where the younger priests, kneeling in white robes, 
 expostulate with shocked gestures to three drunken samurai in loose 
 undress of delicious pattern who are desecrating the sanctuary with 
 their ribaldry. One tucks up his spotted skirt as if to fight the 
 
 acolytes, but a companion grasps him about the waist. Clearly 
 
 Nobuzane has here given us not at all a picture of the sedate days of 
 Sugawara, but a contemporary sketch pulsing with precious details of 
 a devil-may-care life. 
 
 In a second roll follow the long scenes of conflict between Michizane 
 and his enemies, the blindness of the Emperor, who is warned by a 
 magnificent thunder-storm with sulphurous fumes and gold lightning 
 that shivers the palace and bowls over the crimson lacqueys like so 
 many leaded dolls. The Hiyei-zan pope, too, crosses the Southern 
 Kamo by a Red Sea miracle of rolling back its waters, while his bull- 
 chariot dashes through the bed with wheels whose spokes are a blur. 
 Naught avails, however, and Michizane is banished to a desolate Southern 
 island. Groups of curious peasants follow his chariot through the 
 mountains. Motley crowds rush to the shore to see him washed to land 
 from a shipwreck. It is all pure provocative for Nobuzane’s exuberance 
 of genre ; yet the dramatic sting is never lacking. There in his island 
 he occupies for some years a rotten hut. Friends visit him surreptitiously, 
 but he refuses to return against his Emperor’s order. Rank unhealthy 
 vines keep damp the leaking roof, the garden is an impressionistic tangle 
 of wild shrubs in orange and green. At length the premonitory old 
 man climbs a peak and protests his innocence to the god of storms, 
 who snatches a last written message to the Emperor in order to convey 
 
Detail of Scene at Temple Steps. 
 Nobuzane. 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 187 
 
 it miraculously to the Kioto palace even while he smites the petitioner 
 with death. 
 
 Michizane’s body is being slowly carried back to Kioto in a cart 
 when the belaboured bull which draws it sinks and dies. On the very 
 spot the attendants dig his grave with the butt-ends of their spears. 
 A dog scratches his chin with his hind leg. Michizane is soon declared 
 to be the god Tenjin, and the Shinto shrine of Kitano is erected to his 
 memory on the Northern outskirts of Kioto ; for which shrine these 
 very precious rolls were painted, and where they are still kept. The 
 marble bull which fell is here and in other Tenjin shrines, as Kameido 
 in Tokio, visible as a sacred symbol. 
 
 You might think this to be a fair end for the legend ; not so 
 Nobuzane. His blood is just up, his opportunity is just coming, he 
 has half his work yet to create. For should not the wicked enemy 
 of Michizane who procured his banishment be punished both on 
 earth and in Hell ? On earth he is affected with a distress that 
 causes snakes to creep from his ears. But Hell ! ah, what could be 
 a more deliciously opportune morsel for a painter’s imagination ? 
 He gets at it by degrees. We see Fujiwara Tokihira’s spirit carried 
 oward Hell by devils. We see great scarlet flames escaping through 
 the gates. Then come four long splendid horrible rolls of torture. If 
 Nobuzane were Okio, as in the latter’s Miidera tortures, we could not 
 bear him. But the horror is magnificently offset both by the humour 
 and by the colour — something as an infusion of soda keeps tomato 
 acid from curdling milk. It is useless to describe it. Orcagna at 
 Santa Maria Novella is a fool to it. Nobuzane could give him a 
 hundred years handicap and win. Flames of crimson, scarlet and 
 orange shoot all over the place in interlaced and forked serpent- 
 tongues. Jolly, barbarous devils with cat faces pursue their nefarious 
 calling of dragging wicked ladies by the hair ; roasting a bishop or two 
 half strangled in a Chinese cangue ; sawing slabs of flesh with rusty 
 blades from men who have been marked with a taut, inked carpenter’s 
 string ; pouring red hot lead down their wretched throats ; nailing 
 their distended tongues to the floor and forcing poisonous insects to 
 crawl upon them ; or stirring gallons of human broth in copper 
 cauldrons. One delightful green fiend, front face on, possessing a 
 single cream coloured horn, holds a human victim head down in his 
 two hands, and gradually tears the body apart. This might do for 
 
 p 2 
 
1 88 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 a starter, but Nobuzane has far deeper game in view, no less a 
 scheme than to picture all the various worlds of suffering and passion, 
 cognate with Hell, through which souls, even those of deva, must 
 learn to pass. But he never finished the stupendous work. His 
 brush fell in death as he sketched an outline passage whose inhibited 
 colour no human soul can ever conceive. 
 
 The second of our Yoritomo geniuses is Kasuga Mitsunaga, the 
 reputed son (but possibly grandson) of that same Takachika who drew 
 faineant courtiers with line so fine that it simply vanished without 
 your knowing where. But Mitsunaga, like a true founder of the new 
 art, thickened his passionate line nearly to the quality of Toba Sojo’s, 
 and then filled its gaps with colour on a scale as different from 
 Nobuzane’s as Venus from Mars. His line riots in massed street 
 fights, and runaway chariots, and conflagations that hurl brands over 
 crazy crowds. The paper seems about to tear itself to pieces with 
 the opposed lines of surging. His colour scheme is passages of 
 lemon yellow shading into orange, spotted with patterns of light blue 
 and deep pink and thrown against darks of mixed olives and crimsons. 
 This is the real Tosa scale of early Kamakura, and it is unlike any other 
 colour passages of the world’s art with which I am acquainted ; Fortuny 
 and Monticelli at their gayest giving just a hint of it. 
 
