Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 7/Chapter 7
Chapter VII
SCULPTURE ON SWORD-FURNITURE
(Continued)
It is certainly a close approximation to the truth to say that before the time of Yūjō, the first of the Goto masters,—that is to say, before the year 1469, when he began to develop the style for which he afterwards became so famous,—chiselling in relief was not applied to the decoration of sword-ornaments in such a manner as to command public admiration. Some investigators carry the statement still farther: they allege that Gotō Yūjō actually invented relief carving. Possibly the assertion is true if it is understood in the sense of relief without the aid of the repoussé process. Decoration in relief had been applied to armour by the Miyōchin masters for certainly three centuries, and perhaps four, before Yūjō's era. But lightness being of prime importance in the case of armour, the artist naturally had recourse to the repoussé method for the raised parts of the decorative design, and though he used his chisel for finishing off the work, he never attempted to cut the design out of the solid metal. It was left to Gotō Yūjō to develop the potentialities of that method. An element of confusion has been introduced into this chapter of history by writers who represent the celebrated Kaneiye as having chiselled sword-guards with designs in relief before the time of Hūjō. M. Louis Gonse, for example, says that Kaneiye worked at the close of the fourteenth century, and describes guards by him which show that chiselling in relief was then practised. Kaneiye certainly did employ the method of relief chiselling in manufacturing guards. He worked, however, not at the end of the fourteenth century, but at the beginning of the sixteenth. There is, indeed, a little uncertainty about his date. Some records call him a pupil of Nobuiye, which would place him about the year 1520; others assign him to a slightly earlier epoch. At all events Gotō Yūjō had been working for at least twenty or thirty years before Kaneiye's time, and the true historical relation in which the two men stand to each other is that Yūjō invented relief chiselling and Kaneiye was the first to apply it to sword-guards.
For Gotō Yūjō was not a guard-maker. He never chiselled a guard, but devoted his attention solely to the smaller mounts, namely, the menuki, the kōgai, and the kozuka. It has been stated by European writers that from the artistic stand-point the guard is the most important part of the sword's furniture. That view would not be admitted by any Japanese connoisseur. In Japan, from the time when glyptic artists began to occupy themselves with the decoration of sword-mounts, a clear distinction was always drawn between the essential and the ornamental parts. The former comprised the guard, the ring, and the crown (fuchi and kashira) of the hilt; the latter, the menuki, the kōgai, and the kozuka. Until the seventeenth century the three last were known as the kitsu-dokoro (three parts), and though the distinction ceased to be rigid in later times, it was carefully observed by the early Goto masters as well as by their contemporaries, and every connoisseur knows that on the mitsu-dokoro are to be found the most delicate workmanship and the most elaborate decorative effects in the whole range of Japanese metal work. The guard has special attractions which cannot be imparted to such comparatively petty objects as the kogai or the kozuka, but it is not to the guard alone or chiefly that the student must look for the history of this branch of Japanese art.
Gotō Yūjō's skill was expended almost solely on the menuki and the kōgai. So far as concerns the menuki, he cannot be credited with much originality. During certainly two, and probably seven, centuries before his time, the menuki had received attention at the hands of glyptic experts, and had been variously decorated according to the fancy of the swordsman or the genius of the artist. Yūjō merely brought to the chiselling of these little objects a new quality of skill, and to the designing of their forms, in his later years, a new wealth of fancy derived from the co-operation of the renowned pictorial artist Kano Masanobu. Besides, although the beauty of the menuki was incalculably increased by Yūjō, he made no radical change in the method of chiselling it. In his hands it remained what it had been in the hands of his predecessors, either repoussé work with fine surface chiselling, or, in rare cases, a solid carving. It has been argued that since the kozuka and the kogai had a place in the scabbard of the waki-zashi for at least two centuries before Goto's time, and since such unrivalled armourers as the Miyōchin no Judai (the Ten Miyōchin generations) as well as two of the Six Giyoshi, were his predecessors, the ornamentation of these portions of the sword-furniture must have occupied the hands of experts prior to the fifteenth century. Critics holding that view would place Yūjō at the apex of an art movement rather than regard him as its originator, and would derive his great reputation from his excellence rather than from his originality. It must be admitted that such a theory is not inconsistent with facts which confront the student in other developments of Japanese art. However, the sum of accessible knowledge seems to be that never until Yūjō began to work did the art of chiselling in relief become a really admirable accomplishment. Concerning the question whether Yūjō was a great expert, the answer given by many foreign connoisseurs is negative. While granting that he stood at the head of a school, they allege that it was the classical school; in other words, a school which did not conceive the possibility, or perhaps admit the propriety, of aiming at such qualities as softness, delicacy, and pictorial ideality in the decoration of metallic surfaces, especially when the object to be decorated formed part of a weapon of war. Some even go so far as to assert that the severe formality and narrow range of the early Goto experts are as far removed from the graceful tenderness and wide repertoire of the eighteenth-century artists—the Hamano and the Ishiguro, for example—as are the three chisels of Ichikawa Hirosuke from the three hundred of Kashiwaya Nagatsune.[1] Now it is quite true that Yūjō conceived the dragon and the Dog of Fo (shishi) to be the most appropriate objects for representation on arms and armour. The dragon pre-eminently occupied his attention. He devoted infinite care to the modelling of every part of the monster, and elaborated for himself exact rules as to the shape and dimensions of the claws, the horns, the scales, the teeth, the ears, and the armature. There are points here which probably lie beyond the appreciation of a foreign connoisseur, who regards the dragon as on the whole an ugly reptile, and can scarcely accept it as an agreeable element of any decorative scheme. But to a Japanese artist or lover of art the dragon, with its fierce vitality and mysterious suggestions, is a creature of the highest interest. The painter and the sculptor alike understood the immense difficulty of depicting or chiselling it so that it should have the semblance of ferocious vigour and implacable malignity, not the appearance of a limp, fantastic worm. All the Goto masters made a close study of the dragon. They showed it in various shapes and positions, and in chiselling it they acquired certain mannerisms from which skilled connoisseurs in later ages constructed an alphabet of identification. Thus, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was published a two-volume book (Kinko Kantei Hiketsu, or the secrets of judging works in gold), containing minute analyses of what are known as the hiden (secret formulas) of the first fifteen Goto masters. It is a compilation of interest, as showing the lovingly appreciative attention bestowed upon such objects by Japanese connoisseurs. But almost everything is based upon the dragon, and certainly an exceptional instinct is required for undertaking a careful study of that fabulous and repellent monster, from the contours of his curves and the angles of his claws to the length of his antennæ, the set of his ears, and the section of his horns. If an estimate of the Goto family's work were derived from the contents of that brochure alone, it would be necessary to endorse the verdict which accuses them of classical severity and narrow range of motive. But there is other and more trustworthy evidence—the Manpo Zensho (complete treatise on all precious things), published in 1711, as well as a manuscript handed down through six generations of a family whose successive representatives were professional connoisseurs of sword-blades and sword-furniture. It will be worth while to quote from these compilations some of the information furnished about the works of the first six Goto masters, because not only is an insight thus obtained into Japanese views about these products of art, but also much is learned about the decorative motives chosen by these six experts between the years 1460 and 1631:—
1. Among authenticated specimens of the first six Goto masters, there are not any that have a copper ground with trees, reeds, shrubs, or flowers chiselled in relief.
2. Specimens decorated with various kinds of crustacea, or with landscapes in which living creatures do not appear, are considered of inferior quality. The same remark applies to kōgai and menuki chiselled with scattered-leaf designs only.
3. Each stroke of the chisel must be clean and even, showing everywhere strength and directness.
4. With regard to the objeets depicted, it is essential to observe that the faces of human beings must faithfully reflect the sentiments supposed to animate them. Under painful circumstances the faces portrayed by the Goto masters are always distressed; in joyful conditions, they are merry. Such is seldom the case in the works of the carvers of the branch houses (Waki-bori), or of men that make a commerce of their art (Machi-bori, or street-carvers, and Inari-bori, a term of uncertain origin). The Goto oxen are always sleek and fairly proportioned, not the gaunt, bony animals of lesser experts. Their horses are full-girthed, strong, and spirited. Their crows, even the blackest, have a peculiar light-hued mark at the stem of the feathers, and their white herons a gold point under the eye. The chiselling of the dragons' faces constitutes a special distinction, and the same remark applies to the Kara-shishi (Dog of Fo). Water from which a dragon emerges is always rough and has many wave-crests, but water above which the ama-ryo flies has few crests; and water over which the moon shines is calm, with only occasional ripples. The carp also springs from quiet water, and where flower-rafts are shown floating on a lake or river, the whole scene, from the placid water to the softly contoured rocks, is restful and smiling. Association of blossom-boats with beetling cliffs, angry waves, and swirling currents, is the false conception of a bad artist. Flowers and shrubs, however, do not appear much on the works of the Goto masters, or, if they appear, belong to a comparatively low grade of chiselling. Still there is a fine specimen of Yūjō's work that forms an exception to this rule. It is a kōgai of shakudo, having a single chrysanthemum carved in relief, and a tanzaku (tablet) on which the following couplet is inlaid with gold:—
"Until the dew flake,
Beading this blossom's gold,
Swells to a broad lake,
Age after age untold
Joy to joy manifold
Add for thy sweet sake."Other exceptions are the following specimens, which, if the great masters' works be divided in three classes with three grades in each class, must stand in the first grade of the second class, (1) A kōgai by Yūjō, on which the design is a rain-pipe with a wistaria clasping it. The chiselling is in high relief, the creeper and the pipe are plated with gold, and the other parts are in shakudo. (2) A kozuka of shakudo by Yūjō, having for design a tuft of susuki (Eularia Japonica) in silver and gold under a shibuichi moon. The scene represents the Moor of Musashi. (3) A kōgai of shakudo by Yūjō, on which the design is a bamboo water-pipe, having beside it eight Kiri (Paulownia) blossoms within a circle.
