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OVE of Nature, inherent and profound, gave to Japan her national religion, nourished her patriotism, and was the quickening source of all her art. "The spirit continually penetrated by Nature," says Michel Revon, "imitates her and reproduces her little by little. It deifies her benevolent powers, it would retrace the image of her beauty." Therefore, Religion and Art are born together.

In Nara, the ancient capital and sanctuary of Shinto, moss-grown before the foundation of Kyoto in 794, arose the national art. The glory of Nara has departed, but her beauty remains enhanced by time, and a peace as of Nirvana broods in the still glades, where votive lanterns, time-worn and gray, seem one with the stones scattered beneath the trees—sacred vestiges of temples and pagodas. The gentle deer pause, gazing questioningly at the passing pilgrim, and the vibration of the temple bells steals solemnly across the plain.

Yamato, the province in which Nara is situated, was the scene of many an old historical romance and mythological legend. Here flourished the princes Fire-Shine and Fire-Fade, the mysterious ancestors of the Mikados, and Yamato was the centre of the story of the gigantic crow and miraculous sword, told in the "Genji Monogatari" and immortalized by Hokusai in his wonderful surimono. The word signifies "great august country" and is the oldest name for Japan, still remaining the classic and poetic title of the "Land of the Rising Sun."

Corea by reason of her proximity became the Gateway through which Art emanating in India and China passed to Japan, to a nation worthy to receive the sacred vehicle, and fostering it through the centuries, won for itself an inalienable, æsthetic birthright.

Yamato was the fountain of art and the cradle of freedom, for in her Bushido (chivalry) was born: and as the Grecian phalanx withstood the shock of battle "For Altar and Home," so faith in Yamato Damashii, the spirit of Japan—a sacred flame fed by mystic lore, by love of country and devotion to the sacred person of the Mikado—inspired the heart of the Japanese, making him invincible in war.

The symbol of Bushido is the cherry blossom, and as its perfume is distilled, filling the air with fragrance, so says Nitobe "it breathed into our nostrils the breath of life—Yamato Damashii!" An ancient poem, paraphrased by Sir Edwin Arnold, gives the beautiful significance of the Sakura (cherry bloom).

"If it shall happen that one

Ask'd the Japanese heart

How may we know it apart?

Point where the cherry blooms wave

Lightsome and bright, and brave.

In the gold of the morning sun—

There is the Japanese heart."

Though art entered Japan through Corea, its earliest remains at Nara show little trace of Corean influence. The wall paintings at Horiuji are grandly conceived and suggest a resemblance to those of Ajunta Cave in India, though they are more perfect in detail. Artists from India flocked to China and left their impression in the celestial soil, and through Corea the impulse was imparted to Japan.

Amongst these came the mysterious Sakya-Mouni, filled with occult power, and other great leaders both in religion and art who exerted an influence far-reaching and profound.

Art in Japan was not of lowly birth. Her cradle was in palaces and priests and princes stood as her sponsors, as in Europe the grandest monuments were conceived under the inspiration of religion. Thus the building of the great temple of Saidaiji in Nara, before the foundation of Kyoto, was carried through on a wave of religious and artistic fervour. The court ladies, we are told by Mr. Okakura, carried handfuls of clay on their brocade sleeves, and they flung their choicest ornaments of gold and silver into the molten sea, stirred by the hands of the Empress Koken, which was to materialize as the guardian deity of the sanctuary.

The priestly hierarchy reigned supreme, and for centuries dominated the art of Japan. At Nara, life was devoted to newly introduced Buddhism and to its service was consecrated everything that made living beautiful and poetic.

So the Græco-Buddhist art of India, infiltrated in its passage through China with her technique, principles and forceful conventions—the fusion of the majestic brush stroke of the Chinese with the grace and delicacy of touch of a people temperamentally æsthetic—created in the course of centuries the national art of Japan.

As in Europe, in these early days at Nara, landscape painting was a purely subordinate art, introduced incidentally as the background to portraiture, or as an accessory in some tableau of princely ceremonial. Yet in delicate precision of technique in trees and rocks, and strange convention of clouds, we see prefigured the later development, and in the early paintings where landscape was as yet only an episode in the drama of pageantry, or the half mystic environment of some pictured sage or seer, the discerning student may discover buds of promise that later were to flower into majestic beauty under the brushes of the artists of Tosa and Kano, of Korin and Shijo and the other great schools of painting in Japan.

The Chinese and Buddist schools of art dated from the sixth century, and in Japan the Emperor Heizei founded an imperial academy at Kyoto in 808. Religious fervour, glowing in the paintings of the Buddhist school, restricted the motives of its masters, but the Chinese range of subject was unlimited, including landscapes, birds and flowers conventionally painted in quiet tones.

At Kyoto the ninth century was made glorious by Kose Kanaoka, whose genius kindled a living flame which shrivelled the coldly spiritual art of priest-ridden Nara. Like Raphael he breathed into his portraits the breath of life; his touch was vital, and legends tell us how the horses of Kanaoka leaped from their kakemono—for thus an imaginative people love to wreathe with imagery the altar of Fame.

The priestly hierarchy at Nara long dominated politics and art but in the dawn of the tenth century a revolt set in. The princes of the noble house of Fujiwara, which had steadily increased in power since the seventh century, became the patrons of art. In the Fujiwara period the national style asserted itself and the school of Yamato, founded by Motomitsu in the eleventh century, was the outcome of the movement which lead finally to the foundation of Tosa, the school which, with its august rived Kano, dominated for centuries the art of Japan.

The artists of the school of Yamato were ignorant of perspective. Their paintings showed weird mountains and castles in the air, the spaces filled in with lines of mist. They loved to travesty humanity and these quaint burlesques, in which animals and insects take the parts of men and women, reveal that rollicking humour, which is a national trait—the gift of laughter-loving gods to their joyous votaries.

National art with the Japanese is the materialization of faith. The religion of Buddha, modified to meet the needs of a sensitive and highly imaginative race, became the profoundest source of inspiration; and this adaptation of an alien faith was consummated by the guardians of the national religion, who, unable to resist the rush of Buddhistic tendencies, wisely temporized—this perhaps being the earliest manifestation of international jiu-jutsu (that ingeniously ironical system which utilizes the force of its opponent in its own defence).

Through the medium of a "mysterious subtle vehicle," expounded to his disciples by the mystic apostle Kobo Daishi, the national gods became reincarnated in the Buddhist Pantheon, the alien doctrines became national, and throughout Japan Buddha reigned supreme, crowned with the lotus blossom of Art.

Reincarnation

O Pearl of Faith! thou perfect Lotus bloom

Rising to light from depths of slime and mire!

Type of the Soul—that merged in sin and gloom

Struggles to soar from higher slopes to higher:—

Namu Amida Buddha.

Pure flower of Prayer, whose petals dare enthrone

The Buddha and the Blest who sit at ease

In Paradise—reaping the harvest sown

On this earth journey—everlasting peace:—

Namu Amida Buddha.

Blossoms that never more shall fade or fall

Soul of the Lotus! Life that shall endure,

And wing its flight from sphere to sphere, till all

Is lost in Love and Bliss for evermore:—

Namu Amida Buddha.