436 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



first pair of such vases — a work which at that time, in Tokio, at- 

 tracted great attention among Japanese and foreign connoisseurs. 

 They are now in the Royal Industrial Art Museum in Berlin. 

 Later on a second pair with similar work was sent to Germany, 

 acquired by Dr. von Briining, of Frankfort on the Main, and pre- 

 sented to the Industrial Art Museum at that place. These vases 

 are designated by the authors as "the united work of Komai 

 Yoshitaka and Komai Yoshihiro, inhabitants of Kioto, province of 

 Yamashiro." They are among the most beautiful works of this 

 description, although they are the first of the above-named masters. 

 The four fields, two on each vase, represent silk culture. The 

 picture before us shows the end of the process. One girl is busy 

 with the hurdles upon which the worms have been grown ; a second 

 collects the finished cocoons ; a third brings them away ; a fourth 

 sits at the old simple reeling apparatus, a little stove with a coal 

 fire, on which the water is being heated in the iron pan placed 

 above it. She has thrown in a handful of cocoons and is about 

 to reel off the silk threads. A fifth girl is busy hanging up the 

 strands of reeled silk to dry. The fineness of the embossing goes 

 so far as to give the pattern of the clothing, which is recognis- 

 able even in the small scale of the picture. Many of these newer 

 Zogan-works on cast iron are rendered more prominent through 

 the steel blue or dead-black groundwork, a peculiar kind of 

 " Niello," which is made of lacquer putty, or Shakudo, and pro- 

 duces an effect like the works of Zuloaga of Madrid, whose name 

 is known to every friend of art industry and visitor at the great 

 exhibitions, by its magnificent inlaying of iron. 



Copper (Aka-gane, Do), the most widely distributed, and next 

 to iron the most important metal of Japan, is said to have been 

 found here first in 708 A.D. But without doubt it was known to 

 the inhabitants much earlier, as is indicated by prehistoric dis- 

 coveries. Among these and side by side with stone weapons and 

 coarse earthen vessels, are also copper swords and small round 

 bells (Suzu) of copper plate, and other bells (Tsuri-gane) of con- 

 siderable size.^ Copper probably came first with Buddhism from 

 China and Corea to Japan. It is certain that it has served for the 

 ornamentation and outfitting of Buddhist temples and pagodas, as 

 in India and China, in manifold forms, from the first introduction 

 of Buddhist teaching till the present time. 



If it does not play in Japanese religion and in the household so 

 prominent a part as in India, where copper and brass vessels have 

 served for ages the manifold purposes for which we, generally, 

 use wooden, clay and glass ware, it is nevertheless in Japan often 

 substituted for the earthen vessel as well as for iron, zinc and tin. 

 Among other useful copper utensils, I mention only the Yatate or 

 portable writing-case, in which the Japanese business man carries 



^ See Kanda Takahira ; " On some Copper Bells." " Transact. As. Soc. of 

 Japan," vol. iv. p. 29 to i-})- 