An idea of the extreme delicacy of Yūjō's chiselling may be formed from a celebrated work of his, a peach-kernel upon which he carved the twenty-one Shrines of Sanno, standing among trees peopled by a multitude of monkeys.
A favourite form of menuki chiselled by the Goto masters was a dragon coiled round a two-edged sword (called kuri-kara-ryu). In good specimens of these menuki the sword passes perfectly straight through the coils of the dragon, and the blade flashes. The slightest deviation from the straight line is a blemish.
Among authenticated specimens of the first six Goto masters' works the following may be mentioned:—
1. A kōgai, kozuka, and a pair of menuki, en suite, by Yūjō. Each of the menuki is a group of five dragons; on the kozuka and kōgai ten dragons each are chiselled. This is a splendid work.
2. A pair of menuki, the design being Tawara Toda riding on a dragon to meet the giant centipede, which is seen emerging from a mountain.
3. A kōgai, kozuka and pair of menuki by Yūjō, decorated with thirty shishi, five on each of the menuki, and ten each on the kozuka and kōgai. A splendid work.
4. A kōgai having a spray of peony chiselled in relief and a cat playing with a butterfly.
5. Menuki by Yūjō; a group of crows.
6. A kōgai, having for design a hen keeping her chicks warm under snow-laden bamboos.
7. A kōgai, having a cock-fight chiselled in relief.
8. A kozuka; the design a hawk striking a pheasant, and a hunter carrying a game-bag. The menuki, en suite, are in the form of game-bags containing pheasants.
9. Menuki in the form of an eagle swooping on a monkey.
10. A kōgai having five wild geese chiselled on it.
SWORD GUARDS.
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1. By Tsuchiya Yasuchika. |
4. By Hamano Kōzui. |
7. By Hagidani Katahei. |
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11. A kōgai, having for design a sea-scape (Akogi-no-ura), with a fishing-boat in the foreground, the fisherman throwing a net.
12. A kōgai, having for design the scene in the Gem-pei wars, where Kumagaye flies from Atsumori.
13. A kozuka with the Funa-Benkei design (i.e. the scene where, Yoshitsune's boat being overtaken by a storm during his flight from Yoritomo's emissaries, Benkei reads a verse from a sutra to still the waves and exorcise the ghost of Taira no Tomomori, which hovers over the water.)
14. Menuki in the form of Taiko-bo seated on a rock and fishing with a straight hook.
15. A kozuka, having the design of a wrestling-match between Daikoku and Hotei, with Yebisu acting as umpire and Fukurokujin looking on; all have laughing faces.
16. Kōgai and menuki en suite; the kōgai having for design a mermaid, with human face and the body of a fish; the menuki being in the form of the dragon deity and an angel.
17. A kozuka, by Yūjō; the design, Shōki (the demon-slayer) riding on a tiger, pursuing with drawn sword the imps of pestilence (yakujin). A splendid work.
18. A kōgai, with Daruma crossing the sea on a rush-leaf (ashi-no-ha).
19. A kōgai and menuki en suite. On the kōgai is chiselled the celebrated priest Hijiri. He has taken off his wallet and is sitting on a rock tying his sandal. The menuki show him in pursuit of the demon of Adachi-ga-hara.
20. A kozuka with Fukki (prehistoric Chinese Emperor) and Shinno (the first physician) chiselled in relief. Fukki has a girdle of leaves, and Shinno is tasting an herb.
21. A kōgai showing the omkizashi of the courtesan Tora, who being summoned to a feast by the great Wada Yoshimori, and desired to hand the wine-cup to the person she deemed most honourable, gave it to Jinro, one of the Soga brothers, then a humble ronin (samurai out of service).
22. A kozuka, showing the capture of Tosabo (Yoshitsune's would-be assassin) by Benkei. The latter has leaped upon Tosabo's horse from behind, and is in the act of drawing Tosabo's sword to kill him with his own weapon.
23. Menuki in the form of Idaten pursuing Sokushiki, who has stolen some Buddhist relics.
24. Menuki; one representing Watanabe no Tsuna in full armour, drawing his sword as the demon seizes his helmet; the other, a battle-steed without a saddle.
25. Kōgai, by Yūjō, on which is chiselled a night view of the celebrated landscape Shōjō in wet weather. Two figures are seen, both wearing straw rain-coats. The foremost, a young man, carries a torch; the other, an old man, follows. A splendid work.
26. Menuki, one representing the fabulous Nuye (a monster with the head of a monkey, the body of a tiger, and the tail of a serpent); the other, Yorimasa, with bow and arrow.
27. Menuki, by Yūjō; the Sambaso—a dancing figure in high relief; the design on the surcoat, sprays of Paulownai in relief to represent embroidery; the pattern on the skirt, pines and cranes, inlaid to represent dying. A very fine work.
28. Kōgai, having the koshin design (the three sacred monkeys). Yujo's second-class work.
29. A kōgai; the design, three silver trout strung on a spray of willow.
30. Menuki, a spider catching a bee.
31. Kozuka, the genji-guruma: a cart drawn by an ox and laden with a basket of convolvulus flowers.
32. Kozuka, a fisherman drawing up the image of Yakushi in his net.
33. Menuki, by Yūjō; the story of Anchin and Kiyohime, represented by a bronze bell with a gold dragon coiled round it. A splendid work.
Many other specimens are mentioned,—the Dragon King riding on a carp; a tenniu reading a sutra; fishing with cormorants at Nagara; Asaina and the demon trying their strength; fishing by flash-light; a child catching a crab; Fukurokuju feeding his crane; Kengiu and Shokujo; Choryo and Sekiko; Nō dancers; long-armed apes clutching at the moon's reflection; lobsters; insects of various kinds; a rat trapped by a clam; cats catching rats; rats eating mochi; puppy dogs playing with empty shells or holding fans in their teeth; a child setting a dog at a blind man; bulls fighting; oxen ploughing; flower-rafts floating down rivers; carp leaping up waterfalls; various scenes from the twenty-four acts of filial piety, and so on. In short, these records show that the first six Goto masters had a very large repertoire of subjects, and that it is altogether a mistake to speak of their productions as severely classical, or of their range of decorative motives as limited. They differed, of course, in the quality of their work, the third representative, Joshiu, being notably the coarsest and roughest chiseller among them. It is a theory implicitly believed in Japan that an artist's moral nature is reflected in his productions. Joshiu was a big, stalwart soldier. He fell in battle, the end he had always desired, and there is certainly something of the bluff man-at-arms in his style of carving. His most elaborate effort is said to have been a pair of menuki in the form of a procession of golden ants carrying silver eggs. But he preferred fierce dragons and angry shishi. His son Kwōjō, the fourth representative, who worked from 1550 to 1620, is distinguished for precisely the quality which his father lacked, extreme accuracy of detail and delicacy of style. Up to Kwōjō's time, that is to say, during the era of the first three Goto masters, the iroye (literally, colour-picture) process, or "picking out" with metal different from that of the general design, was somewhat clumsy. The preparation of efficient solder not being understood, the expert had to pin each tiny plate of gold, silver, or copper in its place. He accomplished this with such dexterity that the rivets were not visible, but really delicate work could not be done. In Kwōjō's time a solder was discovered so good that a piece of metal fixed with it could be afterwards chiselled in loco. The use of this ro (literally, wax), as the Japanese called it, made an immense difference in the quality of detail chiselling, and the uttori iroye (riveted plating) of the first Goto experts was finally abandoned.