 Mitsunaga’s greatest work was the “ Nenchiu Giogi,” a sort of 
 pictorial diary in sixty rolls that narrated all the striking scenes of 
 Kioto life from January to December. Some twenty rolls of this 
 remained in the Imperial Treasury, and were brought to Tokio in 
 1868 ; but were burned in a palace fire a few years later. The 
 Sumiyoshi had carefully coloured copies of some of these. 1 
 succeeded in obtaining for my collection, now in Boston, a set of 
 outline copies made from them more than two hundred years ago 
 by Sumiyoshi Jokei, the founder of the branch line that located 
 with the Shogun at Yedo. The runaway chariot is found from 
 these, also the guards waving torches at night while the fat gentle- 
 men sup under a shed, also the great cock-fight where men throw 
 up their hats and knock small boys down in their excitement. Of 
 
 the minor works of Mitsunaga, we have a fragment of Hell, and 
 two rolls of the visit of Abe no Nakamaro to China. This latter 
 makes a humorous contrast of Japanese and Chinese customs. There 
 are some genre scenes, of which one of the best is a contemporary 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 189 
 
 surgical operation, where a squatting gentleman doctor calmly punctures, 
 while a priest sits by and watches with eager horror. 
 
 But perhaps the finest coloured rolls of which the original remains 
 are the scenes of “ The Burning of the Gate.” The people in the 
 street stop, drop their loads and begin to run as they hear the fire- 
 bells. Mounted policemen waving metal sticks dash up from behind. 
 The flames drive back the yellow, green and milk-blue crowds who 
 save the singeing of their brows with uplifted sleeves. Then comes a 
 humorous procession of mounted knights in armour and holding 
 folded banners, which out-does Dora’s Don Quixote. Their ill-fed, 
 knock-kneed horses are veritable Rosinantes, and the affected gallantry 
 with which the horsemen rival each ocher in holding their banners is 
 wit straight from Cervantes. 
 
 We come now to Mitsunaga’s younger brother, who took the 
 priestly name Sumiyoshi Keion. In some respects he was the greatest 
 of the three, the greatest draughtsman certainly. He had little of 
 the humour of Toba Sojo and the others, and his colour is more 
 commonplace, relying more on good straightforward reds and blues 
 and greens. But his notan, that is his dark and light “spotting,” is 
 even more effective than theirs. He is no such impressionist as 
 Nobuzane ; he is more sane and business-like. But in his stupendous 
 massing of crowded line into totality of motion there is no one 
 who approaches him. His subjects, too, lend themselves to such 
 treatment. For, above all others, he is the greatest painter of battle- 
 pieces — the central deeds of violence in all Japan’s military history, the 
 mighty struggle out of whose tearing asunder his own and his 
 contemporaries’ individuality arose on light wing. Probably he saw in 
 his youth the Hogen Heiji horror; knew Yoshitsune by sight, and 
 witnessed Kiyomori’s triumph ; watched Yoritomo grow to manhood, 
 and may have been in Yoshitsune’s train when the fortress at Dan 
 No Ura went up in flames. At any rate the grim, determined spirit 
 of the day is his — not so much its roystering fun, but its keenness, 
 cruelty and impersonality. Photographs of the Russo-Japanese war 
 give no such vivid idea as he does of the Japanese military soul. If 
 we compare his charges and ambuscades and cautious marches of 
 crowded men and horses with the battle pieces of European masters, 
 it is only the ancient Greek and the most recent French who can 
 approach him in reality of motion. 
 
 p 3 
 
190 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Keion has left us an interesting makimono of a religious subject 
 treated with secular frankness. It is all part of a human story, in 
 
 which Amida himself and his music-loving Bhodisattwa sweep through a 
 regular Tosa landscape to their act of blessing. They are no 
 longer the hieratic figures of altar-pieces, not shining in unhuman 
 gold but drifting over the water like graceful floating clouds. Single 
 figure pieces, as of a mounted warrior in full armour turning in his 
 saddle and looking backward — seen in fact from behind so that the 
 head of his rearing horse is hidden behind his body — are found in 
 either originals or copies. One of the most splendid small groups is 
 copied upon a fan by no less an artist of later date than Honnami 
 Koyetsu. We shall speak of this again in Chapter XIV. There is 
 no record as to whether it really is a copy, or an original compo- 
 sition in the style of Keion. If the latter it is a most astounding 
 
 revival, lor no such drawing of soldiers exists in the four hundred 
 
 years between Keion and Koyetsu. Koyetsu studied the great Tosa 
 
 masters, especially Nobuzane and Keion, with great care, and I am 
 
 inclined to believe this at least a free transcript from some lost Keion. 
 
 It represents the capture of an armoured courier by five foot soldiers 
 of his enemy — a sort of Major Andre scene, in which the dismounted 
 suspect seems to be trying to swallow his dispatches. The splendidly 
 drawn horse is being held down by three of the soldiers, who, with 
 their strong contrasts of white and black, make an unusually close 
 and unconventional composition. The lines and mass of the horse 
 and the three men are all tangled together. The brutal excitement 
 of the faces is powerfully rendered. 
 
 The greatest remaining secular work of Keion is his panorama in 
 three long rolls of scenes in the Hogan Heiji war. These three have 
 been held in separate possession since early Tokugawa days. The 
 
 two that are still in Japan in private hands are very interesting. In 
 one there are vast stretches of mountain and forest, through which 
 wander figures in small groups. In one place they fall upon the 
 corpse of a warrior, who is lying, feet toward the bottom of the pic- 
 ture, with his throat cut. This is well-nigh the only striking piece 
 of fore-shortened drawing in all Chinese and Japanese art. This 
 would have delighted the late Dr. Anderson, of London, who seems 
 to have thought that Tosa drawing is too childish to merit the name 
 of art. In the second roll we see a squadron of cavalry advancing 
 
Buddha descending through Clouds. 
 From the Taima Mandara, Keion. 
 
