440 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



metals, with 35 per cent, of zinc, and is worked up in a similar 

 manner. The Japanese do not share the predilection of the 

 Indian people for brass utensils, but they nevertheless employ 

 great skill and care in ornamenting the few they do use. Alloys 

 which are made up in the manner of the Indian Bidri wares, in 

 which zinc amounts to 90 or 95 per cent, and copper forms but a 

 small constitutent, are not known in Japan. Here, for ages past, 

 the most various metallurgic skill and ornamentation is concen- 

 trated upon — 



Kara-kane. Bronze. 



This alloy has an old history. Besides serving manifold technical 

 purposes, it has been for ages the favourite of artists, the material 

 in which art made her first attempts and obtained her highest 

 triumphs. Weapons and working utensils of bronze, made very 

 hard by repeated hammering, were preferred by many nations to 

 those of iron. So also in Japan. The oldest prehistoric metal dis- 

 coveries in this country are bronze bells and arrow heads, concern- 

 ing whose origin and age we can only speculate. 



Bronze shares with iron and brass the great advantage of being 

 much more fluid in a molten state than copper, and in casting to 

 perfectly fill out the mould, and therefore to reproduce it exactly, 

 besides presenting on cooling a close homogeneous texture. Most 

 of the bronze alloys shrink much less than cast iron ; the decrease of 

 volume, however, which accompanies gradual cooling has no such 

 great influence upon the clear outline of the casting, as that 

 shrinking which takes place in the sudden solidifying of many 

 metals. 



A further advantage of bronze lies in the fact that it is so easy 

 to be worked upon with hammer, chisel and burin. Its hardness 

 is similar to that of antimony and lies in most cases, as also in 

 brass, and especially in the old copper bronzes of Japan, between 

 3 and 3*5. The hardness is therefore greater than that of the 

 single constituents of the alloy, including copper. The colour, 

 ductility, texture and hardness are all dependent on the compo- 

 sition of the bronze. Among all the Japanese bronzes (the old 

 copper bronzes not excepted) which I have been able to examine 

 I found none whose hardness equalled that of fluor spar, while 

 (according to E. Reyer^) the hard bronzes of the ancient nations, 

 which were free from zinc and lead, had a hardness of between 5 

 and 6. The cause of the greater density and hardness of these 

 old bronze pieces, as axes, chisels, arrow heads, swords and other 

 weapons, is doubtless to be found in the fact that they were made 

 with the hammer, as castings of a similar composition do not show 



^ E. Reyer: "Hartbronze der alten Volker." Jouriial f. prakt. Cheinie. Bd. 

 25, 1882, p. 258. 



