326 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



represented with full beards, as up to the time of Shogun-YoiTi.Qrito 

 in Kama-kura (1185-1199 A.D.) it was the universal custom to wear 

 this appendage. The representations of Buddha as a mild, bliss- 

 ful divinity, of feminine appearance, in his several occupations of 

 blessing, teaching, and meditating, as expressed by the position of 

 the hands and fingers, show a great deal of artistic ability. 



Religion has been at all times and among all peoples the most 

 potent stimulant and support of art and art industry. To represent 

 deities, to beautify their worship and the temples dedicated to them, 

 inspires not only artistic working of wood, stone, and metal,, but 

 leads to progress also in textile industries. It may be generally 

 accepted that the higher men rise in their conception of God, the 

 more artistic and spiritual will be the representations of the em- 

 bodied divinity. There is, however, no generic difference, but only 

 one of degree, between the rough forms of wood and clay of 

 uncivilised nations, and the perfected and beautiful Grecian and 

 Christian art. The ideals and grade of civilization in any nation 

 are seen more clearly in its art and industry than in its laws and 

 history. 



With the introduction of Buddhism, as has already been said, 

 the language, literature, and art industry of China was spread 

 abroad throughout Japan. What had been accomplished in the 

 latter up to this time was of no high grade, and in its forms and 

 ornamentation was not unlike the productions of our own heathen 

 ancestors. Buddhism was, till the middle of this century, the 

 principal promoter and patron of art industry.^ In Buddhist 

 temples and cloisters the best efforts found application and preser- 

 vation, so that the inscription at the entrance to the South 

 Kensington Museum — " Quam quisque norit artem in hac se 

 exerceat " — was appropriate in these also. 



As feudalism developed under the Minamoto, and still more 

 since the tranquillizing of the country under lyeyasu at the begin- 

 ning of the seventeenth century, the feudal nobles (the court 

 nobility was too poor) constituted themselves the patrons of art 

 industry. The castles of the Daimios and the temples became 

 from this time the places where its best productions were collected. 

 The dynasty of the Tokugawa-Shoguns (or the Tycoon) in Yeddo, 

 i,e. from the battle of Sekigahara in 1600 to the restoration 

 of the Mikado government in 1868, is the golden age of Japanese 

 art handicraft. The long peace and the equally long closure of 

 the country served to bring its several branches to stronger and 

 more individual development. The germs of this development 

 were planted in Japan by the long intercourse with Corea and 

 China — which latter country had served as a model for over 1,500 

 years — and as the outcome of an expedition to Corea, organized in 

 1586 by Hideyoshi, and on this new and fruitful soil had grown 



^ Siebold calls the Buddhist religion " Conductrice des sciences et des arts," 

 in his "Sur I'etat de Thorticulture au Japon." Leide, 1863. 