Buddha descending through Clouds. 
 From the Taima Mandara, Keion. 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 191 
 
 slowly between two lines of bull-chariots. The action of the leader 
 on the black horse, with proud, arching neck, is very fine. 
 
 But it is the third roll which reaches the full height of Keion’s 
 powers in military delineation. This was formerly in the possession 
 of the Honda family, and I had the privilege of studying it and 
 photographing it more than once on the occasions of the loan collec- 
 tions of daimyos’ treasures held by the Art Club annually since 1882. 
 I hardly thought then that some day this supreme work would fall 
 into my own possession. The overcoming of the difficulties in its 
 acquirement would form a romance in itself. It is undoubtedly the 
 greatest treasure of the thousand or more pictorial masterpieces which, 
 under the name of the “ Fenollosa Collection,” I contributed, through 
 Dr. Weld, to the Boston Art Museum in 1886. It was carefully 
 photographed several times during my administration as curator of the 
 museum (1890-1896), and had recently been photographed again, very 
 beautifully, for the museum. 
 
 The roll opens (from the right, of course) with the terrified flight 
 of a court party, few of whom have had time to don their armour. 
 Gentlemen on horseback are racing for dear life, trampling down 
 citizens and grooms. In front of them whirls a group of chariots 
 drawn by bullocks. The wheels whizz like electric fans. One of the 
 chariots, surrounded by archers in lacquered caps, has its course blocked. 
 In the confusion one of the bulls has turned upon the struggling mass 
 and his rocking chariot crashes over prostrate crowds. In this part of 
 the continuous composition the prevailing horizontal lines of the general 
 rush are broken chiefly by the angular course of this runav/ay. Every 
 attitude of horse and man, every clearly drawn face, is tense with fear 
 and wild energy. Here we see such individual types as are familiar 
 to-day on the streets of Tokio. I could almost venture to assign 
 some of the family names. The composition is so close that one can 
 scarcely catch a glimpse of the ground through tiie swarming bodies. 
 There is no scenic display as in the Morot accessories at Versailles. 
 It is rather like the Alexander mosaic at Naples, in which the prevailing 
 lines of the moving figures tell the whole pictorial story. Caps and 
 heads and chariot roofs appear over the lower edge of the picture, a 
 vivid arrangement under a down-looking perspective, incomprehensible 
 to ancients and Italians, and seen only in modern French impressionism, 
 such as Degas’ jockeys. A moment more and the mad mass turns a 
 
i 9 2 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 corner, dashing down almost front on to the spectator, as we see 
 reality in modern moving pictures. This powerful transition of angles 
 is aided by the long dark shafts of the chariots and the tilt of chariot 
 awnings. The variety of line and notan passage is here infinite, crammed 
 at every part with startling new feeling and beauty, a torrent of 
 torrents, a spotted mosaic whose apparent confusion is subordinate to 
 clear keys. 
 
 The device of a garden wall divides this passage of the flight from 
 a scene where an ancient palace is burning. The flames — of orange, 
 yellow and red — play up in splendid writhing curves into clouds of 
 
 brown and blue smoke. How unlike are these rounded tongues to 
 
 the forked scarlet sword-blades of Nobuzane’s fires ! It is as if we had 
 here an instantaneous “ snap-shot ” at a conflagration. Soldiers in 
 
 armour with gloved hands are butchering the fugitives and peering 
 to discover some who may have hidden under the already smoking 
 verandahs. There in the court-yard a shouting, twisting guard of 
 
 mounted knights darts back and forth, finely displaying the action of 
 
 their little stocky short-necked horses — for all the world like the prancing 
 steeds of Phidias’ Pan-Athenaic frieze. 
 
 After this the warriors, crazed with blood and fire, pass off to fresh 
 exploits : hideous armoured footmen with faces stained like berserkers, 
 bearing a coronet of dissevered heads upon their pikes. The muscles 
 of their naked legs stand out in knots. 
 
 Lastly we have a mixed group of Fujiwara unarmed courtiers and 
 their convoying squadrons of troops. A chariot, presumably of their 
 own Emperor, is borne in their midst. The splendid mosaic of more 
 than a hundred figures moves with a slow, restrained march, the grooms 
 tugging at the heads of impatient horses. The bow-men are all now in 
 front, some with arrows fixed on the strings. There is evidently nervous 
 suspicion of an ambush. The front of this fine procession tapers off 
 like a cadence in music. A general holds in a prancing white horse 
 with taut rein ; then come two staccato notes of foot-soldiers walking 
 abreast ; then an isolated captain far in advance, upon a fine black 
 charger which rears in fright, as if he sensed an enemy hidden in the 
 grass beyond ; then one last short note of a single archer ahead, who 
 peers into space with arrow set on his half-drawn string. 
 
 The pawing action of the white horse is fine enough ; but what 
 shall we say of the sudden leap of the black, which centres the whole 
 
From the Keion Roll. Fenollosa-Weld Collection, Boston. 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 193 
 
 van to the eye ? All four feet have left the ground at once. The 
 nostril of the raised head is high in air. The rider tries to pull it 
 down by a vertical rein. Though fault might possibly be found with 
 some of the anatomical details of the steed, particularly if enlarged in 
 photography, yet on the actual scale of only a few inches it is hardly 
 possible to conceive of a more vitally rendered action, or of a greater 
 beauty of gleaming curves. If this one makimono had been destroyed, 
 as forty-nine fiftieths of the old Tosa works have been destroyed, our 
 conception of the range of Asiatic art — and even of the world’s art — 
 would have suffered capital loss. 
 