It is unnecessary to enter into any further analysis of the Goto masters' work. What has been said above of the first six generations applies to the methods of all their successors. The influence exercised by the family and its branches in this particular sphere of Japanese art was enormous. Until the time of Kwōjō and Tokujō sword-mounts were valued solely for their uses: the idea of collecting and treasuring them as objects of art does not appear to have occurred to any dilettante. But when the reign of peace inaugurated by the Tokugawa regents gave people leisure to think of the sword's furniture as much as of its blade, it began to be the fashion to make collections of the beautiful specimens of sculpture in metal, then produced in large quantities in the capitals of many of the fifes; and from that era until the present, it was always considered that the basis of every good collection must be a series representing the works of the first fourteen Goto experts, from Yūjō to Keijō. Any careful student of the subject who has had an opportunity of examining the splendid works of other great masters, will be disposed to rebel against the factitious prominence thus assigned to the productions of the Goto,—the iye-bori, or "carvings of the family," as they are called. Yet the Japanese verdict is probably correct, for the foundation of this branch of art is undoubtedly relief-chiselling, and whether the Goto masters originated that style or merely raised it from a condition of tentative inferiority to a state of the highest perfection, the credit belongs to them of having demonstrated its capabilities, and thus opened to Japanese sculptors a path leading to results absolutely unrivalled in the corresponding work, of other nations. It is worth while to note here that at the beginning of the present century a kōgai, a kozuka or a pair of menuki authenticated as fine specimens of an early Goto master, commanded a price of from £8 to £40.
Recapitulating the art relations of the Goto's work, the broad facts are that they introduced the style of carving in relief without the aid of repoussé; that they invented, or, at all events, raised to an admirable grade, the nanako grounds which form such beautiful fields for metal sculpture of every kind; that they devised the method of "picking out," or plating with various metals in order to produce pictorial effects; and that they carried the process of gold inlaying to a point of delicacy far beyond the conception of previous artists. It is curious that this last development should stand chiefly to the credit of the third representative, Jōshiu, otherwise a comparatively rough expert.
Not until the time of Tokujō, the fifth of the Goto masters, who worked from 1561 to 1631, is there any evidence that guards or fuchi-gashira were among the productions of the family, and, on the whole, their work in that particular line may be dismissed as inappreciable. In fact, guard-making remained for a long time the special business of the armourer, and the method of decoration adopted was either to impart to the outline of the guard some quaint shape, or to weld it in such a manner that the surface presented the appearance of wood graining, or to decorate it with designs chiselled à jour. As to the first method, nothing need be said: it was a device within the range of the most ordinary skill. But the wood-grain (mokume) surface must be classed among the remarkable achievements of the Japanese armourer. It seems impossible to determine when this curious tour-de-force had its origin. The oldest examples of it spoken of by Japanese connoisseurs are from the hands of Miyōchin Munesuke, who worked from 1154 to 1185 A.D. Munesuke is generally regarded as the founder of the great Miyōchin family of armourers. He was, in fact, the twentieth representative, the founder having been Munemichi, who flourished in the seventh century. But Munesuke stands so far above all his predecessors that he justly deserves to be called the father of Japanese armourers. He is the first of the Judai, or ten great generations of Miyōchin experts, ending with Muneyasu in 1380. It was he that forged Yoshitsune's magnificent suit of armour. Many of his iron guards are fine examples of the mokume-ji, or wood-grain forging which has already been described. Munesuke marked these guards Shinto go-tetsu-ren, or "five-times-forged iron of the sacred way," and it may here be added that, in common with the great experts of his family, the ideographs used in his inscriptions for guards are of the kind called kabuto-ji, or "helmet characters;" that is to say, the grass script (sosho) with curled strokes; an ornamental style of writing always employed in marking helmets. From the time of Munesuke down to the present era the production of wood-grain effects has been among the remarkable achievements of Japanese workers. The Miyōchin master used iron only. As to guards having designs chiselled à jour (sukashi-bori), it is generally believed that up to the close of the fifteenth century they were more or less roughly executed. Some connoisseurs claim that Miyōchin Nobuiye, who worked during the early part of the sixteenth century, was the first to carry this method of decoration to a point of really high excellence. Nobuiye was third of the Nochi no San-saku, or "Three Later Masters," of the Miyōchin family, and it is scarcely credible that his two immediate predecessors, Yoshimichi (1530) and Takayoshi (1490), the other two of the renowned trio, who worked during the epoch when the Goto family's skill had given new importance to the decoration of swordmounts, can have failed to produce fine guards in the sukashi style. Indeed many delicately chiselled and artistically conceived guards exist in Japan which are attributed, with apparent reason, to makers of earlier eras than Nobuiye's. But the question need not be discussed here. Nobuiye himself did not generally approve of weakening a guard by pierced carving of such an elaborate character as was subsequently adopted, nor must his methods be inferred from the numerous specimens bearing his name, since, in the first place, many of them are forgeries by makers of later epochs, and, in the second, two other experts of the same name—one of Aki, the other of Kishiu—manufactured guards some of which have been confounded with the work of the Miyōchin master. In Nobuiye's finest guards there are found two styles: first, line engraving combined with chiselling in very low relief; and secondly, decoration à jour. Guards of the former class have the surface covered with an engraved floral scroll (karakusa), among which are leaves and blossoms (generally of the Paulownia or the evening gourd) in slight relief. These works plainly show the influence which the Goto family's methods had already exercised upon the fashion of the time. In the guards with pierced decoration, the commonest designs are a network pattern (ami-gata) or a kikko diaper (tortoise-shell tessellation), and occasionally verses of poetry occur, the ideographs cut right through the metal so accurately and delicately that each character seems to be written by a skilled penman with white ink on the russet patina of the iron. Among specimens of Nobuiye's guards preserved in Japan, the sacrifice of solidity to decorative design is carried farthest in one which has in the centre a torii (sacred bird-perch) within a frame of mokko-gata (four-arched outline). The torii alone is solid, all the remaining space within the frame being cut out. Another remarkable guard by the same maker, which the inscription shows to have been forged for the notorious Anayama, has the surface covered with deep pitting, the depressions and elevations alternating on the two faces. All the guards of the Miyōchin experts, from Munesuke to Nobuiye, are slightly rough to the touch, though they present the appearance of finely finished work. This peculiarity—called by the Japanese moyashi, or fermentation—is the result of the patina-producing process. It need scarcely be said that the patina was a point of the greatest importance. The most prized variety had the colour of the azuki bean, or dark mahogany.
The chisellers of guards with decoration à jour showed a fertile fancy in choosing and inventing de- signs. Naturally their work was not uniformly good. The great majority of the inferior samurai and all the common foot-soldiers (ashigaru) had to be content with weapons on which little decorative labour had been expended. But with the nobles and the officers of rank the case was different. At their order the great armourers, and subsequently the chisellers of sword-mounts, worked with ever-increasing rivalry to produce fine guards which, while presenting an appearance of lightness and delicacy, nevertheless possessed all the elements of strength and durability necessary in a soldier's weapons. Many of these guards are interesting and valuable for the sake of the decorative ability and extraordinary technical skill that they display; but they belong, of course, to a class of artistic workmanship distinct from that of the surface-chiselled sword-mounts of later times. It may be well here to dismiss, once for all, a theory sometimes advanced by writers in Europe that many of the elaborate guards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were of cast iron. That cast-iron guards had no existence cannot be affirmed; they may sometimes have been made for weapons of the most inferior description. But the Japanese themselves deny that cast iron was ever regarded as a suitable material for a sword-guard, its liability to fracture being a fatal objection. The connoisseur—and every samurai was something of a connoisseur in matters concerning his sword—attached more importance to the tempering of the metal than to the fashion of the ornamental chiselling, and in every record of great armourers skill in forging iron heads the list of their achievements. There is a story told of a celebrated swordsman of Owari, Yagiu by name, who in the sixteenth century had fifty fine sword-guards made by the best experts of the time. He placed all the guards in a mortar, pounded them with a heavy pestle, and used only those that survived the ordeal. Subsequently Yagiu's guards came to be the fashion, and were preferred to much finer work which had not undergone the same test. There is, however, an explanation of the cast-iron theory advanced by European writers. Many of the guards sold to foreign collectors in recent times have been of cast iron, made expressly for the unwary curio-hunter. From these a deceptive inference has been drawn as to the nature of the genuine old work.[2]
In describing briefly the progress of the art from the time of its early prosperity until the present day, the most convenient method will be to follow the method of division into centuries.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Two eminently great names of this century are Nobuiye (Miyōchin) and Kaneiye, but enough has already been said about their work. It may be added here, however, that although the great Kaneiye certainly flourished at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, Japanese traditions refer to an earlier expert of the same name whom they distinguish as O-shodai Kaneiye, or the "remote first-generation Kaneiye." Nothing accurate is known about him, and the few specimens attributed to him are of such inferior quality that no interest attaches to their history.
Concerning the Miyōchin family, it is to be noted that they did not contribute much to the decoration of sword-furniture. There were essentially armourers, though they produced also many objects which do not belong to the category of arms or armour,—for example, censers, alcove-ornaments, metal mountings for palanquins, and so forth. The list of Miyōchin masters who worked in the sixteenth century includes many names,—Katsumasa, Katsuiye, Nobuyoshi, Nobusada, Muneaki, Kunishige, Muneharu, Munenori, Munehisa, etc.,—but as makers of sword-mounts they may be dismissed with the remark that they confined themselves to chiselling iron guards with pierced decoration or with wood-grained surface. The name of one, Miyōchin Fusayoshi, has been handed down to posterity on account of his skill in cutting chrysanthemums à jour; and Iyefusa, a pupil of Nobuiye, became celebrated for similar work.
