352 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



The first tangible historical facts relating to actual glass manufacture 

 in Japan refer us to the year 1570, when a foreign artisan settled in 

 Nagasaki, and taught the natives there how to blow glass; and in the 

 period Kwanyei (1624-1643), the arrival of Chinese artisans at Nagasaki 

 gave the industry a great stimulus. They taught the Chinese methods 

 of blowing glass, and the art, spreading throughout the country, was 

 practised at Kyoto, Osaka, and Yedo (J. L. Bowes, Notes on Shippo, 

 p. 12, London, 1895). Certainly, the mirror of cloisonne enamel 

 (figured by Bowes on p. 14) in the Imperial Treasure-House (Shosoin) 

 of Nara, is, despite the claims to native workmanship by Japanese 

 connoisseurs, a work of Persian origin, as plainly shown by the style 

 of the floral ornamentation. We know that the Chinese made their 

 first acquaintance with glass during their intercourse with the Roman 

 Orient about the time of our era, but that they did not learn how to 

 make it before the fifth century. There was, no doubt, a lively trade 

 in colored glass beads going on between the anterior Orient and the 

 Far East during the first centuries a. d., and it is possible that they 

 reached Japan in this manner. But it can hardly be presumed that the 

 Japanese became acquainted with the process of making glass earlier 

 than the Chinese, and it is even open to doubt 'whether glass beads 

 were made, as stated by Bowes, in the time of the Emperor Shomu 

 (724 a. d.). Either the Japanese glass beads of early historic times 

 have been imported from the Roman Orient, and most probably by way 

 of China, or if the claim of indigenous manufacture can be sustained 

 with any plausible evidence, these antiquities and the graves from which 

 they come, cannot be as old as they are supposed to be by Japanese 

 archaeologists and their foreign followers. There would be many 

 other reasons to believe that the remains of the so-called protohistoric 

 age of Japan cannot go back to any great antiquity, but seem to go 

 down as far as a period between the second and eighth centuries; but 

 this is not the place to discuss this problem. We were merely obliged 

 to raise this question, in order to obtain a correct point of view in 

 estimating the possible age of the nephrite magatama. 



The nephrite magatama, if they exist, occur only in small numbers. 

 It is too well known how difficult it is, even for a specialist, to rec- 

 ognize nephrite at a glance, without experimental investigations, for 

 unconditional credence to be applied to the definitions of laymen. 

 He who has studied Fischer's careful book on the subject is aware 

 of the numerous disappointments to which the premature labeling 

 of specimens as jades in museums and private collections has been 

 subjected. And what, in the course of a century, has not been taken 