 In the years shortly following Yoritomo’s death, his dynasty of 
 Shoguns underwent, at Kamakura, the same sort of eclipse which the 
 early Kioto Emperors had been dealt at the hands of the Fujiwaras. 
 It was now their Hojo ministers who set up puppet chiefs and did the 
 actual ruling. It was a cruel, crafty and able race, this Hojo family 
 who could hold in check a hostile nation for well-nigh one hundred 
 and fifty years. The tyranny, revolts, and feudal hardening of these 
 days is well shown in many of the No dramas of the fifteenth century. 
 They had reigned hardly more than fifty years when a supreme test of 
 their strength came in resisting the threatened invasion of the Mongols, 
 who by 1269 had conquered all Asia and half of Europe and were 
 preparing an immense armada in China to gobble up the outlying islands. 
 Hojo Tokimune, the reigning Shikken or Shogun-guardian, defied the 
 great Kublai Khan by twice beheading his commissioners. When the 
 crash of invasion came in the South West, Tokimune’s army drove 
 the landing fighters into the sea, and his navy achieved a brilliant victory 
 over the crowded Chinese junks on the exact spot in the “Sea of Japan” 
 where, six hundred years later, Admiral Togo was destined to destroy 
 a second Tartar flotilla — of Russia. It is said that Togo chose the site 
 partly for this reason, not from vain sentiment either, but in firm belief 
 that the souls of those defenders who died in the earlier campaign 
 would be able effectually to assist the living in the latter. It was in 
 the year after the Mongol invasion that Nichiren, the founder of the 
 Hokkei sect, died and was buried at Ikegami, near the present Tokio. 
 In 1316 a library of books, now also becoming rare, was founded at 
 Kanazawa on the West coast. These are the principal events that 
 happened before the advent of Godaigo Tenno and the prolonged 
 wars for the Imperial restoration. 
 
194 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND' JAPANESE ART 
 
 The art of this intermediate day falls lower than the brilliant achieve- 
 ments of Kenkiu. In the middle of the thirteenth century the great 
 painters of the main line, now named Tosa, were Tsunetaka, the son of 
 Mitsunaga, and Yoshinobu, the son of Tsunetaka. Tsunetaka’s line 
 is of wonderful delicacy and crispness, without at all reverting to the 
 imbecility of his grandfather Takachika. He did not mass his figures 
 like Keion. He sometimes worked in black and white. It is in 
 landscape and his wonderfully crisp drawing of trees that we see the 
 full-fledged beauty of the Tosa background. His boatman poling through 
 the rapids, copied by Koyetsu, is a vigorous figure. 
 
 Yoshimitsu essays a form which somewhat recalls Nobuzane. He has 
 given us many crowded scenes, not so closely built as Keion’s, but pulsing 
 with a vigorous coarse life. Especially fine are his forty-eight rolls of the 
 life of Honen Shonin, owned by the Imperial household of Japan. A 
 group of women descending the palace steps is typical of his drawing. 
 His landscape, throwing dark blue and green trees against chocolate 
 coloured hills, is wonderfully free and impressionistic. This Tosa school 
 of landscape is especially notable, since it so absolutely contrasts as a 
 purely Japanese feature with the splendid Chinese school of Zen landscape 
 that came in a century later. Yet this Japanese landscape is itself remotely 
 descended from an earlier pre-Tang Chinese style of the sixth century. 
 Into it, however, has been infused the characteristic drawing of pines and 
 cherries and cedars whose waving plumes crest the dear familiar hills that 
 surround Kioto. As we traverse the wild valleys about Kozanji, we exclaim 
 again and again of the scenery : “ How exactly like a Tosa landscape ! ” — 
 and that, too, down to the minutest tawny colour. Such mountain passages 
 as shown in Yoshimitsu landscape with wild cherry are the most beautiful 
 landscape illumination in existence. This was a feature which the earlier 
 Tosa masters deigned only to suggest. We see again in the Tosa 
 gardens the little rounded hillocks and the small curving Japanese red- 
 stemmed pines, the “female” pine, so different from the dark towering 
 conifers of China and of the Tokugawa temples. Such little Tosa gardens 
 might have been seen lingering among the monasteries of Nikko some 
 thirty years ago. En-i Hogen, the painter of the fine makimonos at 
 Shodaiji Nara, has left us some grand Tosa landscape effects in storm and 
 snow. 
 
 In illuminated Buddhist scripture rolls, too, we find some charming 
 examples of pure Tosa decoration, nearly contemporary with Giottoesque 
 

 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 195 
 
 Gothic manuscripts. In one, a Fujiwara daimyo and his court ladies gaze 
 out through an atmosphere flecked with many sized gold flakes upon a 
 lotos garden. The colour is richer than the best modern lacquer. In 
 another the whole decorative band is filled with coloured lotos flowers and 
 leaves. It should be noted too that as early as 1229 Toshiro founded 
 at Seto, in Owari, the first kiln for making artistic pottery. His dark 
 brown glazes had something of Sung type in them. The lacquer work of 
 the day either had Tosa landscape executed in dull gold or black, or quite 
 Tosa-ish patterns of flower forms and birds inlaid in pearl upon a 
 
 powdered gold ground. The patterns are far less stiff and conventional 
 than the corresponding decoration of utensils in Fujiwara days. It was 
 such impressions of garden scenes, scenes that might have been copied 
 from Yoshimitsu’s makimonos, that Koyetsu and Korin took for models 
 in their great lacquer renaissance of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The third and fourth generations of Tosa, Yukimitsu and Yukihiro, 
 show still more of a fall. At the beginning of the fourteenth century 
 Yukimitsu is more like Keion. Yukihiro is still more like him, only 
 reducing Keion’s myriad types to two or three and loosening the 
 
 composition into scattered masses. It is clear that a Tosa formalism 
 
 is eating away strength. 
 