In nearly all cases where an artist achieved success as a worker in metals, a number of students flocked to his workshop, and these, together with his own sons and descendants, founded a line of experts perpetuating the family's name and its style from generation to generation. The Goto and Miyōchin houses are conspicuous examples, but scores of other families swell the list. Several had their origin, and attained special fame, in the sixteenth century. Reference has already been made to the Umetada family, whose representative, Shigeyoshi, became famous at the end of the fourteenth century, working for the Ashikaga Shōgun, Yoshimitsu. A much more highly skilled artist of the same house—also called Shigeyoshi (art name, Miyōju)—chiselled guards with decoration à jour in the middle of the sixteenth century, thus bringing the Umetada family into greater repute than ever. There was a third Shigeyoshi (art name, Meishin), who, though he flourished in the seventeenth century (1630), may be mentioned here for the sake of distinctness. This last, working for the Court in Yedo, received the honorary title of Hō-kyo, and added chiselling in relief to the à jour decoration which alone had been practised by his predecessors. Thus it may be said that the Umetada family had three epochs,—its début upon the art stage at the beginning of the eleventh century when its then noble representative, Tachibana no Munechika, became the renowned swordsmith known through all time as Sanjō nō Kōkaji; its earliest remarkable connection with guard-chiselling in the days of the first Shigeyoshi (1400); and its attainment of high rank in that line when (1630) the third Shigeyoshi (Meishin) worked for the second Tokugawa Shōgun. This somewhat tedious analysis is made because great confusion has crept into the writings of European connoisseurs in the matter of the Umetada family. The reader will understand that the family did not cease to produce skilled experts after the third Shigeyoshi, but it is impossible to find space here for detailed reference except in the case of great celebrities.
The Muneta family, which gave to Japan another long line of experts, was founded in Kyōtō in 1520 by Matazayemon. At first the Muneta masters confined themselves to working in silver, but Matabei (1560), grandson of Matazayemon, having invented the style of nanako called go-no-me (as already mentioned), he and his successors, down to the middle of the century, are chiefly remembered for their skill in that kind of work. Muneta Naomichi (1660)—art name, Dochoku—was the first of the family to attain great distinction for chiselling in high relief and in the shishi-ai-bori method (recessed carving). He and his sons, Naoshige and Naomine, worked in Ōsaka, and are among the most celebrated experts of that city.
The Aoki family also came into notice in this century. It was founded (1580) by Jubei (art name, Tetsujin, i.e. worker in iron), who entered the service of the feudal chief of Higo, and settled at Hasuike in that province. Jubei is often spoken of as the successor of Kaneiye, apparently because he resembled the latter in style and was not much inferior to him in skill. He also has the credit of introducing brass into the decorative designs on iron sword-guards. But the latter specialty is more correctly associated with the name of Jingo, who worked at Yatsushiro, in the same province of Higo, in 1630. Jingo's guards have brass decoration, boldly chiselled in very high relief. They were always greatly appreciated in Japan, though their workmanship scarcely seems to merit that distinction. Jingo-tsuba came to be the generic term for all guards having brass decorative designs on an iron ground.
The Soami family was founded at the end of the fourteenth century by Masanori, but its work did not attract public attention until the time (1410) of Takatsune, who lived in Kyōtō and chiselled guards with pierced decoration. Representatives of the family were working in various parts of the country in the sixteenth century, but their productions had not yet become remarkable.
Towards the close of the century Hideyoshi, the Taikō, built at Fushimi, overlooking the beautiful valley of the Yodo River, a castle of unprecedented magnificence. The best artistic resources of the time were devoted to the interior decoration of this "Palace of Pleasure," as it was called, and a host of skilled artisans and artists assembled in Fushimi in connection with the enterprise. Few of the works executed for the Palace have survived, but the chiselling of the silver mounts on two state palanquins which stood in the vestibule show that even on such objects the highest skill of the time was expended. It is known incidentally that many experts great in the decoration of sword-mounts worked in Fushimi during the brief period—some ten years—of its prosperity, but the name of one only has been transmitted as directly associated with the place. This artist, Kanaya, evidently belonged to the artisan class, for his family name is unknown. He attained renown for chiselling landscapes, birds, foliage, and the long, feathery moorland grasses so much affected by Japanese painters and sculptors. His work is compared by Japanese connoisseurs to a moon-lit waterscape seen through an opening in a pine forest.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The seventeenth century was a period of marked development. For the first time during five hundred years the country enjoyed almost complete rest from civil wars, and there sprung up among the various fiefs keen rivalry in the fields of art and industry. One of the fiefs (Kaga) must be specially mentioned in this context. The feudal chief of that province at the time was Mayeda Toshiiye. When the Taikō turned his arms against the celebrated warrior Shibata Katsuiye, the issue of the combat depended largely upon the attitude of Mayeda Toshiiye, then a feudatory of only the second rank. Mayeda espoused the Taikō's cause, and as recompense for his fidelity received in fief the whole province of Kaga, thus becoming at once one of the wealthiest and most puissant feudatories in the Empire, while, at the same time, the remote and comparatively inaccessible position of his fief rendered him virtually independent of the government in Kyōtō or Yedo. Not unnaturally, therefore, when the tide of political fortune began to set against the Taikō's son, and when Fushimi ceased to be a centre of prosperity, a number of the artists who had settled there turned their faces to Kaga. They were received most hospitably and liberally by Mayeda Toshiiye. Kanazawa, the chief town of Kaga, became thenceforth one of the principal centres of art production in Japan, and has retained that distinction down to the present day. The most renowned of the families established there by artists emigrating from Fushimi or Kyōtō were the Kuwamura, the Goto, the Mizuno, the Koichi, the Nagayoshi, the Kuninaga, the Yoshishige, the Katsugi, the Tsuji, the Muneyoshi, and the Tadahira. To every one of these houses the Kaga chief granted liberal pensions, varying in amount from the equivalent of 3,500 yen to 250 yen annually. All the early representatives of the Kuwamura family were pupils of the Goto masters and worked in the Goto style, namely, relief chiselling in various metals with addition of gold inlaying. Moriyoshi, a pupil of Gotō Kenzō, was the first recorded member of the house, but it attained the summit of its reputation in the time (1630) of Hiroyoshi, who, under his art name of Kokō, stands in the foremost rank of sword-mount chisellers. The same description applies to the Mizuno family. Its founder, Yoshinori, learned his art under Gotō Yenjo, and neither he nor his successors made any departure from the methods of the Kyōtō masters. It may, indeed, be said that the glyptic movement in Kaga was entirely permeated by Goto influence, and that the greatest artists of this school in the seventeenth century were Hiroyoshi (Kokō), who has just been mentioned; Kuninaga (the first, not the second, of the name); Yoshishige[3] (1620), a younger brother of Kuninaga's, who, as well as Kuninaga, had studied under Gotō Takuzō; and Uji-iye (1630) of the Katsugi family, who had the official title of Gon-dayu. On the whole, however, the characteristic feature of the Kaga work may be said to have been profuse inlaying with gold. Many Japanese connoisseurs are accustomed to credit Kuninaga with having been the first to use gold inlaying in the decoration of sword-furniture. That is an historical inaccuracy. But it is certain that Kuninaga's inlaying was so fine as to become proverbial, the term Jirosaku-hori—Jirosaku was Kuninaga's personal name—being used to indicate specially delicate specimens of that nature, to whatever expert they owed their manufacture. Perhaps it will be correct to say that groove-inlaying (hon-zōgan), as distinguished from surface damascening (nuno-me-zōgan), began to be practised with marked success at the beginning of the seventeenth century, for it appears that while Kuninaga was winning admiration for such work in Kaga, Gotō Kiyoshi, his contemporary, was becoming equally famous in the same line in Yedo. The Nagayoshi family of Kaga, who began to work when Kuninaga was at the zenith of his fame, made groove-inlaying a specialty, and devoted themselves through thirteen successive generations almost entirely to that branch of the art, so that they are generally spoken of as the Kaga Zogan-ko (Inlayers of Kaga). It must be noted, further, that Kuninaga, Gotō Kiyoshi, and the Nagayoshi experts of Kaga were not the only famous inlayers of the epoch. Shōami Masanobu (1620), an artist of Kyōtō, produced iron guards with gold-inlaid pictures of the Eight Views of Omi (Lake Biwa), which were the marvel of his time; and Hosono Masamori, also of Kyōtō, working at a still earlier date,—the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century,—showed such skill in hair-line inlaying (kebori-zogan) that by some authorities he is regarded as the originator of that kind of work. Masamori would have been remembered for his chiselling in relief, even though he had not distinguished himself specially as a zogan worker. A contemporary of his, Shōami Nagatsugu, who lived at Hino in Goshiu, was the first to inlay brass with gold, silver, and shakudo, so that inlaying of that kind came to be known as Yoshiro-fū (Yoshiro style), Yoshiro being Nagatsugu's personal name. The use of brass as a field for gold or silver damascening does not, when cursorily considered, suggest fine results. But the soft and tender effects of the combination are admirable. Altogether it may be said that the development of inlaying was a feature of art progress at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The history of this century contains so many incidents of importance that it is difficult to marshal them in clear sequence. Certainly one of the most important was the founding of