Page:Japan by the Japanese (1904).djvu/563

As a matter of fact, the colossal Daibutsu, bronze Buddha, of Nara, as also other similar objects, would be worth anyone’s seeing. It is true the head of the great Buddha of Nara is not good—it is comparatively a new one put up by far less competent hands after the original head had been lost in a fire caused by war; but from the artistic surroundings of other parts, it is assumed by competent native experts that the head must have been equally as good as, if not better than, that of the great Buddha of Kamakura, which was a product of the latter part of the twelfth century. Of this latter big Buddha, all experts of the Western nations agree in placing it in a very high position among the art products of the world. I may here only give an extract from ‘The Ornamental Art of Japan,’ quoted from a French expert, who winds up his analytical observations thus:

‘A people who could thus embody the most illusive of metaphysical mysteries must have had an exceedingly lofty conception of the capacities of art.’

After Nara we come to the Heian period. Heian is modern Kyoto. It was our Imperial capital, lasting from after the Nara period to the beginning of the present Imperial régime, for eleven centuries; but when we speak of it as a period we mean about four centuries of its early part. Art flourished, together with general culture, to a very high degree in this period, but somewhat in a different way from that of the Nara epoch. In the Nara period we have seen that art achieved a very high standard, but it was, as it seems, subservient to religion. It does not seem to have played its part independently as such; hence the individuality of an artist did not make much distinctive mark. If a picture was painted it was almost always a religious subject, and it was used for religious objects, not as a product of an artist for the sake of associating his name with it, and admiring his representation of the picture as a picture. But in the Heian period things seem to have changed to a significant degree, especially in pictorial art, which came to be admired as such, and individuality in artists became more marked in the public estimation. It was then that artists like Kanaoka and Nobuzane appeared. Pictures founded upon scenes in narratives or actual landscapes came to be generally appreciated. On the whole, the art of the Heian period seems to have become more extensive. To show in what sort of relationship pictorial art and society stood towards each other in this period, there is a very good illustration in the famous ‘Genji Monogatari,’ contained in a chapter under the title of ‘Ye-awase,’ which means ‘pairings of pictures.’ At that period there was a very common practice of so-called ‘uta-awase,’ which means ‘pairings of poems.’ It was done in this way: Ladies and gentlemen who were versed in composing poems were to meet at an appointed place at an appointed