 It must now be mentioned that, parallel to the family schools of 
 Fujiwara and Tosa, a set of descendants of both the Kose and Takuma 
 painters still flourished, and these by the fourteenth century began 
 to do secular work on makimons, in addition to their traditional 
 manufacture of altar pieces. It was one of these Koses, Nazataka — 
 his full name and title being “ Echizen no kami Nazataka” — who has 
 left us a contemporary panorama of Tokimune’s destruction of the 
 Mongol fleet. Kose Korehisa has left some fine large groups of 
 warriors in colour. The Kose line continued to be a little harder 
 and more wiry than the Tosa. By the middle of the fourteenth 
 
 century these parallel and friendly schools began to have an influence 
 upon each other, approximating more and more to a common type, 
 so that it becomes difficult to tell apart, say, Tosa Yukihida, Kose 
 Arishige and Takuma Rioson. 
 
 The last stages of the first Shogunate, that is, the Kamakura 
 domination, began with a new series of civil wars opening with the 
 attempted freeing of the Emperor Godaigo Tenno in 1331. The 
 Hojo tyrants had become most unpopular. Story and song had aroused 
 
196 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 pity with tales of threadbare Emperors. Godaigo himself had the 
 desire to assert an independence which no Emperor had enjoyed since 
 the year 900, and which no one should again enjoy until the accession 
 of the present Mutsuhito in 1868. Godaigo authorized the great 
 Kusunoki Masashige and Nitta Yoshisada to fight for him against 
 the Kamakura usurpers. With the Imperial army was, at first, a crafty 
 general, Ashikaga Takanji, who afterward became jealous of his fellow- 
 conquerors of Kamakura, revolted against Kusunoki and the Emperor, 
 and proclaimed himself Shogun under a Northern Emperor of his own 
 choosing (1337). After three years of independence Godaigo is utterly 
 defeated by Takanji, and the despairing Kusunoki, courting death, is 
 killed. It was the remembered tragedy of these moving days that 
 steeled the arms of Satsuma and Choshu in their war for Imperial 
 restoration in 1868. Saigo Takamori was hailed as a second Kusunoki; 
 loyalty to the Emperor and hatred to the Shogun became a passion. 
 Down to the Russian war Kusunoki has always been celebrated as 
 the ideal samurai, and Japan’s greatest hero. How far Togo and 
 Nogi have now supplanted him in national affection remains to be seen. 
 
 The followers of Kusunoki, however, would not give up the 
 unequal fight, and maintained a guerilla civil warfare against Takanji 
 and his successors for years, also maintaining a separate Southern 
 Emperor in their fortresses about Yoshino. It was not until as late 
 as 1392 that the Southern Emperor finally gave up to his suc- 
 cessful rival at Kioto, thus legitimizing to all eyes the power of 
 Ashikaga. It is hard to say quite when the first feudal period falls 
 and the second begins. Kamakura and the Hojo fell in 1333. 
 Ashikaga was proclaimed Kioto Shogun in 1337 ; but he merely kept up 
 the traditions of the Kamakura court in another place. Takanji was, 
 it is true, temporarily beaten by the Southern party and driven from 
 Kioto in 1351, and he died in 1358 without really knowing whether 
 or not he had left a successful and permanent dynasty. On the other 
 hand it is not necessary for us to wait for the final collapse of the 
 Southern party in 1392 in order to recognize that a permanent change 
 has come. The third Ashikaga became Kioto Shogun in 1368 — 
 Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, a powerful man with a deliberately new policy, 
 who practically ruled all but a small portion of Japan. This, too, is 
 the exact date of the advent of the native Chinese Ming dynasty 
 which had first overthrown the Mongols. We shall adopt this date, 
 
FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 197 
 
 therefore, as not only a convenient but a real demarcation between the 
 civilization and art of the Kamakura period and the Ashikaga period. 
 
 It was in these last days of civil war that the Tosa art became 
 weakest. As an example of fairly good work, we may show a copy 
 of the equestrian portrait of Ashikaga Takanji, by perhaps Tosa 
 Awataguchi Takanitsu. The family had now divided into many 
 branches ; a new school of artists had come forward, the Shiba, whose 
 style seems to be a real but weak mixture of Kose, Tosa, and 
 Takuma. The descendants of the Tosa, Hirochika, and Mitsunobu 
 lapsed over into solid Ashikaga days, and will be spoken of under 
 Chapter XIV. 
 
 Yet I have now, before quite closing this chapter, to speak of 
 several phases of Kamakura art which went on parallel to the main 
 stream of secular makimono painting which I have already described. 
 I preferred to treat makimono painting first as a whole, because it 
 is the most typical and striking innovation of this purely Japanese 
 school. We have already seen that beside the makimono, the greatest 
 artists of this school were celebrated for their portraits. It is natural 
 that portraiture should have become a marked feature of a day which 
 adored individuality. The finest painted portraits were those done by 
 Takanobu and Nobuzane. Takanobu’s great portrait of Yoritomo we 
 have already mentioned. Nobuzane’s famous portraits of the thirty-six 
 poets are the most original things of their kind in Japan. His Ono 
 no Komachi and his Hitomaro are the most celebrated. His large 
 portrait of the seated Hitomaro, owned by Mr. Kawasaki, of Kobe, is 
 finer than all. The individual portrait of a fat Fujiwara noble has 
 been immortalized by Koyetsu’s copy. His portrait of Ono no Tofu 
 practising caligraphy is another fine piece of humour. Still other 
 painted portraits, mostly by artists of the Takuma school, are repre- 
 sentations of priests. The finest of these has been lately acquired by 
 the Louvre Museum at Paris, where it is reckoned one of the supreme 
 Oriental treasures. Its pure delineation suggests perfect modelling ; 
 indeed it suggests the strength of a Holbein. 
 