the Yokoya family in Yedo by Sōyo, who worked from 1621 to 1643. Sōyo is supposed to have invented the style of chiselling called kata-kiri,—that is to say, cutting the lines of a design in channels of varying depth and width, so as to suggest brush-work rather than chiselling. It is impossible to say whether Sōyo really invented this style or whether he merely brought it into public notice by his great skill. At all events, its extensive practice dates from his time, and it was unquestionably one of the most potential additions made to the art in any era. Speaking broadly, incised chiselling, which had hitherto been mere etching, became thenceforth painting. The Japanese stand quite solitary in this work. They alone among the glyptic artists of the world have carried the element of directness so thoroughly into the ornamental chiselling of metallic surfaces that every line is completed by a single stroke of the tool, and that each line has its own special value in the scale of modelling. Sōyo received a handsome pension in perpetuity from the Yedo Court. He did not confine himself to kata-kiri work, but carved in relief also with grand force. His fame is eclipsed, however, by that of his grandson Sōmin (1680–1733), whom many connoisseurs count the greatest chiseller of metal that Japan ever produced. He scarcely deserves such unqualified praise, but he was certainly a grand artist, and in some directions he has never been surpassed. Beginning life with the position of chiseller to the Yedo Court and an annual allowance—hereditary since the time of his grandfather Sōyo—equivalent to about 2,011 yen yearly, he voluntarily resigned the distinction and its associated emoluments, and devoted himself to machi-bori (literally, street carving), or working to general order. This step seems to have been inspired by pure pride of art: he desired to establish an entirely independent reputation for himself, and to owe nothing to the reputation of his family. Like Gotō Yūjō, who had obtained designs from the great painter Kano Motonobu, Sōmin sought assistance from two artists famous in his time and in all time, Tanyū and Hanabusa Itcho. His reproductions of the drawings of these masters by the kata-kiri and kebori processes were so admirable and striking that the public unanimously gave him the credit of having originated the "engraved pictorial style" (yefū kebori), though the conception of such work undoubtedly came from his grandfather Sōyo and was adopted by his father Sōchi. It is difficult to speak too highly of Sōmin's chiselling. There is life in everything that he produced. A spray of peony carved by him contrasts with similar work by other artists as a real blossom contrasts with a paper flower. Accurate examination of his floral work shows that the style of the petal and leaf carving is essentially his own, but that his stalks and branches combine the methods of the Goto and Soyo schools. Sōmin often worked in silver, especially in chiselling kozuka. It may be mentioned here that from the days of the early Goto masters it became a common custom to give a backing of pure gold to kozuka of high quality. Sōmin's work has always been so much valued by Japanese connoisseurs that few genuine specimens seem to have passed into foreign hands. A noble example was lately sold by the principal art auctioneers in London, but so little did they appreciate it that they grouped it with several ordinary kozuka and sold the whole en bloc! It is possible that many English collectors may thus be entertaining angels unawares.
The celebrated Nara family, which deserves and has received at least as much honour as the Yokoya, had its origin in the century under review. "Nara" is in this case a family name, not the name of a place. Toshiteru, an expert of Kyōtō and a pupil of the Goto school, was the first metal-chiseller of the family. He moved to Yedo in 1620, but it was not until the time of his son Toshimune (art name, Sotei) that the Nara workers began to be famous. Their style was then severe and simple, their favourite designs being crows perched on a withered branch, mandarin ducks in water, birds beside a stream, and such things. Toshiharu (art name, Sōyu, date 1680) abandoned this narrow range of subjects, and became a landscape carver of such consummate skill that the Yedo Court conferred on him the title of Yechizen no Kami, and he was thenceforth known in the world of art as Yechizen. The Nara family gave to Japan three of her greatest artists, Toshihara (1680), Toshihisa (1720) and Yasuchika (1730). The last two do not belong to the seventeenth century, but are mentioned here for the sake of convenience. These three are commonly spoken of as the Nara Sambuku-tsui, or "three pictures en suite of the Nara family." No artists stand higher in Japanese estimation. Toshiharu's art name was Sōyu; Yasuchika's was Tō-u, and Toshihisa is often called Tahei, but these appellations are not found upon their works. Yasuchika belongs really to the Tsuchiya family, but was adopted into the Nara. He ranks as the greatest of the three. They all carved in relief, but Toshihisa and Yasuchika combined the Yokoya style with their own, and carved figures, plants, flowers, birds, and landscapes with extraordinary delicacy and force. Yasuchika is sometimes called the "Kōrin" of carvers, his qualities of boldness, directness, and originality being not less marked than those of the great painter Ogata Kōrin. His works as well as those of Toshihisa have been largely imitated, but, as a Japanese connoisseur of the eighteenth century justly says, the imitations differ from the originals as widely as glass differs from diamond. The difference may be illustrated by saying that prior to the Meiji era a good sword-guard by one of the "Three Pictures" sold for the equivalent of from two hundred to four hundred yen, whereas an imitation, however skilful, was appraised at about as many sen.[4] It should be noted that a great deal of confusion exists between Toshihisa, and his teacher Toshinga. That is partly due to the fact that the second ideograph of the former's name may be read naga, but also to the fact that Toshinaga, though he has received less recognition than Toshihisa, can scarcely be called an inferior artist, and that, owing to the number of his pupils, he exercised a lasting influence on the fame of the family. Toshinaga's art name was Chikan. No less than forty-four experts of the Nara school worked between the beginning of the seventeenth and the middle of the nineteenth century, though only six of them were actual representatives of the family.
The century was remarkable for a great development of the art of chiselling à jour. That kind of decoration, as already shown, represented almost the only style of the early forgers of sword-guards, and was practised by them with much success. But they treated the guard as though it were a block of cardboard, and were content with the simple operation of piercing, so that the decorative design appeared in outline only. At the end of the sixteenth century, or the beginning of the seventeenth, a new departure was made by adding surface modelling to pierced work. The difference thus produced can be easily explained by saying that whereas a design of cherry petals, for example, took the form of a mere diaper according to the old method, it became, according to the new, a cluster of accurately shaped blossoms and leaves suspended within the circumference of the guard. Under this artistic impulse the guard soon ceased to have the character of a frame, or field, for the design, and was wholly absorbed into the latter. An immense variety of beautiful and cleverly conceived specimens then came into existence. The rim of the guard, ceasing to be rigidly circular, square, or oval, adapted itself to the demands of the design; and the carver, while taking care not to sacrifice the protective purpose of his work, allowed himself wide latitude and irregularity of shape. Thus the "ascending" and "descending" dragons, together with the clouds among which they fly, were disposed so that the backs of the monsters formed the rim of the guard; and a procession of rats pursuing each other in a circle filled all the space surrounding a central haft-socket; or a branch of cherry-bloom, or of plum-blossoms, or of pine-branches, or a cluster of all three combined, was skilfully bent into a circular medallion. Wreaths of iris, sheaves of rice, circlets of intertwined serpents, loops of crayfish, garlands of bean-sprays,—it would scarcely be possible to enumerate the multitude of notions adopted by the carvers of this school. One of the principal centres of manufacture was the province of Chōshiu, the Yamaguchi Prefecture of the present day. As early as the close of the fourteenth century, an expert called Mitsune (art name, Jokan Inshi) began to work at Suwo in that province, and founded the Nakai family. This artist and his immediate successors made no special contributions to the art; they followed the old style of decoration applied to a flat surface. But at the beginning of the seventeenth century Nobutsune, a scion of the family, moved from Suwo to Hagi in the same fief, and the work of the Nakai experts thenceforth began to attract wide attention. Nobutsune's grandson, Tomoyuki (1660, the first of that name, i.e. Zensuke, as distinguished from the second, Zembei), and above all his great-grandson, Tomotsune (1680), stand in the front rank of chisellers. They carved iron guards with the most elaborately chiselled designs à jour, involving both faces of the guard, their motives being warriors, mythological figures, birds, animals, flowers, landscapes, fish, insects, in short, every natural object that could be utilised for such a purpose. While Tomoyuki was approaching the zenith of his fame, an expert of the Umetada family, named Meiju, moved from Kyōtō to Hagi, and his grandson Nobumasa (1690) established the Okada family, which contributed several good artists to the Chōshiu school. Another and more important family whose representatives also worked at Hagi, was the Okamoto,[5] of which there were two branches, one founded at the end of the sixteenth century by Tomoharu; the other, a hundred years later, by Tomotsugu. Yet another family was the Fujii, founded contemporaneously with the later branch of the Okamoto by Kyokaze. No detailed reference need be here made to the experts that bore the names of these families. Their work was nearly all in the same style, chiselling à jour with surface modelling; but in comparatively modern times some of them abandoned that fashion and became highly skilled in relief carving of the Kyōtō school. The material used by the Chōshiu artists was invariably iron, which they tempered and treated with marked ability, the Satsuma workers alone being counted their peers in that respect. Inlaying and picking out with gold were freely resorted to in the decoration of elaborate specimens.
