Untitled

LACQUEE-WARE AND PAPEE. 461
most offhand way the native artist will dash off vast decorative compositions, in which
all the parts are perfectly balanced, and symmetry secured without a repetition of forms.
Even in strewing the floors with many-coloured sands, the common people, who
are by no means artists by profession, improvise ornamental patterns of surprising
truth and lightness. Design enters into the ordinary course of instruction, and
the native of Nip-pon is always ready with his pencil. Shrewd observers of nature,
the Japanese artists display remarkable skill in seizing the characteristic traits and
attitudes of individuals, and the shafts of their satire are aimed not only at the
Fig.
212. RATS AS RICE MERCHANTS.
Fac-simile from a Japanese Album.
despised bodzes, but also at the grandees, always represented, however, under the
figure of foxes, apes, wild boars, or such like animals.
Although Japan received its first lessons in Art from China, it soon escaped
from mere servile imitation, retaining nothing but the method and processes, which
it applied to the objects of its choice with a perfect freedom, full of sprightliness
and endless fancy. Even in the traditional art of the Buddhist monasteries the
motives imposed by religion are reproduced with a surprising variety of details.
But if the human figure is always treated with great energy of action, an astonish-
ing intensity of expression and a remarkable appreciation of types and characters,
it is seldom that the limits of the grotesque are not passed, so that the representation
usually degenerates into caricature. At the Exhibitions of 18(57 and 1878, Japanese