THE fact that the Trustees of the British Museum have lately given £3000 for a collection of Japanese prints and drawings, is evidence of the interest which has been aroused in England in the pictorial art of Japan. It is not too much to say that no event in the artistic world has of late years attracted so much attention as the discovery of the wonderful skill in painting possessed by the people of that strange empire in the western Pacific. Before the conclusion of our treaty with Japan, little or nothing was known of the productions of the native studios. The few picture-books which found their way into Europe through the Dutch settlers at Decima, were only specimens of the coarser kind of popular albums; and it was not until Sir Rutherford Alcock revealed, at the Exhibition of 1862, a glimpse of the treasures to be met with, that the public generally learned that any other art than that we are accustomed to associate with the Malayan archipelago existed in Japan. Then it was that the strange beauty of form, the exquisite colouring, and the extraordinary purity of outline, to which we are now becoming habituated, came like a revelation to the lovers of art in this country. In proportion to the surprise evoked by the discovery, was the admiration expressed at the unparalleled skill of the artists both as draughtsmen and colourists. There was a grace and warmth in their pictures which were unlike anything that had been seen before in Europe; and in the first maze of astonishment, it was supposed that everything Ja

panese must necessarily be beautiful. By degrees, however, as our eyes became accustomed to the glare of this new light from the East, it was made obvious that their paintings, as all their other art productions, were very unequal; and little by little, as collections were formed, we were able to distinguish the styles of the different schools, and to trace back the art to the source of its inspiration.

Sir Rutherford Alcock, Mr Frank Dillon, Sir Edward Reed, M. Gonse, Messrs Audsley, Bowes, Cutler, and others, have done much to instruct us on the nature and beauties of Japanese painting; but none of these writers have succeeded in throwing so comprehensive and satisfactory a light on the whole history of the art as has the author of the work under review. For some years Mr Anderson was attached to the English Legation at Yedo, and when there he made, with the assistance of Mr Satow, the Japanese Secretary of Legation-who, in addition to being the first Japanese scholar of the time, was a persona grata with all the cultured classes in the capital-the splendid collection of prints and drawings which has now, as stated above, become the property of the nation. Using these exceptionally well- chosen works of art to elucidate and illustrate the history of painting in Japan, Mr Anderson has been able to compile a work which is beyond comparison the most full and trustworthy that has as yet appeared on the subject in any European language.

Like every one else who has made

a study of Japanese pictorial art, Mr Anderson has been led to the irresistible conclusion that it is essentially Chinese in all its branches. This is the first fact connected with the subject that it is necessary should be constantly borne in mind, and the second flows naturally from it-viz., that drawing is a branch of caligraphy. This last truth is the one with which every Chinese text-book on drawing starts, and its accuracy becomes apparent when the conditions of the caligraphic and pictorial arts both in China and Japan are examined and compared. In the first place, it must be remembered that a large proportion of Chinese characters are of the nature of hieroglyphics, we say of the nature of hieroglyphics, because, though such as we speak of were originally pure hieroglyphics, they have, through the course of ages, lost much of their pictorial character, and that every schoolboy in both countries is trained from his earliest youth to draw these with grace and accuracy. His eye becomes thus trained from his infancy to observe and reproduce on paper objects placed before him, while the brush with which he is taught to write is especially fitted to enable him to execute with ease the light, supple, and lithesome strokes which are necessary to the formation of Chinese characters. The position in which the brush is held also perpendicularly between the second and third fingers, with the arm supported by the elbow--gives a freedom and power which are unknown in our use of the pen and pencil. In these circumstances it is readily conceivable how slight is the transition from writing a hieroglyphic representing a horse, to sketching the outline of the living animal; while the fact that lines drawn in Indian ink are ineras

able, imposes the necessity on the student of precision and accuracy.

In tracing the history of Japanese pictorial art, we have then to go back to China, where we find, among the sculptured remains of the later centuries before Christ, prototypes of the earliest efforts of the Japanese to depict figures and landscapes. Considering the impermanent nature of ordinary drawings, and how very little is known of the art treasures which are preserved in private collections, it need not surprise us that nothing of this period on less durable material than stone has become known to Europeans. History tells us, however, that on the revival of literary culture at the establishment of the Han dynasty (B.C. 206), collections were made of the existing drawings, and buildings were especially constructed for their custody and preservation. On this followed a general renaissance not only of learning but also of the national life. Communications were opened with foreign countries, and the influence of foreign ideas became observable in the literature and art of the people. A series of very remarkable sculptures of the second century A.D., which have lately become known to us in Shantung, show a very decided correlation of ideas with those current in Assyria and Egypt; and with the later introduction of Buddhism came also an influx of Indian art. It is somewhat remarkable that the Buddhists, whose first article of faith was a complete contempt for the human form, should have been the means, as they eventually became, of promulgating a style of art in which the human figure formed so prominent a feature as in the earlier Buddhist pictures of China and Japan.

