Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/199

 case, pouch, toggle (netsuke), cord-clutch (ōjime), and so forth—did not come into existence till the close of that century.

There is another girdle-pendant (sage-mono) long antecedent to the pipe and pipe-pouch,—a pendant to which some authorities assign a greater age than even that of the kinchaku,—namely, the inro. Originally, as its name implies, a little bag or wickerwork receptacle for holding the seal (in signifies seal, and ro, a bamboo basket) which in Japan took the place of a written signature, the inro was subsequently made of wood, lacquered black; and thereafter being converted into a tiny medicine chest, took the form of a tier of segments, each fitting into the other vertically, so that the whole, when put together, became a many-receptacled little box, from three to four inches long and two or two and a half inches wide, its corners rounded and its thickness reduced so that it was always handy and never obtrusive. There have been enthusiastic collectors of inro, both foreign and Japanese. It is a taste with which every virtuoso must sympathise, for as specimens of exquisitely artistic and infinitely painstaking decoration in lacquer, inlaying, and sculpture, these tiny medicine-boxes deserve unstinted praise. For the moment, however, attention may be directed to the appendages of the inro rather than to the inro itself. The edges of the two long faces carried a little cylinder, just large enough to admit a silken cord, the ends of which were passed, immediately above the inro, through an ōjime, or cord-clutch. There is reason to think that the ōjime was the first highly ornate appendage of both the inro and the kinchaku, for it occupies in the latter also the same place as in the inro and serves the