JAPANESE ART INDUSTRY IN GENERAL. 335 



structures lack much in solidity, adaptation and elegance, besides 

 being an easy prey of fire. The Japanese show their inventive 

 genius, skill and perseverance in woodwork of an entirely different 

 character from building, viz., in the hundreds of little articles which 

 they manufacture from this material. Therefore it is not as car- 

 penters and architects that their peculiar talent and taste is dis- 

 tinguished, but as joiners, turners, and wood-carvers. The frames 

 of the Shoji or window panes, the wainscotting of the walls in 

 many of their temples, and numerous other works, are samples of 

 their fine and careful joinery. 



The very simple way of living and the household arrangements 

 among all classes of Japanese people, excluding as it does the use 

 of heavy furniture, does not tend to develop any individual style 

 of cabinet-making. The principal work of manufacturing the 

 few wooden household articles, such as chests, sword stands, eta- 

 geres^ screens, dining-tables, trays, sedan chairs, etc., falls to the 

 lacquerer, who paints the light and neatly made frames and ground- 

 work of pine with the precious varnish, and decorates them with 

 his skilled and artistic hand. Now, however, in modern times and 

 with the necessity to furnish the houses of foreigners and natives 

 after European style, artistic cabinet-making has been developed 

 and attempted with growing success, not only in making common 

 furniture, but above all in fine wood mosaic work called intarsia or 

 7narquetrie. And in this line the most excellent results were very 

 soon reached. A peculiar kind of wood-working is wrought in the 

 Hakone Mountains, and at Shidzuoka, the capital of Suruga. The 

 cabinets, commodes, and tables ornamented with wood inlaid-work, 

 are very much prized and already many of them are exported. 

 For inlaying, the yellow-brown wood of the camphor laurel with 

 its silky lustre is chosen. Also the black pith-wood of kaki, or the 

 persimon tree {Doispyros kaki). The wood most prized for all kinds 

 of cabinet-work and for turnery also in part, is that of the keaki 

 {Zelkoiva keaki), already mentioned in this connection on page 242. 

 It is used by itself alone much as our oak, but serves also as a stout 

 framework in the large amount of intarsia work, for tables and 

 commodes, neither splitting nor warping, and showing off the light- 

 coloured mosaic in its dark colour and fine flecking very advanta- 

 geously, like a dark picture frame. It is also very useful in turning 

 and carving, as for instance in the pipe-case in the illustration. Fig. 



I, P- 133- 



The wood-work of the Hakone mountains, — a day's journey 

 from Yokohama, — which goes by the name of Hakone-zaiku, (Ha- 

 kone-work) consists mainly of these mosaics, and a great variety of 

 small articles turned by the lathe, very cheap, and extensively ex- 

 ported. I need only mention the little ash cups standing on one 

 foot, made from the wood of the Sansho {Xanthoxyhun piperiUim^ 

 (p .255), the black-veined light plates and bottle stands of Sotetsu 

 Cycas revohita) and the heavier ones of Hari-no-ki (a sort of alder) 



