In China, the Ming dynasty gave birth to an original style, which for centuries dominated the art of Japan; the sweeping calligraphic strokes of Hokusai mark the sway of hereditary influence, and his wood-cutters, trained to follow the graceful, fluent lines of his purely Japanese work, were staggered by his sudden flights into angular realism.
The Chinese and Buddhist schools of art dated from the sixth century, and in Japan the Emperor Heizei founded an imperial academy in 808. This academy, and the school of Yamato, founded by Motomitsu in the eleventh century, led up to the celebrated school of Tosa, which with Kano, its august and aristocratic rival, held undisputed supremacy for centuries, until challenged by plebeian Ukiyo-ye, the school of the common people of Japan.
Tosa has been characterized as the “manifestation of ardent faith, through the purity of an ethereal style.” Tosa represented the taste of the court of Kyoto, and was relegated to the service of the aristocracy; it reflected the esoteric mystery of Shinto and the hallowed entourage of the divinely descended Mikado. The ceremonial of the court, its fêtes and religious solemnities,—dances attended by daimios, in robes of state falling in full harmonious folds,—were depicted with consummate elegance and delicacy of touch, which betrayed familiarity with the occult methods of Persian miniature painting. The Tosa artists used very fine, pointed brushes, and set off the brilliance of their colouring with resplendent backgrounds in gold leaf, and it is to Tosa we owe the intricate designs, almost microscopic in detail, which are to be seen upon the most beautiful specimens of gold lacquer work; and screens, which for richness have never been surpassed.
Japanese Art was ever dominated by the priestly hierarchy, and also by temporal rulers, and of this the school of Tosa was a noted example, as it received its title from the painter-prince, Tsunetaka, who, besides being the originator of an artistic centre, held the position of vice-governor of the province of Tosa. From its incipience, Tosa owed its prestige to the Mikado and his nobles, as later Kano became the official school of the usurping Shoguns. Thus the religious, political and artistic history of Japan were ever closely allied. The Tosa style was combated by the influx of Chinese influence, culminating in the fourteenth century, in the rival school of Kano. The school of Kano owed its origin to China. At the close of the fourteenth century the Chinese Buddhist priest, Josetsu, left his own country for Japan, and bringing with him Chinese tradition, he founded a new dynasty whose descendants still represent the most illustrious school of painting in Japan. The Kano school to this day continues to be the stronghold of classicism, which in Japan signifies principally adherence to Chinese models, a traditional technique, and avoidance of subjects which represent every-day life. The Chinese calligraphic stroke lay at the root of the technique of Kano, and the Japanese brush owed its facility elementarily to the art of writing. Dexterous handling of the brush is necessary to produce these bold, incisive strokes, and the signs of the alphabet require little expansion to resolve themselves into draped forms, and as easily they can be decomposed into their abstract element.
Walter Crane inculcates the wisdom of this method for preliminary practice with the brush in his valuable study, “Line and Form,” but the Chinese and Japanese ideographs give a far wider scope to initial brush work.
The early artists of Kano reduced painting to an academic art, and destroyed naturalism, until the genius of Masanobu, who gave his name to the school, and still more, that of his son, Motonobu, the real “Kano,” grafted on to Chinese models, and monotony of monochrome, a warmth of colour and harmony of design which regenerated and revivified the whole system. Kano yielded to Chinese influence, Tosa combated it, and strove for a purely national art, Ukiyo-ye bridged the chasm, and became the exponent of both schools, bringing about an expansion in art which could never have been realized by these aristocratic rivals. The vigour and force of the conquering Shoguns led Kano, while the lustre of Tosa was an emanation from the sanctified and veiled Mikado.
The favourite subjects of the Kano painters were chiefly Chinese saints and philosophers, mythological and legendary heroes, represented in various attitudes with backgrounds of conventional clouds and mists, interspersed with symbolical emblems. Many of the Kano saints and heroes bear a striking resemblance to mediæval subjects, as they are often represented rising from billowy cloud masses, robed in ethereal draperies, and with heads encircled by the nimbus.
Beneath the brush of Motonobu, formal classicism melted. In this new movement, says Kakuzo Okakura, “art fled from man to nature, and in the purity of ink landscapes, in the graceful spray of bamboos and pines, sought and found her asylum.”
Space will not permit a glance at the personnel of the many schools of Japanese Art. A lengthy catalogue alone would be required to enumerate the masters who inaugurated schools, for if an artist developed exceptional talent in Japan, he immediately founded an individual school, and it was incumbent upon his descendants for generations to adhere rigidly to the principles he had inculcated, so becoming slaves to traditional methods.
During the anarchy of the fourteenth century art stagnated in Japan, but a revival, corresponding with our European Renaissance, followed. The fifteenth century in Japan, as in Europe, was essentially the age of revival. Wm. Anderson epitomizes in one pregnant phrase this working power: “All ages of healthy human prosperity are more or less revivals. A little study would probably show that the Ptolemaic era in Egypt was a renaissance of the Theban age, in architecture as in other respects, while the golden period of Augustus in Rome was largely a Greek revival.” There seems ever to have been a reciprocal action in Japanese Art. Tosa, famed for delicacy of touch, minutiæ of detail and brilliance of colour, yielded to the black and white, vigorous force of Kano. Kano again was modified by the glowing colouring introduced by Kano Masanobu and Motonobu. Later we see the varied palette of Miyagawa Choshun efface the monochromic simplicity of Moronobu, the ringleader of the printers of Ukiyo-ye.