JAPAN
times as remote as the beginning of the Christian era, they knew how to hew stones and join them into the forms of sarcophagi, so perfect in shape that some of them, when exhumed in later epochs, were regarded as palanquins in which demigods had ridden, or as boats in which they had sailed the seas during the age of Japan's government by divine beings. Still more conclusive proof of ability to fashion stone into given shapes is afforded by objects for personal adornment found in these tombs,—carved jewels (maga-tama) of agate or jadeite; tubular jewels (kuda-tama) of light green stone; hexagonal jewels (kiriko-dama), and triple-ring jewels (mitsuwa-dama) of quartz; and already in the fourth century of the Christian era, one of the sections of artificers employed by the Government had the name of Tamatsukuri-be, or sculptors of ornamental minerals. In the face of these facts it is impossible to doubt that the cutting, shaping, and polishing of stone fell well within the competence of Japanese artisans in very early times, and that had they recognised it as a material suitable for sculpturing objects of high art, technical difficulties would not have deterred them.
In China and Korea the custom of erecting huge memorial tablets of marble or granite existed in ancient ages. But the Japanese were slow to adopt it, and never reconciled themselves to the use of ornamental sculpture on such objects. History contains a poem attributed to that personage of somewhat apocryphal achievements, the Empress Jingo (201–269 A.D.), in which words occur indicating apparently that a stone monument was set up to the deity Sukuna. But the first unequivocal record of stone sculpture is found in the annals of the Emperor Keitei's reign
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