There are many quaint aids to artistic effects from time immemorial well known to and favored by the old Chinese painters and still successfully practiced in Japan. Probably the larger number of these are employed in the technical construction of the Four Paragons (p. 66 _et seq.)._ There are still others: as, for instance, the fish-scale pattern _(Plate XIX)_, used in painting the clustered needles of the pine tree or the bending branches of the willow; the stork’s leg for pine tree branches _(Plate XIX)_; the gourd for the head and elongated jaws of the dragon; the egg for the body of a bird (_Plate XXII_; the stag horn for all sorts of interlacing branches; the turtle back pattern or the dragon’s scales for the pine tree bark. In addition to these, the general shapes of certain of the Chinese written characters are invoked for reproducing winding streams _(Plate XX)_, groupings of rocks, meadow, swamp, and other grasses and the like.
Of course the exact shape of the various Chinese characters here referred to must not be actually painted into the composition but merely the sentiment of their respective forms recalled. They are simply practical memory aids to desired effects.
It is the spirit of the character rather than its exact shape which should control; the order of the painted strokes being that of the written character, its sentiment or general shape is thus reproduced.
In this connection I would allude to criticisms or judgments upon Japanese painting in which particular stress is laid upon its calligraphic quality. If any Japanese artist was seriously informed that his method of painting was calligraphic, he would explode with mirth. There are several ways to account for this rather wide-spread error. Much that is written about Japanese painting and its calligraphy is but the repetition by one author of what he has taken on trust from another, an effective way sometimes of spreading misinformation. It is quite true that the assiduous study of Chinese writing (SHO) is an essential part of thorough art education in Japan, not, however, for the purpose of learning to paint as one writes, or of introducing written characters more or less transformed into a painting (if that be what is meant by “calligraphic”), but simply to give the artist freedom, confidence, and grace in the handling of the brush and to train his eye to form and balance and to acquire both strength of stroke and a knowledge of the sequence of strokes. To write in Chinese after the manner of professionals (SHO KA) is truly a great art, esteemed even higher than painting; it requires thirty years of constant practice to become expert therein, and it has many laws and profound principles which, if mastered by artists, will enable them to be all the greater in their painting, and many Japanese artists have justly prided themselves upon being expert writers of the Chinese characters. Okyo practiced daily for three years the writing of two intricate characters standing for his name, until he was satisfied with their forms, but there is nothing calligraphic about any of Okyo’s painting.