But it is to the Kinai family of Yechizen that the seventeenth century owes its finest examples of chiselling à jour. Remarkable as were the achievements of this family, its record is somewhat obscure. The best authorities agree, however, that the first Kinai expert worked about the year 1680,[6] and that he was succeeded by five generations of the family. They all used the mark Kinai, prefixing the ideograph Yechizen or Yechizen no Kuni, and their productions are thus far indistinguishable. But the second Kinai (1660) was incomparably the greatest expert of the family. It will scarcely be too much to say that he stands at the head of all Japanese sukashi chisellers. He carved designs à jour in iron with as much delicacy and elaboration as though the material were paper. Of course a sword-guard, which must have a certain degree of solidity and thickness, does not offer the best field for such work. It is in censers—especially clove-boilers—and incense boxes that the most wonderful examples of Kinai's skill are found. These utensils he could cast of wafer-like thinness, decorating them afterwards with pierced patterns fine as lace. Many exquisite specimens were made by him to order of the feudal chief of Yechizen, who presented them to the Court in Yedo. Thus Kinai's chefs-d'œuvre came to be called Kenjo Kinai (presentation Kinai), a term generally applied in later times to all art productions of superlative excellence. The Kinai experts are specially spoken of for supplementing pierced decoration with surface modelling. After the fame of the family had been established, all the sukashi-bori work produced in Yechizen, whether from the Kinai ateliers or not, was generally classed as Kinai-bori, though Kanemori (1680) and Chiusaku 1700), working independently, turned out many examples so good as to deserve distinct mention.
The Akao family of Yechizen must also be referred to. Its founder, Yoshitsugu, was a contemporary of the first Kinai, and worked in the same style. But it is on account of his son, also called Yoshitsugu, that the family chiefly deserves to be remembered; for this artist (1670) was the first to employ chiselling à jour in the decoration of shakudo guards. Such work had hitherto been confined to iron, but from Yoshitsugu's time it came to be applied to all metals, shakudo, shibuichi, silver, gold, and brass. This new departure may almost be said to mark an epoch, for by skilful employment of the sukashi process the artist was able to produce effects of atmosphere and space which immensely enhanced the beauty of a design.[7] Yoshitsugu[8] subsequently settled in Yedo, and was succeeded by experts of the Akao family through several generations, but none of them attained special skill.
At the time of the second Kinai, the province of Echizen possessed another artist, Kogitsune, who enjoys a great reputation in Japan. Local tradition says that, being ordered to carve a lifelike dragon for the chief of the province, he sat for ten days and nights in the open air at Mikuni, watching the whirlwinds for which that place was remarkable. At last he imagined that he saw a dragon in one of the revolving storms, and the impression was so vivid that he was able to reproduce the monster in iron exactly as he had seen it, a very unusual kind of dragon.
Before dismissing the subject of chiselling à jour in the seventeenth century, reference must be made to Umetada Muneyuki (1650), a Kyōtō expert, who did magnificent work of that nature, several of his masterpieces being made to order of the Shōgun's Court in Yedo; and also to the Ito family, founded by Masanobu in 1670. Masanobu, commonly called Tsuboya Tasuke, or "Tasuke the guard-maker," lived in Kyōtō, and won a high reputation. His son, Masatsune, however, was the artist of the family par excellence. He settled in Yedo, received the appointment of guardmaker to the Shōgun's Court, and was scarcely inferior to the second Kinai as a chiseller of decoration à jour. Representatives of the Ito family continued to work in Yedo down to the Meiji era, and one of them, to whom further reference will be made, now ranks among the masters of the era. The Ito chisellers followed the lead of Akao Yoshitsugu, and worked in shakudo, shibuichi, etc. as well as in iron.
In this context reference must be made to a school of experts who worked at Hikone in Omi province. Their style was moulded on that of Kitagawa Sōden (circ. 1640), who forged large iron guards having curved edges, and decorated them with chiselling à jour as well as surface modelling. The peculiarity of these guards was that the figures generally sculptured were those of Dutchmen, Chinese, or some of the uncouth-looking foreigners depicted in ancient Japanese encyclopedias of ethnography. The chiselling was more or less crude and clumsy, and gold damascening was usually added. Sōden used the mark Sōheishi, which is vulgarly pronounced Mogarashi. Thus his guards, and those subsequently produced at Hikone in the same style, are commonly spoken of as Mogarashi-tsuba.
Among the families which contributed materially to make the seventeenth century remarkable for masterpieces of chiselling in all grades of relief and in the round, with occasional additions, in later times, of the kata-kiri method of the Yokoya masters, a high place must be assigned to the Yoshioka of Yedo, founded by Shigehiro at the close of the sixteenth century, and brought into prominence by his son Shigetsugu, who was appointed to work for the Yedo Court in the year 1600 and died in 1653. The Yoshioka was a noble family of Fujiwara descent, and its early representatives had the titles of Bungo-no-suke and Buzen-no-suke. They did not use these titles in marking their works, but they did frequently use the title Inaba-no-suke. Attached to the employment of the latter there was a restriction characteristic of Japanese customs. The Inaba branch of the same family had a hereditary though conditional right to the high post of court councillor (goroju), and whenever an Inaba noble held that office, the Yoshioka artists were precluded from putting Inaba-no-suke on their works. The restriction happened to be inoperative in the days of Shigehiro (called also Morotsugu, and, in art circles, Sōtoku) and Shigetsugu (art name, Sōju), the latter of whom is commonly spoken of, with reference to his carvings, as Inaba-no-suke. His forte was extreme delicacy and fineness. Among the heirlooms of his family is a peach-stone carved by him after an elaborate drawing of a Japanese festival. The preparation of the stone reduced it to about two-thirds of its natural size, and on the scanty surface that remained Shigetsugu carved eight boats each carrying an elaborate festival-car, and each manned by thirty-three monkeys. Beside the water on which the boats floated there stood a grove of pine-trees, and under their shadows mandarin ducks sailed, as emblems of love and constancy. Another well-known example of his skill may be seen at the temple Zōjō-ji, in the Shiba Park (Tōkyō). It is a carving on stone, representing the Nirvana of Buddha (Nehan-ko), and it was executed immediately after the death of the second Tokugawa Shōgun (posthumous name, Tai-toku-in-den), when Shigetsugu was in his seventy-third year. The Yoshioka family have continued to work in Yedo through successive generations down to the present day, and a branch was founded in Sendai in the middle of the seventeenth century by Kiyotsugu. No novel features are presented by the Yoshioka carvings: they combine the styles of all the schools.
The Isono family, which came into note in the days of Jochiku (1630), commonly called Masuya Bunyemon, ranked with the Yoshioka masters for minute and delicate chiselling, but were distinguished by more profuse use of gold inlaying. Jōchiku is considered one of the greatest chisellers of insects that Japan ever produced. His daughter, Jotetsu, whose works are spoken of as musume-bori (the girl's carvings), was very successful in the same line, as were also several of his pupils and descendants.
It was in the early part of this century (1620) that Hikoshiro, founder of the Hirata family, began to apply verifiable enamels in the decoration of sword-furniture. Technical knowledge of the enamelling processes existed in Japan before his time, nor does any inventive credit belong to him except in the matter of opaque white enamel, which he was the first to manufacture and which remained a specialty of his family down to recent times. All the other enamels employed by him—green, yellow, blue, red, and purple — were translucid (suki-jippo). Parts of the design were cloisonned, so as to receive the enamels, and 1 much brilliancy of decorative effect was thus produced. The Hirata experts cannot be ranked with Japan's best glyptic artists. The only member of the family who deserves to be called a great chiseller was Harunari (1810). For the information of collectors it may be mentioned that sword-mounts having enamel decoration and bearing the Hirata mark are not necessarily identifiable as products of the Hirata family. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the term Hirata was used to designate a style rather than a family, and artisans often carved it on guards in the former sense.
In addition to the families of experts already spoken of as having made their début in this century, the following may be noted without any detailed reference:—the Tsuji of Yedo, founded by Masachika (1660), which produced several generations of skilled experts; the Nomura, also of Yedo, founded by Masaoki (1650); the Wakabayashi of Toyama in Yetchiu, founded by Kaneko Denzaburo (1690); the Inouye of Kyōtō, founded by Saburozayemon (1650); the Yasui of Kyōtō, founded by Mitsusada (1650) and made specially famous by the incomparable chiseller Nagatsune (1770), commonly called Ichi-no-miya Yechizen; the Chiyo of Tsuyama (in Mimasaka), founded by Kinsuke (1680), whose experts produced magnificent silver work; the Kaneko of Kii, founded by Kichinojo (1640); the Uyemura of Kyōtō, founded by Yasunobu (1600) and made celebrated by Masuya Kuhei (1600), and Masuya Kichibei (1720); and greatest perhaps, of all these, the Iwamoto of Yedo, founded by Chiubei (1680), a pupil of Yokoya Sōmin. The century closed when Yanagawa Naomasa, one of the most renowned masters in the whole history of the art, was perpetuating in Yedo the noble style of his teacher Sōmin.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
An immense quantity of beautiful work distinguished this century, and the names of many great experts appear in its annals, but it added nothing to the methods already practised. Scores of skilled chisellers devoted themselves to perfecting the processes of their predecessors without inventing any new technical mode, and, on the whole, it may be said that the distinguishing features of the century were elaboration of detail and splendour of decorative effect. Such developments were consistent with the spirit of the time, for the country had now enjoyed a hundred years of unprecedented peace, and the various principalities throughout the empire, ceasing to be disturbed by problems of military expansion and perils or projects of aggression, had become competitive centres of art production.
