Where landscapes or trees are to be painted upon a single panel, panels on each side of it may be conveniently placed and the painting designed upon the central panel in connection with the two additional ones used for elaboration. In this way, when the side panels are withdrawn the effect is as though such landscape or trees were seen through an open window, and all cramped or forced appearance is avoided. The _Ukiyo e_ artists practiced a similar method in their _hashirakake_ or long, narrow, panel-like prints of men and women used for decorating upright beams in a room.
The literature of art abounds in instances illustrative of correct proportion and design.
The artist Buncho being requested to paint a crow flying across a _fusuma_ or four sliding door-like panels, after much reflection painted the bird in the act of disappearing from the last of these subdivisions, the space of the other three suggesting the rapid flight which the crow had already accomplished, and the law of proportion (ICHI) or orderly arrangement thus observed was universally applauded.
In the wooded graveyard of the temple at Ike-gami, where the tombs of so many of the Kano artists (including Tanyu) are to be found, is a stone marking the grave of a Kano painter who, having executed an order for a picture and his patron observing that it was lacking in design and that he must add a certain gold effect in the color scheme, rather than violate his own convictions of what he considered proper design, first refused to comply and then committed _hara kiri._
A canon of Japanese art which is at the base of one of the peculiar charms of Japanese pictures, not merely in the whole composition but also in minute details that might escape the attention at first glance, requires that there should be in every painting the sentiment of active and passive, light and shade. This is called IN YO and is based upon the principle of contrast for heightening effects. The term IN YO originated in the earliest doctrines of Chinese philosophy and has always existed in the art language of the Orient. It signifies darkness (IN) and light (YO), negative and positive, female and male, passive and active, lower and upper, even and odd. This term is of constant application in painting. A picture with its lights and shades properly distributed conforms to the law of IN YO. Two flying crows, one with its beak closed, the other with its beak open; two tigers in their lair, one with the mouth shut, the other with the teeth showing; or two dragons, one ascending to the sky and the other descending to the ocean, illustrate phases of IN YO. Mountains, waves, the petals of a flower, the eyeball of a bird, rocks, trees—all have their negative and positive aspects, their IN and their YO. The observance of this canon secures not only the effective contrast of light and shade in a picture but also an equally striking contrast between the component parts of each object composing it.