An artist who greatly influenced Moronobu was Tanyu, of the School of Kano, whose masterpiece may be seen at the great temple in Kyoto,—four painted panels of lions, of indescribable majesty. M. Louis Gonse tells us that one of Tanyu’s kakemonos, belonging to a celebrated French painter, well sustains the test of comparison with its companion pictures, in the artist’s studio, by Durer, Rembrandt and Rubens. Under Tanyu’s direction the task of reproducing the old masterpieces was undertaken. The artists of Ukiyo-ye were ever ready to profit by the teaching of all the schools; therefore, properly to follow the methods of the Popular School, we must study the work of the old masters and the subjects from which they derived their inspiration.
In this brief resumé we cannot follow the fluctuations of Japanese Art through the centuries. During long periods of conflict and bloody internecine strife, art languished; when peace reigned, then in the seclusion of their yashikis these fierce and princely warriors threw down their arms and surrendered themselves to the service of beauty and of art. Nor had the dainty inmates of their castles languished idly during these stirring times. Often they defended their honour and their homes against treacherous neighbours. It was a Japanese woman who led her conquering countrymen into Corea. In the arts of peace the cultured women of Japan kept pace with their lovers and husbands. A woman revised and enlarged the alphabet, and some of the most beautiful classic poems are ascribed to them. Well might the Japanese fight fiercely for his altar and home, with the thought of the flower-soft hands that were waiting to strip him of his armour and stifle with caresses the recollection of past conflict. The early history of Japan suggests a comparison with ancient Greece, and the Japanese poets might have apostrophized their country, as did Byron the land of his adoption:
“The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,—
Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!”
Happily Japan, unlike Greece, withstood the enervating influences of luxury and the passionate adoration of beauty. Princes laboured alike with chisel and with brush, and the loftiest rulers disdained not the tool of the artisan. Art Industrial kissed Grand Art, which remained virile beneath the sturdy benediction. Therefore Japan lives, unlike Greece, whose beauty in decay called forth that saddest of dirges, ending,
“’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.”
In Japan, art lightens the burden of labour, utility and beauty go hand in hand, and the essential and the real reach upward, and touch the beautiful and the ideal.