Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/151

 many artists from the neighbouring empires crossed to Japan at that era. But there are almost insuperable obstacles to complete acceptance of such a theory. The subject will be referred to in another place. Here it must be dismissed by noting the extraordinary impulse of progress that gave to Japan, in a brief space of time, sculptors of noble images, architects of imposing edifices, and painters of grand religious pictures. Lacquerers might be added to the category; but the processes of lacquer manufacture are said to have been known in Japan as far back as the third century before Christ, and it is possible that before the Emperor Kotoku (645–654) ordered his coffin and his crown to be lacquered, fine examples of that kind of work may have been produced. There is no guide here. But it is known that, in the second half of the seventh century, lacquer was so highly prized that lacquered articles were received in payment of taxes, and also that, at about the same epoch, red lacquer, five-coloured lacquer, aventurine lacquer, and lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl were produced.

In the absence of any form of literature the Japanese people remained entirely without intellectual education during the first thousand years of their existence as a nation. That is their own account of themselves, and there are no sufficient grounds for a different version, difficult as