It is a strictly observed rule that none of these dots should interfere with or hide the branches of the trees of which they form part.
The term chobo chobo is applied to the practice of always finishing a landscape painting, rocks, [pg 58] trees or flowers, with certain dots judiciously added to enliven and heighten the general effect. These dots, done with a springing wrist movement, serve to enliven the work and give it freshness, just as a rain shower affects vegetation. The Kano artists were most insistent upon chobo chobo.
There are many quaint aids to artistic effects from time immemorial well known to and favored by the old Chinese painters and still successfully practiced in Japan. Probably the larger number of these are employed in the technical construction of the Four Paragons (p. 66 et seq.). There are still others: as, for instance, the fish-scale pattern [(Plate XIX)], used in painting the clustered needles of the pine tree or the bending branches of the willow; the stork's leg for pine tree branches [(Plate XIX)]; the gourd for the head and elongated jaws of the dragon; the egg for the body of a bird ([Plate XXII]; the stag horn for all sorts of interlacing branches; the turtle back pattern or the dragon's scales for the pine tree bark. In addition to these, the general shapes of certain of the Chinese written characters are invoked for reproducing winding streams [(Plate XX)], groupings of rocks, meadow, swamp, and other grasses and the like.
Of course the exact shape of the various Chinese characters here referred to must not be actually painted into the composition but merely the sentiment of their respective forms recalled. They are simply practical memory aids to desired effects.
It is the spirit of the character rather than its exact shape which should control; the order of [pg 59] the painted strokes being that of the written character, its sentiment or general shape is thus reproduced.
In this connection I would allude to criticisms or judgments upon Japanese painting in which particular stress is laid upon its calligraphic quality. If any Japanese artist was seriously informed that his method of painting was calligraphic, he would explode with mirth. There are several ways to account for this rather wide-spread error. Much that is written about Japanese painting and its calligraphy is but the repetition by one author of what he has taken on trust from another, an effective way sometimes of spreading misinformation. It is quite true that the assiduous study of Chinese writing (sho) is an essential part of thorough art education in Japan, not, however, for the purpose of learning to paint as one writes, or of introducing written characters more or less transformed into a painting (if that be what is meant by “calligraphic”), but simply to give the artist freedom, confidence, and grace in the handling of the brush and to train his eye to form and balance and to acquire both strength of stroke and a knowledge of the sequence of strokes. To write in Chinese after the manner of professionals (sho ka) is truly a great art, esteemed even higher than painting; it requires thirty years of constant practice to become expert therein, and it has many laws and profound principles which, if mastered by artists, will enable them to be all the greater in their painting, and many Japanese artists have justly prided [pg 60] themselves upon being expert writers of the Chinese characters. Okyo practiced daily for three years the writing of two intricate characters standing for his name, until he was satisfied with their forms, but there is nothing calligraphic about any of Okyo's painting.
Possibly what has misled foreign critics and even some Japanese writers is that there exists a class of men in Japan given to learning, to writing, and also to painting in a particular way.
These men are called bun jin (literati) and their style of painting is called bun jin fu. They are not artists, but are known as Confucius' scholars (ju sha), and being professional or trained writers in the difficult art of Chinese calligraphy they have a manner of painting strictly sui generis. It is known as the nan gwa or southern literary way of painting. Their subjects are the bamboo, the plum, the orchid and the chrysanthemum, called the four paragons (shi kun shi). These and landscapes they paint with their writing brush and more or less in what is called the grass character (so sho) manner of writing. In fact, they often aim to make their painting look like writing and they rarely use any color except light-brown (tai sha). They suppress line as distinguished from mass. This method is called bokkotsu (see [Plate XII]). Such painting of the nan gwa school is, in a sense, calligraphic, but that is not the kind of painting which Japanese artists are taught, practice and profess, nor is it even recognized as an art, but simply as an eccentric development of the literary [pg 61] man with a taste for painting. At one time or another well-known artists, especially at the beginning of the Meiji era, have affected this bun jin calligraphy style simply as a passing fashion.
One other possible explanation of the critics pronouncing all Japanese paintings calligraphic is that various Chinese characters are, as we have seen, invoked and employed by Japanese artists as memory aids to producing certain effects; but were these characters introduced calligraphically, the result would be laughable. It should be plain then that Japanese painting is not calligraphic; as well apply the term calligraphy to one of Turner's water colors. On the other hand, Chinese writing is built up on word pictures. There are between five and six hundred mother characters, all imitating the shapes of objects; these, with their later combinations, constitute the Chinese written system, so that while there is nothing calligraphic about Japanese painting, there is much that is pictorial about Chinese calligraphy.
Other landscape laws applicable to things seen at a distance in a painting require that distant trees should show no branches nor leaves; people at a distance, no features; distant mountains, no ledges; distant seas or rivers, no waves. Again, clouds should indicate whence they come; running water the direction of its source; mountains, their chains; and roads, whither they lead.