444 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



arrangement has found new ways and means. This is shown by 

 the vase on Plate XVII I.^ The flowers (CameUia Sasanqua) and 

 leaves are raised from the dark brown ground in lighter colours ; 

 the bird and the spider-web inlaid with silver wire are well re- 

 presented. The work is new and wrought entirely in the Kioto 

 style. Here bronze containing lead is less used, but there is much 

 relief-inlaying and incrustation. 



Among the useful bronze articles seen in the homes of well- 

 to-do Japanese, are the flower vases (Hana-ike), the censers 

 (Ko-ro), braziers (Hibachi) and mirrors (Kaga-mi), while common 

 people must content themselves with the much cheaper earthen and 

 other substitutes. Artistic bronze work finds its most important 

 and many-sided employment in the manifold decorations of Buddhist 

 temples. Here various Buddhas and other idols astonish and im- 

 press the beholder chiefly by their colossal and exceedingly fine 

 casting, which is even more notable in a number of gigantic bells. 

 The monuments of the Shoguns at Nikko and at Shiba in Tokio, 

 lanterns and a number of smaller articles of bronze, as vases, can- 

 dlesticks, censers and several others, also attract the attention 

 and furnish proof that bronze industry has reached its highest 

 development, principally in the service of the Buddhist religion, 

 and that a considerable amount of copper has been used in its 

 alloys. 



Many of these prominent monuments were ordered to be cast by 

 princes who wished thereby to make themselves acceptable to gods 

 and men ; others are presents of private persons, or the results of 

 public collections, which the priest stimulated as much through 

 ambition as pious feeling. So long as these last were common 

 among the higher classes of society, the gifts for the maintenance 

 and adorning of the temple and cloisters flowed in abundantly, 

 while since the political revolution, the greatest indifference to all 

 these things has been manifest. 



Among the Dai-Butsu or " large Buddhas " of bronze, those of 

 Nara in Yamato and of Kamakura in Sagami are most prominent 

 of all because of their enormous dimensions. The Nara-no-Dai- 

 Butsu is in a spacious temple hall, 88*4 meters long, 51 '8 meters 

 broad, and 48^2 meters high, whose roof is supported by 176 pillars. 

 It represents Rochana (Vairochana), sitting with legs crossed under 

 him, upon an open lotus flower. The left hand of the idol rests 

 upon the corresponding knee, the right is raised with its back 

 turned towards the upper arm, in such a way, that the points 

 of the three out-stretched fingers reach almost to the height of the 

 shoulders, while the thumb and index finger are bent toward each 

 other. Buddha is represented in this manner as a teacher. The 

 idol was cast between 741 and 749 A.D., by the order of Shomu 



^ This was most kindly lent me for the illustration by Herr Paechter (R. 

 Wagner, Kimst- und Verlags-handlung, BerHn, Dessauerstrasse 2), from his 

 rich and choice collection. 



