Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/174

 honour as their makers, and often the name of a sword-smith who had not marked his work, was fixed by a connoisseur of a later generation and inlaid in gold upon the tang.

Of course the Japanese sword had its own vocabulary. An expert speaking of its qualities, of the shape of its line of tempering, of the complexion of the metal, or the dappling of the surface, and of numerous other points perceptible to trained eyes only, used language which conveyed no meaning to the uninitiated. It was so with everything Japanese. Arts and crafts, customs and cults, placed under the microscope of centuries of loving observation, developed features sometimes full of subtle charm, sometimes almost ludicrously disproportionate to the esteem in which they were held, and the plastic language of the country made it possible to construct for all these features a terminology copious and precise to a degree almost beyond the conception of the Anglo-Saxon, the facts of whose daily doings and experiences so enormously outnumber their lexicographical representatives. Thus there are no less than twenty-two expressions—possibly more—for the different curves, sinuosities and scallopings shown by the line of tempering, though, as has been shown above, the form given to this line is purely a matter of the temperer's caprice and has nothing to do with the quality of the blade.

The sword had its superstitions. It was in-