We now come to Ogata Korin, one of the most individual of all Japanese artists. Born in 1661, he is said to have studied under Yasunobu, and the influence of Sotatsu seems to appear in his work; but he can be classed with no existing school, striking out an entirely new line for himself. A wonderful draughtsman, Korin possessed in the highest degree the Japanese faculty for spacing and balance. Slight, and often almost bizarre, as his compositions are, one feels that it would be impossible to alter a line. He is more frankly decorative than any of his predecessors, and is even more famous as a lacquerer than a painter. Indeed, often in his painting, especially in the enamel-like quality of his colour effects, one sees the hand of the lacquerer rather than the painter. Japan, perhaps, possesses one or two greater artists, but none more original, or whose work exercises a more subtle fascination. To commemorate the centenary of his death his follower Hoitsu issued several volumes of woodcuts from the master’s designs. Slight as these are they are never trivial, nothing is expressed but what is necessary, the non-essentials are absolutely ignored, and the results are masterly in their telling arrangements of black and white.

We must now retrace our steps a little and return to the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Iwasa Matabei founded the style which was known as the Ukioyé, or “pictures of the passing world” school, and which soon became the great popular school of painting. The distinction between the Ukioyé and the older classical schools, however, was not one merely of subject. Many of the earlier men had turned to the scenes of everyday life for their subjects. Toba Sojo, Sanraku, and Itcho, to name but a few, and, on the other hand, the Ukioyé painters, frequently treated of classical subjects. The real difference is one of treatment, not of subject, and the starting-point of variance was the mental attitude of the painter. It was a departure from the subjective attitude of the older men. The Ukioyé and later schools took the standpoint of the poet: “The earth—that is sufficient; I do not want the constellations any nearer”—and their works are frankly decorative or frankly naturalistic. Materialists, in a sense, they turn from the beauties of the ideal world to show us the beauties of the natural world around us. This does not necessarily mean that their treatment was what we term realistic; but, while with the classical schools one looked through the picture, as it were, to the thought beyond, in this case one looks at the picture for the beauty which it presents, and which is inherent in the subject itself. The fact that the rise of the Ukioyé school was more or less a popular revolt against the old classical traditions which had governed the art for a thousand years will help to explain to us why its masters were hardly esteemed as highly by the cultured classes in Japan as, by their undoubtedly fine qualities, they deserved to be. On the other hand, we must admit that they never attain to the power and dignity of the older schools.