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going too far, but let me proceed to illustrate these observations by my own experience.” ’

It must not, however, be understood that art in religious subjects had disappeared; on the contrary, there are many pictures of this kind, produced at this epoch, still in existence in many temples, and which are of highest merit. From the latter part of the twelfth century Kyoto had lost its importance, because from that time the actual ruling power of the country had left the hands of the Imperial Government, and had been transferred to the Shogunate Government. From that time down to about the middle of the fourteenth century Kamakura became the seat of the Shogunate Government. This interval was called the Kamakura period; there were many conditions in this period which were adverse to progress in the field of art—you may even say it showed some decadence—and yet there were many art products both in picture and sculpture. The Daibutsu of Kamakura, referred to above, was itself a product of the earliest part of the thirteenth century. It is a masterpiece of its kind, and will go a long way in showing what artistic workmanship then existed in Japan.

I may here interpose just a few words. The progress of culture was not necessarily limited to Kyoto only. About the beginning of the Kamakura period there existed a centre of refinement in the northern part of Japan: namely, in the province of Osiu. There a great feudal lord had his establishments at his seat of government, and all their surroundings, made in imitation of Kyoto, and from what remains there now of old objects, and also from the old map of the place, we can judge very well in what a flourishing state that capital of the feudal chieftain must have been before it was crushed by the invading forces of Yoritomo the first Shogun.

After the Kamakura period, the Ashikaga period comes in for about two and a half centuries. During this time the chief seat of the Shogun Governments was in Kyoto, side by side with the Imperial Court, though there was also a kind of branch Government in Kamakura. In the early part of this period the country was not yet ripe for general progress in art; but from the beginning of the fifteenth century most of the Shoguns of the epoch extended much patronage towards art, especially in pictures, several of them being artists of no mean ability themselves. It was then that Japan produced. many eminent artists, such as Cho-densu, Siubun, Sessiu, Siugetsu, Sotan, Masanobu, Motonobu, Sesson, and many others, whose masterpieces we are proud to show to any other nations to-day, and whose names are immortal in our annals. Their styles, indeed, were not identical, but, taken as a whole, they were akin to one another, and differed from their predecessors