At the opening of the century Gorobei of Kyōtō is found chiselling iron guards with decoration à jour so skilfully that the term kinai, which had previously been used to designate particularly delicate and elaborate work of this description was now replaced by Daigoro-saku, a name obtained by compounding the first ideographs of 'Daimonji-ya, as the artists' atelier was called, and "Gorobei." Contemporaneous with Gorobei was Shōyemon, called also Tomoyoshi or Yūki, who has had few peers as a maker of mokume grounds. Shōyemon is generally known as Nomura Masa-ya.[9] He entered the service of the feudal chief of Awa, and founded a branch of the Nomura family in Tokushima, the capital of that fief. It should be noted that Yedo was the seat of the elder branch of the Nomura family, which was founded by Masatoki (1660), and gave to Japan a number of well-remembered experts,—Masanori (art name, Itoku, 1790), Masayoshi (art name, Suihaku, 1760); Masatsugu (1760); Masayoshi (art name, Katōji, 1790), and others. All these experts excelled in the production of mokume, but were also appreciated for their chiselling in relief. The most celebrated of all the Nomura masters was Jimpō (1750), commonly called Tsū Jimpō. He took his designs from the pictures of Tanyu, the greatest artist of the preceding century, and his chiselling shows extraordinary minuteness and delicacy. Numerous imitations of his work were produced in the second half of the eighteenth century. Scarcely less renowned was another member of the same family, artistically known as Hiyobu-jo or Yūsen (1790). His literary talents were as great as his glyptic skill, and he received from the Yedo Court the honorary title of Hōgen.
It is observable that in this century the artists showed a disposition to make a specialty of particular fields of design. Thus Shōami Tempō (1700), of Kyōtō, confined himself almost exclusively to chiselling peonies and chrysanthemums tossed by the wind. Kikugawa Muneyoshi (1720), of Yedo, commonly called Chōbei, carved chrysanthemums so admirably that Chōbei-kiku (Chōbei chrysanthemums) came to be a synonym for exceptionally fine work of this class. Nara Ichibei (1730), pupil of the great Nara Yasuchika, became so celebrated for chiselling the landscapes of Omi that his contemporaries spoke of him as Miidera[10] Ichibei. Nara Masanaga (1740) obtained equal fame for his moor-scapes with a praying mantis and tufts of soft feathery susuki (Eularia japonica) in the foreground. Uyemura Munemine (1720) of Kyōtō excelled in the chiselling of warriors. Yasuyama Motozumi (1760), of Mito, one of the greatest masters of any era, who was known in art circles as Sekijōken or Tōgū chiselled mythological Chinese figures with extraordinary force and delicacy, his favourite metal being shibuicbi. Shinshichi, of Osaka (1730), chose a fishing-rod and river trout as his specialty. Noda Yoshihiro (1730), of Yedo, chiselled groups of fishes with admirable fidelity. Tamagawa Yoshihisa (1790), of Mito, made himself famous by his dragons. Fujita Katsusada (1700), of Ōsaka, is remembered for his wonderful masks and cuttle-fish. Kikuoka Mitsuyūki (1780), of Yedo, artistically known as Dopposai or Saikaon, an artist of the highest ability, is held to have equalled Sōmin as a carver of peonies; and Shōami Morikuni (1730), of Matsuyama (Iyo province), has had few equals as a chiseller of dragons and clouds. This list might be greatly prolonged, but such distinctions are apt to be misleading, since in many cases they suggest a narrower range of motives than the artists in question really selected.
The Nara family made large contributions to the finest productions of this century. Toshihisa and Yasuchika, who worked during the first half of the century, have already been spoken of, and with them must be bracketed Jōi (art name, Issando Nagabaru, 1720), who by many connoisseurs is regarded as the peer of the "Three Nara Pictures." It is not certain whether Jōi belonged originally to the Nara family or was adopted into it. He learned carving from Nara Hisanaga (art name, Zenzo), who, in turn, was a brilliant pupil of the celebrated Nara Toshinaga. Jōi excelled in the shishi-ai style of carving. His work was singularly soft without sacrificing strength, and he chose elaborate subjects, using gold freely for purposes of damascening and picking out. He drew his motives chiefly from martial history,[11] but he chiselled flowers, also, and landscapes with consummate skill. Three other members of the Nara family deserve a place in this context. They are Masanaga (1740), his son Masachika (1760), and Masanobu. Masanaga (art name, Seiraku) was a pupil of Toshihisa. Reference has already been made to his celebrated landscapes with a praying mantis and tufts of Eularia japonica in the foreground. His son, Masachika, became a pupil of Jōi in the latter's old age, and took the art name of Jōwa. He did not reach the high level of either his teacher or his father, but he was undoubtedly a grand expert. Nara Masanobu (1750) had the art names of Kikuju-sai and Kiko. His works are greatly prized by Japanese connoisseurs, but as his specialty was the carving of the amariyo (the rain-dragon), he does not appeal strongly to foreign taste.
At the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, Nagasaki's experts were brought into prominence by Kizayemon, artistically known as Jakushi. Nagasaki, from time immemorial, had been permeated by Chinese influences, being the centre of trade and intercourse between Japan and the neighbouring empire. Hence its chisellers of sword-mounts affected designs generally called kwanto-gata, or Canton style, many examples of which may be seen throughout the whole field of Japanese decorative art. The familiar "willow-pattern" is the worst specimen of this type. Its features are stiff figures of Chinese warriors, court ladies, mandarins or historical personages, set in a stereotyped garden with architectural accompaniment; or little children—the well-known kara-ko (Chinese children)—with tonsured heads, playing various out-door games; or dragons of more or less conventionalised shape. Jakushi carved dragons, but he also chiselled landscapes, bamboos tossed by the wind and other designs of flowers and foliage, and his skill was so conspicuous that in Nagasaki people learned to use the term Jakushi-bori as generally distinctive of beautiful work. The use of kwanto-gata motives are not confined to Nagasaki experts. Gotō Kiyonori, who worked in Yedo contemporaneously with Jakushi, became celebrated for similar carving, and examples of it are not infrequently found among the productions of inferior experts. These kwanto-tsuba, and the mogarashi tsuba already described, are, perhaps, the least interesting of all the ko-dogu.
The artists thus far noticed as belonging to the eighteenth century were all representatives of families established at an earlier date. Families which not only gave lustre to the century but also had their origin in it, are the Hamano, the Omori, the Iwamoto, and the Okamoto. These houses produced experts who may be said to have carried the art to its zenith.
The Hamano family of Yedo first came into note in the days of Masayori (1730), a pupil of the great Nara Toshihisa. Masayori is always known as Shōzui, the alternative pronunciation of the ideographs forming his name. He had many art titles—Otsuriuken, Miboku Rifūdo, etc. He worked chiefly in shakudo, but often in iron, not making any departure from the Nara style, but using his chisels with extraordinary strength yet at no sacrifice of grace and delicacy. The Sōken Kishō says that the lines of his carving are like "the storm of a tiger's roar or the wind of a dragon's rush through the clouds." It may be truly said of the Hamano family that it did not give one inferior artist to Japan. Shōzui himself was probably the greatest, but his pupils Moriyuki and Noriyori, and his successors Masanobu (1780) and Norinobu (1790) rank almost as his peers.[12] The Hamano artists achieved their greatest successes in figure subjects, but among specimens by Shōzui there are found some exquisitely delicate and lifelike carvings of bees, spiders, fireflies and herons.