 But what I have in mind is that the Kenkiu people soon saw 
 that sculpture might be a more effective medium for portraiture than 
 painting. Sculpture had been used sparingly as a subordinate art all 
 through Fujiwara days; the revival of Jocho in the eleventh century being 
 the only notable one after the introduction of mystic Buddhist painting. 
 
1 98 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 Before that, of course, Nara had made sculpture the chief medium of 
 her whole culture, and with this she had executed some fine portraiture. 
 But never before had sculptured portraits been made an important 
 part of professional work. Of course the new sculpture that came in 
 with Yoritomo was not entirely confined to portraiture, as we shall 
 see in a moment. Two great men, Wunkei and Tankei, whose 
 
 names are as familiar to every modern Japanese as Donatello and 
 Michael Angelo to us, inaugurated a new school of sculpture in these 
 violent days of Yoritomo ; and, since individuality was becoming the 
 key note of the new life, they naturally gave great prominence to 
 portraiture. In this they were followed by several generations of 
 sculptors who applied their methods, but with weakening skill — -just 
 as the Makimono painters became degenerate imitators of Keion — 
 down to the end of the Kamakura period. We may thus make the 
 interesting generalization that what is new in the art of this third 
 period of Japanese life can be summed up in historical painting and 
 portrait sculpture. 
 
 First among the many such statues that have come down to us — 
 portraits of priests, artists, Shoguns, guardians and temple-donors — 
 are the effigies of Wunkei and Tankei themselves, self-carved. Their 
 medium is now entirely wood, practically ignoring the bronze, clay 
 and lacquer compositions of the Yamato Era. We see Wunkei in the 
 form of a somewhat round-shouldered bald-pated priest, telling his 
 beads. Another portrait of a famous old priest, with a long, hard 
 monkey face, is of their school.* Perhaps the finest of all in this 
 line are the six seated portraits of priests that occupy the front of 
 the new tiled altar of the Chukondo at Tofukuji in Nara. It was 
 indeed at Nara, and as Nara sculptors, that Wunkei and Tankei 
 did a great deal of their work, and an important branch of their 
 disciples located at Nara; so that Nara, through the Tosa age, became, 
 with its corps of sculptors and its dramatic troupes — all acting in the 
 service of the temples, chiefly the Shinto-Buddhist construction of 
 Kasuga-Kofukuji — an even greater centre of culture than the stricken 
 Kioto. Even such painters as Keion, too, went down from the capital 
 to work for Nara. 
 
 The six sculptured priests have not only great strength of 
 drapery line but absolutely individualised heads, and faces working 
 •This monkey-faced priest is now said by Japanese critics to be Wunkei, by himself. 
 
Portrait Statue of Asangba. 
 
 At Kofukuji, Nara, 
 
Portrait Statue of a Priest. 
 
 Nio. By Wunkei. 
 
 Portrait Statue of Wunkei. 
 
 
 Portrait Statue of Hojo, 
 the Fifth of the 
 Kamakura Guardians. 
 
199 
 
 FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 
 
 in the expression of deep personal emotion. The finest, perhaps, is 
 the somewhat thin individual with the broken right ear whose 
 photograph we reproduce. It must be remembered that the dis- 
 coloration of the flesh tones is due to the disintegration of the 
 pigment with age ; but it does not hide the perfect finish of muscle, 
 and tendon, and wrinkle, nor the minute veining of the hands. The 
 neck, seen through the open collar of his keisa, is - a specially fine 
 piece of work. The earnestness of the prayer has clenched the hands 
 almost to the point of swelling, There is not the slightest attempt 
 at aesthetic pose. The man has fallen to his knees in absorbed 
 devotion — an ecstacy of mortal fear and longing — and his collar has 
 become disarranged in the long heat of his effort. It is indeed 
 analagous to the realism of Spanish Renaissance portraits of monks, 
 also done in painted wood. Compared to such Japanese portraits 
 the most famous work of early Egyptian or later Assyrian artists, 
 though in itself admirable enough, becomes utterly outclassed for a 
 perfect primitive realism. It is interesting to note that these statues 
 appear on the same altar with the imported Nara statues of the 
 Indian sculpture, and with the two colossal Tang portraits of 
 Asangpo and Vasabandhu, from whose style and power it is probably 
 true that Wunkei derived a good part of his inspiration. Indeed, 
 so alike are the two styles that some Japanese archaeologists are 
 inclined to include the larger works also among the products of 
 Wunkei’s time. 
 
