Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/110

RV 88 that all the rest were Japanese. If that deduction be warranted, the Japanese of the eighth century could do these things: they could sculpture metal delicately and minutely, using a number of chisels and burins, and thus showing a long step of progress from the sixth-century time of few and ineffective implements; they could inlay metals with mother-of-pearl and amber; they could apply cloisonné decoration to objects of gold, the cloisons being of silver and somewhat clumsy; they could work skilfully in lacquer, black, and golden; they could encrust gold with jewels; they could chisel metal in designs à jour or in the round, both with much skill; they could cast bronze by the cire-perdue process, showing detailed work as clear as though it had been finished with the chisel; they could encrust wood with ivory, plain or coloured, and inlay it with mother-of-pearl, gold, or silver; they could weave rich brocades; they could paint decorative or pictorial designs on wood, overlaying them with translucid varnish which preserved the colours fresh for centuries; and they could manufacture coloured glass. The difficulty which the student encounters in assigning these beautiful objects to Japanese artists is that in not one instance do the decorative designs bear a purely Japanese character, and that in many instances they are essentially Chinese, Indian, or Persian. It is of course conceivable that Japanese decorative artists may not yet have emerged from the copying stage, and that they borrowed motives frankly and faithfully from foreign sources. But, on the other hand, if these objects had been of native production, would the Nara Court have placed them among the treasures of the principal temple? It seems more reasonable to believe