most ingenious of these earlier productions, such as the magnificent
iron eagle in the South Kensington Museum, the wonderful articulated
models of crayfish, dragons, serpents, birds, that are found in
many European collections, came from the studios of the Miyōchins;
but these were the play of giants, and were not made as articles of
commerce. The new artisan makers of the okimono struck out a
line for themselves, one influenced more by the naturalistic and
popular schools than by the classical art, and the quails of Kamejo,
the tortoises of Seimin, the dragons of Tōun and Tōryū, and in recent
years the falcons and the peacocks of Suzuki Chokichi, are the joy of
the European collector. The best of these are exquisite in workmanship,
graceful in design, often strikingly original in conception, and
usually naturalistic in ideal. They constitute a phase of art in which
Japan has few rivals.
The present generation is more systematically commercial in its glyptic produce than any previous age. Millions of commercial articles in metal-work, wood and ivory flood the European markets, and may be bought in any street in Europe at a small price, but they offer a variety of design and an excellence of workmanship which place them almost beyond Western competition. Above all this, however, the Japanese sculptor is a force in art. He is nearly as thorough as his forefathers, and maintains the same love of all things beautiful; and if he cannot show any epoch-making novelty, he is at any rate doing his best to support unsurpassed the decorative traditions of the past.
History has been eminently careful to preserve the names and records of the men who chiselled sword furniture. The sword being regarded as the soul of the samurai, every one who contributed to its manufacture, whether as forger of the blade or sculptor of the Sword-making Families. furniture, was held in high repute. The Gotō family worked steadily during 14 generations, and its 19th century representative—Gotō Ichijō—will always be remembered as one of the family’s greatest experts. But there were many others whose productions fully equalled and often excelled the best efforts of the Gotō. The following list gives the names and periods of the most renowned families:—
(It should be noted that the division by centuries indicates the time of a family’s origin. In a great majority of cases the representatives of each generation worked on through succeeding centuries).
15th and 16th Centuries.
Miyōchin; Gotō; Umetada; Muneta; Aoki; Sōami; Nakai.
17th Century.
Kuwamura; Mizuno; Koichi; Nagayoshi;
Kuninaga; Yoshishige; Katsugi; Tsuji;
Muneyoshi; Tadahira; Shōami; Hosono;
Yokoya; Nara; Okada; Okamoto; Kinai; Akao;
Yoshioka; Hirata; Nomura; Wakabayashi; Inouye;
Yasui; Chiyo; Kaneko; Uemura; Iwamoto.
18th Century.
Gorobei; Shōemon; Kikugawa; Yasuyama; Noda; Tamagawa; Fujita; Kikuoka; Kizaemon; Hamano; Ōmori; Okamoto; Kashiwaya; Kusakari; Shichibei; Itō.
19th Century.
Natsuo; Ishiguro; Yanagawa; Honjo; Tanaka; Okano; Kawarabayashi; Oda; and many masters of the Ōmori, Hamano and Iwamoto families, as well as the five experts, Shuraku, Temmin, Ryūmin, Minjō and Minkoku. (W. An.; F. By.)
There is a radical difference between the points of view of
the Japanese and the Western connoisseur in estimating the
merits of sculpture in metal. The quality of the
chiselling is the first feature to which the Japanese
directs his attention; the decorative design is the
Japanese Point
of View.
prime object of the Occidental’s attention. With very rare
exceptions, the decorative motives of Japanese sword furniture
were always supplied by painters. Hence it is that the
Japanese connoisseur draws a clear distinction between the
decorative design and its technical execution, crediting the
former to the pictorial artist and the latter to the sculptor.
He detects in the stroke of a chisel and the lines of a graving
tool subjective beauties which appear to be hidden from the
great majority of Western dilettanti. He estimates the rank
of a specimen by the quality of the chisel-work. The Japanese
kinzoku-shi (metal sculptor) uses thirty-six principal classes of
chisel, each with its distinctive name, and as most of these
classes comprise from five to ten sub-varieties, his cutting
and graving tools aggregate about two hundred and fifty.
Scarcely less important in Japanese eyes than the chiselling of the decorative design itself is the preparation of the field to which it is applied. There used to be a strict canon with reference to this in former times. Namako (fish-roe) grounds were essential for the mountings The Field for Sculptured Decoration. of swords worn on ceremonial occasions, the ishime (stone-pitting) or jimigaki (polished) styles being considered less aristocratic.
