Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/157

RV 133 the huge images of Japan, like the very much smaller statues of ancient Greece, were finally built up with plates of bronze, these plates were not originally hammered into shape: they were cast. The building-up process was evidently resorted to because it would have been scarcely possible to cast such gigantic figures in situ, neither could the mechanical genius of the age have furnished any means of transporting and elevating upon its pedestal an image weighing five hundred and fifty tons, as the Nara Dai-Butsu did. It is thus apparent that the Japanese of the eighth century understood and practised with marked success the process which is regarded as the highest development of the caster's art, namely, the employment of a hollow, removable core round which the metal is run in a skin just thick enough for strength without waste of material. The object was first roughly modelled in clay on a hollow wooden core. Then, over the clay, a skin of wax was applied, and in this the artist worked all the details, whether of form or of decoration. Thereafter a thin layer of clay was applied with a brush, and when it had dried, other layers were similarly superposed, until coats of coarser clay could be added so as to obtain the requisite strength of mould. Then the mould was dried slowly by means of gentle heat, and the wooden core having been removed, the wax was melted out, leaving a hollow space into which the molten bronze could be poured, the outer envelope and the inner skin of clay being ultimately broken up and removed. A bronze casting obtained by this process was evidently a shell without any break of continuity, whereas for great images, like the Dai-Butsu of Nara and Kamakura, it was necessary to cast the shell in a number of small