 Another fine line of portraits are of leading Kamakura lords and 
 generals, in their characteristic costume of tall, pointed lacquer hat 
 and enormous baggy trousers that half conceal the feet. That which 
 we reproduce is a portrait of Hojo Tokiyori, the fifth of the 
 line of Kamakura guardians, who administered from 1246 to 1261. 
 It is interesting to note that he sits, not upon his knees as modern 
 Japanese, nor cross-legged “ as a Tartar,” but with his raised knees 
 as far apart as possible consistently with the bringing the soles of his 
 feet together in front of him. It is here that we must call atten- 
 tion to the sacred sculpture, much of it extraordinarily fine, which 
 Wunkei and Tankei inaugurated at the outset of the Kamakura era. 
 I have not before in this chapter dwelt upon religious art, because I 
 wished especially to focus attention upon the remarkable and quite 
 new secular art, whose very human qualities effect the chief innovation 
 
200 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 in that Buddhist art which would otherwise have remained tra- 
 ditional and dead. Of course even the old forms of it did not 
 altogether cease. Horiuji still preserves the sect even of Suiko Tenno ; 
 Yakushiji and Todaiji bring Nara worship down to our own day ; 
 Shingon is still a powerful influence in Japan ; and Enriakuji of 
 Hiyei-zan still boasts the succession of its Tendai popes, the last of 
 whom, formerly priest of Nanshoin, was one of my Buddhist teachers. 
 The demand for the old altar pieces therefore did not altogether die 
 away, and there were simpler forms demanded for the new democratic 
 sects. 
 
 The best known works of Wunkei and Tankei, on these lines, 
 are perhaps Buddhist “ Gate Guardians (Ni-o) and Altar Guardians 
 (Shi-tenno).” Of the former class the largest examples are the colossal 
 statues in the great gateway of Todaiji at Nara. The most violent 
 and complete in muscular and vein development are the two, life 
 size, which occupy the front corners of the Chukondo altar at 
 Kofukuji. Dr. Anderson of England has gone into panegyrics over 
 these as the finest statues in Japan. But to our mind they are 
 too mannered and distorted in their pose, and their overdone violence 
 is even repulsive. Yet in knowledge of muscle, in swing of drapery 
 from the waist and in force of motion, they evidently form part of the 
 same epoch with Nobuzane’s courtiers and Keion’s soldiers. It may be 
 noted that from this era onward the eyes are generally set with carved 
 crystal, instead of remaining part of the basic wood. In Nara days the 
 pupils of the eye only had been sometimes inlaid with a cylinder of dark 
 mineral. But now white was inserted under the crystal to show the 
 whole cornea. 
 
 Of Wunkei’s Shi-tenno there are many fine examples ; typical are 
 those of Toindo at Yakushiji, and Seigwanji of Kioto. The whole 
 group of Bodhisattwa, saints and deva, upon the central altar of Sanji 
 sanji san gendo at Kioto are very fine works of a generation or two 
 later. Buddhas and Amidas we have in hundreds ; some of the most 
 delicate, carved of plain wood and gilded, dating from the later 
 thirteenth century. But of Buddhas we must, of course, give the palm 
 to the colossal bronze Buddha of Kamakura, so well known to modern 
 travellers. This was erected by the efforts of a priest whose name 
 is not known. It has been described by many foreign writers in 
 terms of great praise ; and it has entered into English literature, both 
 
201 
 
 FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 
 
 in verse and fiction. The important thing to say about it, next to its 
 size and its great feeling of calm (which belongs to all good Buddhas) is 
 that its assthetic quality is that of the type that follows in the next 
 generation after Wunkei. Compared with painters, it makes me think of 
 Tosa Yoshimitsu, rather than of Keion and Mitsunaga. As contrasted 
 with the Nara colossus, it is far finer ; not because the art of the day 
 is more enlightened than Yamato art had been ; but because while the 
 Nara Buddha is the clumsy work of a decadent age the Kamakura 
 bronze comes just after the culmination of its day. The former’s 
 place is far down a descending curve ; the latter’s on the descent 
 indeed, but still near the top. Very beautiful and graceful works of 
 the same day are the six large Kwannons carved out of unpainted 
 wood in the Roku Kwando of Northern Kioto. 
 
 Fourteenth century sculptures of the Wunkei school are common, 
 but weaker. In grotesques much charm remains, specially in the Kasuga 
 lantern bearer by Kobun. Here we have a Buddhist imp, by no means a 
 bad sort of fellow, in the painful muscular effort of holding up a heavy 
 weight. A late fourteenth-century stage of the art, still admirable, is 
 shown in the Shingon bronze group of the early mystic pilgrim, Enno 
 Gioji, and his two familiar mountain spirits. Here, the weakened pro- 
 portions and the unquiet surfaces, not clearly bounded in line feeling, 
 show, in sculpture, the same poverty of styles which we find in con- 
 temporary pictorial work with the Shiba school. From that day on 
 Buddhist sculpture fell into a kind of manufacture, like Italian mosaic- 
 ing, without reference to name or fame. The last professional Butsshi 
 was a young man whose workshop, stocked with ancient and modern 
 portraits, Buddhas and carved works, I visited in 1882 in Tera machi 
 (“ temple-street ”) of Kioto. He died a few years later, and the 
 tradition was lost, except in sporadic amateur work among a few 
 Shingon and Tendai priests. 
 
 Before closing I ought surely to refer to the parallel Buddhist work 
 that was done in painting, mostly by the self-same Tosa, Kose, 
 Takuma and Shiga artists who won their most original fame upon the 
 secular makimono. All these artists worked at times upon hieratic altar 
 pieces. With the painters that had come down from Fujiwara days — 
 Kasuga, Kose and Takuma — such work was, of course, traditional. But 
 it had fallen into extreme weakness and effeminacy before the days of 
 Yoritomo ; and if it had not been for the new life-blood infused by 
 
202 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 secular work it would hardly be worth serious mention as a phase of 
 Kamakura art. There is, of course, in the latter, plenty of formal 
 weakness — mere artisan persistence in the manufacture of gilt Amidas and 
 flying Bodhisattwa. But besides this the age and the artists put new 
 wine into the old bottles, making more human, more dramatic, more 
 filled with motion, the hierarchical compositions demanded for the 
 accepted sects. In short, the Tosa makimono drawing was used for it. 
 
