DISTANT REALM

THERE is no substitute for actuality, yet art books can JL do wonders in bringing home to space-bound men impossibly far realms of art. This spring, with the publication of Japan: Ancient Buddhist Paintings, the New York Graphic Society offered U.S. readers 32 color reproductions of masterpieces of Japanese religious art that are rolled up in scrolls, tucked away in mountain monasteries or otherwise unavailable to all but the most determined travelers. Like all too many art books, Japan is expensive ($18), and its text contributes little or nothing to the pictures. But any one of the big (14 in. by 20 in.) color plates is worthy of a frame and a wall. Strangest picture in the book, perhaps, is a 7th century panel representing the willful martyrdom of a future Buddha. It illustrates the legend of a saintly youth who comes upon a family of starving tigers. Filled with pity, he flings himself down from the top of a cliff, offering his own body to feed the tigers' hunger. The story is told consecutively in a single picture, as in the case of some modern comic strips and many early Renaissance paintings. With Buddhist confidence in reincarnation on a higher plane, the youth gives himself up as simply as a candle flame pinched from its wick. He lies peacefully under the tigers' tearing fangs. The whole dark and wild episode is painted with the utmost delicacy, even serenity. It looks like the imaginary scenes that small boys find among the ashes of dying fires.

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