JAPAN
to Korea, China's pupil. The same information is furnished by the gilding and silvering found on copper plates which formed decorative adjuncts of sword-hilts and horse-trappings from the beginning of the iron age (200 B.C.). Hence it may be affirmed on the evidence furnished by relics of art industry that, in the first or second century before the Christian era, Japan was in contact with Chinese or Korean civilisation, and that she learned from one of her continental neighbours the process of obtaining reflective surfaces by means of mercury.[1]
The Japanese mirror attracted much attention at one time among foreigners, owing to a curious property it sometimes possessed, namely, that the pattern on the back was reflected by the polished surface in front. The effect was best seen by double reflection,—that is to say, when light cast on the surface of the mirror was reflected on some other flat surface. So strange did this feature seem that it received the epithet "magical," and for many years it was considered the "correct thing" that every collector should include a Japanese "magic mirror" among his treasures. Of course the Japanese themselves knew that their mirror possessed this property, but they did not understand it and did not indulge in many conjectures about a phenomenon which seemed inexplicable. So soon, however, as the scientist of the West approached the problem, he discovered a simple solution. It is a structural accident. When a mirror, laid face upwards, is subjected to pressure by the hand of the artisan polishing its surface, it necessarily rests on the salient points of the arabesque or other design that decorates the reverse,
- ↑ See Appendix, note 13.
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