JAPANESE ART INDUSTRY IN GENERAL. 327 



and reached their best period during a long and undisturbed 

 season of nufture. 



The condition and ability of Japanese art industry in the first 

 half of the seventeenth century can be understood best by its 

 various accomplishments in Nikko. After this beautiful site ^ at 

 the foot of the wooded and well-watered mountains had been 

 chosen for the resting-place of the great Shogun lyeyasu, by his 

 own wish, and his body had been removed thither from Ku-no-zan 

 in Suruga, the nobles and most faithful followers of their dead 

 master and leader made great exertion to pay him all possible re- 

 spect in death. The temples and pagodas which they founded, the 

 granite columns and water basins, stone and bronze lanterns as 

 well as many bells, the wood carving in relief and open v/ork, the 

 priests' robes and utensils, lacquer work and many other articles 

 preserved from that time, furnish indubitable evidence that art in- 

 dustry had even then attained a high degree of perfection. Its 

 further advancement is seen in many beautiful articles from the 

 tombs of the Shoguns at Shiba and Uyeno in Tokio, and in many 

 celebrated temples of the age following. Several art connois- 

 seurs consider the reign of the eleventh Shogun, lyenari Bunkio 

 (i 787-1 836 A.D.), as the real golden age of Old Japanese art in- 

 dustry. 



Finally, after long practice, and after the opening of the country 

 to foreign commerce, New Japan appeared in the markets of the 

 West, with its manifold productions of lacquer art, with its 

 ceramics, its enamelling of copper and earthen vessels, its bronze 

 industry and its forged weapons, with its splendid silk fabrics and 

 embroideries, and its bewildering variety of playthings and fancy 

 articles by which it won very rapidly the admiration of nearly all 

 patrons of art, and at the several international exhibitions com- 

 peted successfully with the civilized nations of Christendom. 

 Like the mountain streams which, after long obstruction, at last 

 suddenly pour forth over the plain, flooding and enriching it, 

 these products of Japanese industrial art surged into the markets 

 of Western Europe and exercised more or less influence on the 

 taste and efforts of many of our artisans and artists. 



The feudal system of Japan and its barriers had been overcome, 

 the Daimio fortresses had fallen, the cloisters had been robbed of 

 a large part of their support, and with this the former supports 

 and patrons of its peculiar artistic handicraft had disappeared. 

 Most of the art collections of the country went into foreign lands, 

 to enrich public and private exhibitions ; many were squandered 

 away at ridiculously low prices ; and the fear became widespread 

 that the old skill would die out, and the art industry of Japan de- 

 generate. This anxiety was well-founded, in so far as the foreign 

 exporters of these articles now had them manufactured in quan- 



' See illustrations on pp. 302, 456, and 462, vol. i. 



