SPECIAL SUBJECTS
become so extreme as to lose suggestiveness, and the balance of his decorative scheme is disturbed by unduly large masses of metal or mother-of-pearl. When he avoids these faults his work deserves the admiration it received in his time, as well as the homage of a numerous school of imitators down to modern eras. Certainly prior to his epoch no expert of applied art had formed any comparable conception of the effect of skilful spacing and the charm of irregularly yet symmetrically distributed decoration. Yet, even in that respect, neither Kwōyetsu nor Kwōrin can be called an originator. The source from which they derived inspiration is easily discovered by any one examining the illuminated sutras of the twelfth century.
The Tokugawa times were the golden era of lacquer production. Not only did the universal popularity of the tea-clubs and the incense cult create a keen demand for the finest work, but also the interior decoration of the mausolea at Shiba and Nikko offered an unprecedented field for the art. In these mausolea are to be found the most splendid applications of lacquered decoration that the world has ever seen, nor is it at all likely that anything on a comparable scale of grandeur and beauty will ever again be produced. Japanese connoisseurs hold that the summit of development was reached at the end of the seventeenth century under the rule of the fifth Shōgun, Tsunayoshi (1680–1709),—that famous era of Genroku, memorable for so much that was bad and so much that was good in Japanese civilisation. Such was the reputation acquired by work of that time that whenever in later days a date had to be assigned to any specimen of exceptionally fine quality, the disposition of connoisseurs was to refer it to the
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