The Omori family of Yedo is generally supposed to have been founded by Shigemitsu, who worked in the opening years of the eighteenth century, but his father, Shirohei, a samurai of Odawara, was really the first Omori carver. Chronologically, therefore, the family should have been referred to in the notice of the seventeenth century; but it is placed in the eighteenth because it did not begin to be famous until the days of Shigemitsu. The latter had the advantage of studying under two of the great Nara masters, Ichibei—mentioned above as "Miidera Ichibei"—and Yasuchika. He carved with great skill in the Nara fashion. It was by his pupil Terumasa, however, that the style of the Omori family was fixed—namely, a combination of the Nara and Yokoya methods, with extreme elaboration of detail and profuse use of all decorative adjuncts, such as inlaying and picking out with gold, silver, copper, etc. Terumasa received instruction from the great Sōmin (Yokoya) as well as from Shigemitsu, and would doubtless be remembered as a most distinguished artist had not his fame been completely eclipsed by that of his adopted son, Teruhide (1748–1798), known in art circles as Ittosai or Riu-u-sai. Teruhide was a grand chiseller. Some of his high-relief peony sprays in gold on shakudo are not inferior to Sōmin's masterpieces. He is said to have been the first to carve wave diaper in high relief, and to him was due a splendidly decorative ground of shakudo inlaid with gold in the aventurine pattern. The Sōken Kisho, says of Teruhide: "His chiselling has force that would rend a rock. His wave diapers deeply carved in shibuichi are magnificent, and nothing could exceed the beauty of his peonies in high relief on aventurine grounds. He seems to have based his method of carving flowers on Sōmin's celebrated ichirin-botan (single-blossom peony). His martial figures also are grand." It may be said that peonies and Dogs of Fo (shishi) were Teruhide's specialties. Among ten choice examples of his work in a Tōkyō collection, only two are without peony flowers either in the principal or a subordinate place. Many artists bore the family name after Teruhide's time, but although their work was of the finest quality from a decorative point of view, they scarcely merit special mention on account of their glyptic skill.
Concerning the Iwamoto family of Yedo the same remark applies as that made about the Omori, namely, that although founded in the seventeenth century, it did not become famous until the eighteenth. The founder was Chiubei (1680), a pupil of the celebrated Yoko-ya Sōmin, and the family's greatest master was Konkwan (1760-1801), who is counted one of Japan's most skilled chisellers of fishes of all kinds (especially Crustacea), but who also carved with admirable ability wild-fowl, insects, flowers and even figures. Konkwan had three art names, but he seems to have always marked his pieces Iwamoto Konkwan. The productions of the Iwamoto experts were not so elaborately decorative as those of the Omori, but as an artist Konkwan is certainly not inferior to Teruhide. It is recorded that during the latter years of his life the Iwamoto master was so besieged by clients that he finally hung out this sign: "Orders cannot be quickly executed. Importunity is deprecated."
The Okamoto family of Kyōtō was a branch of the great Okamoto of Hagi (Chōshiu), already alluded to. It was founded in 1750 by Harukuni (originally called Kuniharu), who is known in art circles as Tetsūya-ya Dembei (Dembei the Iron chiseller). Harukuni worked in iron. Although the representatives of his family in Chōshiu were celebrated chiefly for chiselling à jour, he reduced that kind of decoration to a subordinate position, and relied more upon relief carving in all its grades, as well as upon the kata-kiri method. Indeed, by Dembei's time the experts of Kyōtō and Yedo had ceased to make à jour chiselling the principal feature in a decorative scheme. They preferred to utilise such work with reference to its pictorial suggestiveness. Thus a delightful effect of space and atmosphere is produced by clouds chiselled à jour, with a silver moon struggling through them, its disc revealed in the open spaces and concealed by the solid rack; or the sheen of water is obtained by a delicate outline of transparent carving; or the leaves and branches of a tree are projected against the sky by cutting out all intervening portions. Even when the à jour feature predominated, it was always associated with decoration carved in the round, so that it served chiefly to detach the sculptured object from the flat surface.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 36.
Note 36.—M. Gonse, in L'Art Japonais, dismisses the Goto family in a single paragraph, and sums up their style thus: Leurs décors sont monotones poncifs et d'un goût un peu chinois; leur invention est pauvre.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 37.
Note 37.—There are some misapprehensions among European collectors with regard to this part of the subject. Errors of date are seldom of much importance in such matters, but occasionally they are worth noticing when they affect the history of the art's development. Thus M. Gonse depicts, among the oldest guards to which he refers, one by Toshiharu (of Yedo), and assigns it to the end of the fifteenth century. But Toshiharu was one of the "Three Masters" of the Nara family, and worked in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Again, M. Gonse puts Kaneiye at the close of the fourteenth century, whereas he flourished a hundred years later. He also shows a guard by Nagayoshi (of Yamashiro)—"incrusted with bronze and gold of different tones," having a design of monkeys and a vase of flowers—which, according to M. Gonse, shows plain evidence of Persian influence, and in that context the French critic explains that Namban-tetsu means "iron of Persia." Now this guard belongs to a comparatively modern class known in Japan as Heian-tsuba (guards of Heian), and justly condemned as most inferior specimens. They have no connection with any chapter of the art's history, but simply represent bad, vulgar workmanship. The design is borrowed from a Chinese picture. As for the term Namban-tetsu, it has nothing whatever to do with Persia, but was formerly applied to all iron imported from Occidental countries. The guard referred to by M. Gonse bears the date "1498," but that seems to be a capricious addition on the part of the maker. He might with equal truth have written "1948." Further, speaking of the use of trans-lucid enamels in the decoration of sword-furniture, the same author accredits the innovation to Kunishiro, whom he places at the end of the sixteenth century. Kunishiro was an insignificant workman of the eighteenth century. There is no record of his having employed vitrifiable enamels for such a purpose, and if he did, he had been long anticipated by the Hirata family. M. Gonse also makes Kinai of Yechizen a contemporary of Nobuiye, and puts them both at the end of the sixteenth century. But Nobuiye flourished in the first part of that century, and the great Kinai in the second half of the seventeenth. These comments are made simply in the interests of accuracy, and not with any intention of criticising an author whose knowledge, considering the circumstances under which it was acquired, must be pronounced remarkable, and who has brought so much light to bear on every branch of Japanese art.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 38.
Note 38.—Runinaga and Yoshishige are described by tradition as the first really skilled artists of Kaga. Their personal names were respectively Jiro and Goro, and their carvings were known as Jiro-saku and Goro-saku.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 39.
Note 39.—A kozuka by Toshihisa was sold fifty years ago for a sum which would now represent 1200 yen. It was made of iron, and the design, chiselled in high relief, represented the Chinese celebrities Liu Pei, Chu Koh-liang, and Kwan Yu.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 40.
Note 40.—Not to be confounded with the Okamoto family of Kyoto, founded by Harukuni in 1740, the second representative of which is the celebrated Naoshige, known in the art world as "Tetsugen."
- ↑ See Appendix, note 41.
Note 41.—The meagre nature of the information contained in Japanese records with regard to the Kinai experts is remarkable. They are spoken of merely as "Kinai," neither their family names nor their dates being given. The writer of these notes caused special investigations to be made in Yechizen, and found that the first Kinai was called Ishikawa, the second Takahashi, and that the family was a branch of the Miyōchin. The tomb of Ishikawa Kinai shows that he died in 1680, and that of Takahashi Kinai, that he died in 1696. There is in Yechizen a tradition that the feudal chief of the province ordered the second Kinai to carve a pair of iron menuki in the shape of mandarin ducks. Kinai did not complete the work until three years had passed, and, almost immediately afterwards, one of the menuki was lost during the chief's journey to Yedo. Kinai, being required to replace the missing menuki, chiselled a substitute in one day, and was then severely rebuked for having previously taken three years to accomplish a work which could easily have been finished in as many days. His answer was: "Put those two menuki in water and observe the difference." That being done, the new menuki sank at once, but the original one floated, so delicately had it been chiselled.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 42.
Note 42.—It has been found by measurement that lines cut in guards of iron shakudo, etc., have a width not exceeding 3/100 of an inch. The tool used for such work is scarcely imaginable.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 43.
Note 43.—Yoshitsugu's personal name was Kichiji, and he received the appellation of "Kichiji Kinai" from contemporary connoisseurs, who placed him on the same level as the great Kinai.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 44.
Note 44.—Not to be confounded with Masu-ya. There were four well-known experts whose ateliers went by the name of Masu-ya. They were, Uyemura Kuninaga (1680), of Kyōtō, known as "Masu-ya Kuhei;" Uyemura Kichibei, of Kyōtō, known as "Masu-ya Kichibei;" Torii Jōkwo, of Ōsaka, known as Masu-ya Uhei; and Uyemura Munemine (1720), or Masu-ya Kihei.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 45.
Note 45.—Miidera is the name of a famous temple on the shore of Lake Biwa in Omi. An autumn evening on the lake while the bell of the temple tolls is one of the "Eight Views" of Omi.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 46.
Note 46.—One of Jōi's guards (shakudo) carries the picture known as Munetaka no Matsu. On the face, Yoshitsune, in full armour, rides to his final victory over the Taira; on the reverse, a troop of armed men with halberds and banners, appear partially above the rim of the guard so as to suggest distance and numbers. This guard was sold forty years ago to a Japanese provincial magnate for the equivalent of about 500 yen in the currency of the present time.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 47.
Note 47.—The attention of collectors should be drawn to one point connected with the Hamano experts. It is that among the eleven art names used by Shōzui, four (Otsuriuken, Miboku, Rifudo, and Kankyo) appear upon the works of Masanobu, and two (Otsuriuken and Miboku) upon the works of Norinobu. Thus a specimen cannot be exactly identified merely because it bears one or more of these names. Another point is that Masayoshi, a pupil of Shōzui, was called "Shōzui Bozu" (old man Shōzui), and being exceptionally skilful as an imitator of old masterpieces, did not hesitate to copy the works of his teacher and to mark them Shōzui.