Arts and crafts of old Japan

Like the sister art of painting, the art of sculpture arose in Japan with the coming of the Buddhist priests from Korea in the sixth century. But though both existed together in the great Buddhist monasteries the latter seemed for the first few hundred years to entirely eclipse the former, for the first great products of Buddhist art in Japan were seen in the figures carved in wood or cast in bronze which adorned the shrines of the temples.

Time, too, has dealt less severely with these relics, or rather, less perishable in their nature, they have been better able to survive the dangers that so often swept away the frailer kakemonos of the painter, and in many of the old temples are preserved the works of these early sculptors. Such statues were rarely or never in stone, but either of wood—which material always seems as plastic as clay in the hands of the Japanese craftsman—or cast in bronze. Why this should have been it is difficult to say. Perhaps the lack of a suitable stone at hand, and the difficulty of transporting large and heavy blocks long distances in a rough and hilly country, had something to do with the matter. In any case, wood and bronze were at first entirely used for the work. Some centuries later a fine grey clay, found at Nara, mixed with vegetable fibre, like the bricks of Egypt, and, like them, hardened without baking, came into use. Another interesting method of working was the covering over with thin lacquer, mixed with powdered bark, a model made of coarse cloth stiffened with glue. Works in both these last styles were frequently gilded or painted.

Arising in India, Buddhist art spread northward with the spread of the creed through China to Korea, and as it went farther north its characteristics were largely altered and moulded by the different types of the northern Buddhists. The Hindu sensitiveness gave place to a Chinese solidity, which, again, was mellowed and softened by the gentler influences of Korea.

The early Buddhist altar-pieces of Japan are marked by a sweet and dignified serenity. Unlike the great Greek sculptures, they do not represent the ideal of the natural human form, but rather endeavour to express in terms of the human form an abstract or spiritual beauty. Their figures are personifications of abstract qualities—Reason, Pity, Charity, Fortitude, Beauty, Divine Love, for the northern Buddhist doctrine was a gentle one; the world was not a hopeless dream, as in the Hindu form, but a storehouse of forms to be idealised.

The temple of Horiuji at Nara, the first Buddhist temple built in Japan, is one of the richest of all in art treasures, and contains many fine examples of the old work. One of the earliest known specimens there is a life-sized seated figure of Kwannon, said to be the work of Prince Shotoku himself, and, in any case, dating from about the end of the sixth century. The figure is nude from the waist upwards, and is modelled with great severity of style, so that the anatomical forms are almost lost; but this, with the simplicity of the drapery, only concentrates the attention on the serene dignity of the expression, and adds to the power and impressiveness of the statue.

During the seventh century there arose at Nara a school of bronze casters, who produced a number of beautiful altar-pieces, more than a hundred of which still exist. They are of small size, varying from six inches to three feet in height, and in delicacy of modelling and elegance of style they far surpass any of the Indian, Chinese, or Korean work. The triumph of the school is seen in a little group of three at Horiuji: a seated Buddha with two standing figures, backed by a richly-wrought folding screen.

It is a beautiful piece of work, the lines graceful and flowing, the modelling subtle and of exquisite finish. Perhaps the finest part of all is the openwork halo, pierced with a floral design, behind the head of the central figure. In its own way this group, executed about 680 A.D., is one of the gems of Japanese art.

Towards the end of the seventh century a wave of Greek feeling, which had slowly spread from India and had produced what was known as the Greco-Buddhist art, reached Japan, and its influence is seen in a certain ampler sense of human dignity and proportion absent in the earlier works. In 695 A.D. an attempt was made to cast three large bronze figures of about twelve feet high, but it was a failure. In 715 A.D., however, Giogi, who ranks among Japan’s greatest sculptors, successfully cast an altarpiece for the temple of Yakushiji, Nara, of even greater dimensions—a trinity of a seated Buddha and two standing figures. In the opinion of many this work represents the culmination of the art of bronze casting in Japan. For largeness of conception, easy grace and elegance of pose, richness and beauty of finish, it has never been surpassed.