Namako is obtained by punching the whole surface—except the portion carrying the decorative design—into a texture of microscopic dots. The first makers of namako did not aim at regularity in the distribution of these dots; they were content to produce the effect of millet-seed sifted haphazard over the surface. But from the 15th century the punching of the dots in rigidly straight lines came to be considered essential, and the difficulty involved was so great that namako-making took its place among the highest technical achievements of the sculptor. When it is remembered that the punching tool was guided solely by the hand and eye, and that three or more blows of the mallet had to be struck for every dot, some conception may be formed of the patience and accuracy needed to produce these tiny protuberances in perfectly straight lines, at exactly equal intervals and of absolutely uniform size. Namako disposed in straight parallel lines originally ranked at the head of this kind of work. But a new kind was introduced in the 16th century. It was obtained by punching the dots in intersecting lines, so arranged that the dots fell uniformly into diamond-shaped groups of five each. This is called go-no-me-namako, because of its resemblance to the disposition of chequers in the Japanese game of go. A century later, the daimyō namako was invented, in which lines of dots alternated with lines of polished ground. Ishime may be briefly described as diapering. There is scarcely any limit to the ingenuity and skill of the Japanese expert in diapering a metal surface. It is not possible to enumerate here even the principal styles of ishime, but mention may be made of the zara-maki (broad-cast), in which the surface is finely but irregularly pitted after the manner of the face of a stone; the nashi-ji (pear-ground), in which we have a surface like the rind of a pear; the hari-ishime (needle ishime), where the indentations are so minute that they seem to have been made with the point of a needle; the gama-ishime, which is intended to imitate the skin of a toad; the tsuya-ishime, produced with a chisel sharpened so that its traces have a lustrous appearance; the ore-kuchi (broken-tool), a peculiar kind obtained with a jagged tool; and the gozamé, which resembles the plaited surface of a fine straw mat.
Great importance has always been attached by Japanese experts to the patina of metal used for artistic chiselling. It was mainly for the sake of their patina that value attached to the remarkable alloys shakudo (3 parts of gold to 97 of copper) and shibuichi (1 part of silver to 3 of copper). Neither Patina. metal, when it emerges from the furnace, has any beauty, shakudo being simply dark-coloured copper and shibuichi pale gun-metal. But after proper treatment[1] the former develops a glossy black patina with violet sheen, and the latter shows beautiful shades of grey with silvery lustre. Both these compounds afford delicate, unobtrusive and effective grounds for inlaying with gold, silver and other metals, as well as for sculpture, whether incised or in relief. Copper, too, by patina-producing treatment, is made to show not merely a rich golden sheen with pleasing limpidity, but also red of various hues, from deep coral to light vermilion, several shades of grey, and browns of numerous tones from dead-leaf to chocolate. Even greater value has always been set upon the patina of iron, and many secret recipes were preserved in artist families for producing the fine, satin-like texture so much admired by all connoisseurs.
In Japan, as in Europe, three varieties of relief carving are distinguished—alto (taka-bori), mezzo (chūniku-bori) and basso (usuniku-bori). In the opinion of the Japanese expert, these styles hold the same respective rank as that occupied by the three kinds of ideographic script in caligraphy. High relief Methods of Chiselling. carving corresponds to the kaisho, or most classical form of writing; medium relief to the gyōsho, or semi-cursive style; and low relief to the sōsho or grass character. With regard to incised chiselling, the commonest form is kebori (hair-carving), which may be called engraving, the lines being of uniform thickness and depth. Very beautiful results are obtained by the kebori method, but incomparably the finest work in the incised class is that known as kata-kiri-bori. In this kind of chiselling the Japanese artist can claim to be unique as well as unrivalled. Evidently the idea of the great Yokoya experts, the originators of the style, was to break away from the somewhat formal monotony of ordinary engraving, where each line performs exactly the same function, and to convert the chisel into an artist’s
- ↑ It is first boiled in a lye obtained by lixiviating wood ashes; it is next polished with charcoal powder; then immersed in plum vinegar and salt; then washed with weak lye and placed in a tub of water to remove all traces of alkali, the final step being to digest in a boiling solution of copper sulphate, verdigris and water.
