Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/131

 finely grained or richly lacquered wood, it soon obtained recognition as the only heating apparatus adapted to refined life, the sunken hearth being banished to the kitchen and the tea-chamber. It was then that some one invented the kotatsu, a brazier which, being covered by a latticed wooden frame, could be placed under a quilt drawn over the knees, thus constituting a mechanically excellent though very insanitary method of heating the lower part of the body.

Pine torches continued to be the chief means of obtaining light at aristocratic receptions and weddings, but on ordinary excursions they began to be replaced by lanterns consisting of a candle set inside a skeleton frame covered with an envelope of thin white paper. In the fifteenth century a kind of basket lantern was devised which could be folded up when not in use. About the same time candles began to be made of greatly improved tallow, and a species of match was invented in the form of a piece of thin wood tipped with sulphur. These changes carried the Japanese far towards the limits of the improvements made by them in lighting apparatus prior to the resumption of Occidental intercourse in the nineteenth century. The basket lantern, indeed, gradually gave place to a delicate structure decorated so prettily and variously that Japanese lanterns ultimately became famous and were chosen by all civilised nations as specially suited for illuminations where