Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/118

RV 96 1775, a thousand figures, namely, five hundred Buddhas and five hundred Arhats, the whole constituting the most numerous assemblage of stone images in Japan. Many other ishi-botoke, as a stone Buddha is called, may be seen here and there throughout the country, but the general verdict with regard to them all is that they cannot be described as objects of art. The experience of the Emperor Gotoba shows that want of good stone was fatal to the development of sculpture in that material, and in any case it is not improbable that the Japanese glyptic artist would always have preferred metal and wood, as better adapted to the wooden temples he was invited to people with images. Indeed this latter consideration may have been paramount. It is easy to conceive that had the Parthenon been constructed with pine or the temples on the Acropolis of Selinus with oak, posterity would not have inherited marble pediments or tufa metopes.

Mirrors are among the concrete evidences from which knowledge is derived of the ability of early Japanese workers in metal. These objects are usually simple castings without any trace of the chisel. They possess much value in the eyes of Japanese dilettanti, who regard them as among the oldest examples of their country's artistic metal work. From the description already given of the curious bell-shaped iron castings found under conditions which refer them to a period more remote than the beginning of the Christian era, the reader will have derived the impression that grace of form and a measure of decorative effect were contemplated and achieved by Japanese metal-founders even at that remote time. That impression is confirmed by the mirrors preserved in many Japanese collections of