 Chief of this semi-new school of sacred painting were the Tosas 
 themselves. Keion has left us charming— often very minute — views of 
 the grounds and buildings of Kasuga temple at Nara, arranged as a 
 Tosa landscape background, against which gilded and coloured gods 
 descend, the Buddhist analogues of Shinto deities. Tsunetaka is noted 
 for his whirls of the star-gods, beautiful Buddhist figures, the spirits 
 of the planets, sweeping on clouds through the sky, as orbs about the 
 central pole. One of the finest examples is the star-mandara of Boston, 
 which 1 bought as a sacred treasure from Sumiyoshi Hirokata on his 
 death-bed, along with the Takanobu Shotoku series. Another example 
 is in Mr. Freer’s collection. Yoshimitsu is specially noted for his 
 Shingon pieces, of which sect there was a notable revival in the thir- 
 teenth century, Dai-nichis, Fudos, and Aizens. The finest pieces of 
 this Tosa Mandara work are in Daigoji of Yamashino. We reproduce 
 here the Yoshimitsu Dai-nichi of Boston. 
 
 Next to the Tosa come in importance a whole new generation of 
 Kose artists, probably blood descendants of Kanawoka and Hirotaka. 
 Beginning with Kose Genkei in the days of Kiyomori and Yoritomo, 
 they also introduced into their altar pieces, even before they essayed 
 makimono, the freer drawing and the more personal spirit that the age 
 demanded. A splendid example is Genkei’s Jizo Mandara in Mr. 
 Freer’s collection ; of which the composition is not unlike that which 
 Raphael often borrowed from the Umbrian school, a gentle Jizo, of 
 mixed gold and colours, seated on high on a circular halo, while 
 below, relieved against a mountain background cleft with a stream, 
 stand right and left in two crowds, realistic figures of devas, saints and 
 kings, and a spirit, kneeling before the cleft, and in front of the two 
 groups, reads from a large white scroll, thus completing the central 
 axis of a magnificent composition. Fourteenth century Kose altar pieces 
 become again suave and hieratic, more like the graceful Amidas, and 
 Kwannons of lacquered sculpture. A Kwannon from a Yeishin-like 
 
The Kasuga Lantern-bearer. By Kobun. 
 Kasuga Temple, Nara. 
 
203 
 
 FEUDAL ART IN JAPAN 
 
 trinity, with the traditional gold diaper pattern, by Kose Arishige, is in 
 Detroit. The Shiba school, as of Rinken, exemplified in Boston, shows 
 a late scrolly stage of prettiness, approaching the Byzantine formula of 
 Mount Athos. 
 
 A final word must now be said covering the family and school of 
 the Takumas, also descended from Fujiwara days. Their history, 
 though interconnected with the others, is slightly different. While they 
 sometimes painted to Shingon order, their special work seems to have 
 been to minister to the pictorial needs of the new Zen sect of Buddhism 
 which was slowly finding its way into Japan from the Sung of China. 
 It is in the next chapter that I am to speak chiefly of Zen, which already 
 in Northern Sung had influenced to some extent even Ririomin. It 
 is enough to say that the style of Ririomin, as the Sung continuer of 
 the Godoshi movement, began to pass over into Japan with the 
 immigrants who founded the Zen temples. This early patronage of 
 Zen was rather specially a matter of the Hojo at Kamakura, who were 
 glad to accept any spiritual makeweight against the prestige of the 
 older Kioto sects. Thus the Zen temple of Kenchoji in Kamakura, 
 still standing, was built by the Shikken Tokiyori, the same Hojo whose 
 portrait statue we have already seen in 1253. Other great Kamakura 
 Zen erections followed soon after. The great Kioto Zen temples came 
 mostly after, as we shall see in Chapter XII. 
 
 The Takuma style of this third period may be described as a mixture 
 of the leaden lines and nobler proportions of Ririomin with the liveness 
 and soft nervous brushwork of the Tosa. In making the combination 
 they learned to spread the hairs of their soft brush to far wider strokes 
 than the Tosas, in drawing the accented portions of lines. Takuma 
 Shoga was the great master of this sort of work, after Kukin. He 
 lived in the mountains of Takawo to the north-west of Kioto, not 
 
 far from Kozanji, where his great set of the twelve Ten Bapteri 
 
 Bodhisattwa are still kept. One of these, the Kwaten, or God of Fire, 
 shows a fine old fellow, the hairs of whose gray head are swept out 
 
 into the draught which the flame of his halo creates. Another, the 
 
 moon Goddess, is of a young graceful figure seen in profile, holding 
 up in a golden dish a crescent moon with a rabbit in it. The force 
 of the former suggests something of a Durer drawing ; the charm of 
 the latter, with its sweeping drapery lines, is like a Boticelli. The 
 great Louvre portrait of a priest, probably Zen, already noted, is 
 
204 EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART 
 
 probably by Shoga. His followers, Erichibo, Rioga, Rioson, Choga 
 and Yeiga continued the style, at times falling closely under Kose and 
 Tosa influence ; but in the main it can be said, that with the clues 
 furnished by Ririomin and the first Zen apostles, Takuma art is 
 really the only one of Kamakura which forms a sort of transition to 
 the wave of Sung influence which in the next period overflowed the 
 art of Ashikaga. 
 
 END OF VOL i. 
 
 BRADBURY, AGNEW & CO., LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. 
 

 
 
 

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