The movement thus begotten in the literary and artistic world of

China was not long in reaching Japan. An apostle of painting in the person of one Nanriu visited the islands in the fifth century, and so captivated the susceptible Japanese by his skill, that they at once established an 66 Imperial Academy of Art," with a full staff of officials. The subsequent introduction of Buddhism enriched their knowledge by acquaintance

with the Chinese Buddhistic school of drawing, which, like the earlier phase of the art, at once found a home on their hospitable shores. But they did more than receive it gladly; they improved upon it, and so skilfully applied their artistic instincts to it, that under their influence the purely conventional figures of Boddhisatwas and Rishis became living beings, with distinctive features and attributes. The languor, however, which set in in China as regarded all matters of culture, during the first years of the seventh century, was reflected in Japan by the decay of pictorial art, which appears to require for its permanence in that country a constant supply of inspiration from the source of its being, and which revived only two hundred years later, when the effect of the intellectual vigour resulting from the enlightened rule of the sovereigns of the Chinese T'ang dynasty gave new life to the masters of the brush in Japan. Then it was that Kanaoka, whose name is revered by every Japanese connoisseur, painted his masterpieces. And later again, Hirotaka, upon whose shoulders his master's mantle fell, earned a deserved reputation for his Buddhist pictures. Among these the most wonderful was one before which, when it was on the point of completion, the artist fell dead. The subject of the picture was the tortures of the damned in Hades.

"As the design progressed, he became inspired by a mysterious fore

boding of his approaching death. The melancholy thought, however, only urged him on in his labour, and strange perseverance that sustained he worked unceasingly, with the same Mozart in the composition of his Requiem, until at length a few touches only were needed for the completion of the ghastly subject; but with the final strokes his overstrained energies collapsed, and the artist, brush in hand, fell dead in front of his illomened masterpiece."

But the Japanese are too clever a people to follow in every detail for many generations the narrow and conventional style of any branch of Chinese art; and thus, side by side with the school founded by Kanaoka, there grew up in the early part of the eleventh century a succession of artists who devoted their brushes to the representation of native scenes, and incidents in the lives of famous scholars, priests, and heroes. A comic element, the natural offspring of the joyous character of the people, showed itself in many of their drawings, which, so far as genial and unconstrained fun is concerned, will bear comparison with the most racy of the modern productions of Hokusai and his school. This particular characteristic of these men was taken up and improved upon by a certain "Toba Priest," who was both an artist and a wit, and who, throwing off the shreds of Chinese formality which clung to the new school, produced a comparatively national art. Mr Anderson gives us several specimens of his style. One represents an attenuated coolie carrying a bottomless tub, who is mistaken by two travellers for a revived corpse rearing its head above the perambulating coffin. The sight has so terrified the wayfarers that they fall over each other in their attempt to escape. Though the figures are grotesque, they are instinct with life, and their faces

are expressive of the most lively astonishment and alarm.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the wonderful development of art which characterised the Sung and Yuen dynasties of China produced a corresponding revival in Japan, and it was then that two great artists, Chō Densu and Josetsu, arose to reawaken in their countrymen that naturally artistic taste which had been allowed to become dormant. Chō Densu, following his priestly instincts, devoted, himself to representing Buddhist scenes and sages. His skill in preserving the religious bearing of the numberless members of the Buddhist Pantheon, at the same time that he individualised each in a marked and distinct manner, is nothing short of marvellous; while his excursions into the realms of heterodox faiths, such as Taoism for example, are signalised by the same vigour of treatment and originality of design. Josetsu, on the other hand, drank deeply at the fount of Chinese arts-so deeply, indeed, that doubts have been cast on his nationality, and it has been suggested that he was one of the Chinese immigrants who at this time brought their skill and learning to the Land of the Rising Sun. At least, if he were not so, he succeeded in becoming even more Chinese than the Chinese themselves; for not only were his landscapes the landscapes of China, but the figures he introduced into them were those of China men and women.

Among Josetsu's reputed pupils were three notable geniuses-Shiubun, Sesshiu, and Kano Masanobu, whose names have been for three centuries household words among collectors in Japan, and have lately become so among the confraternity in England, France, and America. All three were ardent students of Chinese art, and

Sesshiu even made a voyage to China to inspect the works of the old masters, and to familiarise himself with the scenery which had inspired their brushes. It is said of him, that when, as a lad, he was placed under the instruction of a priest, he was so neglectful of his acolytic duties that his tutor on one occasion tied him as a punishment to a pillar of the temple. At the time for his release, the priest went to unbind him, and was startled to see a number of rats at the boy's feet. "The good man ran to drive away the intruders, and found that they were pictures which the little artist, using his toe for a pencil and his tears for ink, had drawn upon the floor." After such a display of his skill, it was obvious even to his priestly preceptor that his natural home was in the studio rather than in the cloister, and he was thenceforth allowed freely to follow the bent of his genius.

After having touched the source of inspiration in China, he established according to Japanese notions a school of painting, and produced himself a number of pictures which are more precious than rubies in the eyes of native connoisseurs. He commonly painted either in monochrome or in ink outline, and landscapes were his favourite subjects. He was possessed with an extraordinary power of expressing in a few lines the features of a landscape, in which distance and atmosphere were suggested with vivid accuracy. But in his finer and more elaborate works he was equally successful. A beautiful little picture representing a weary traveller leaning against a tree, while his horse stands ready-saddled by his side, has been reproduced in a Japanese album; and for grace, suggestiveness, and feeling, it is unsurpassed. The native historians