Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/207

 carver's motives had extended into the every-day life of the people, into the realm of birds, flowers, insects, shells, and all other natural objects, and into the sphere of history. It is hopeless to attempt any classification. Nor, indeed, would anything be gained by such an effort. The netsuke derives its value, in the first place, from the skill of the sculptor; in the second, from the nature of the motive. It would be as impossible to lay down hard-and-fast rules for the collector's guidance as to construct a useful formula for judging the merits of a picture. Many people attach great importance to the age of a netsuke, and, possessing specimens which they believe to be old, are complacently confident that nothing new can be good. That is a pure delusion. A netsuke gains nothing from age. It is true that ivory, like bronze, develops in time a patina, a soft-brown glow, which is justly prized. But the same colour can be produced by "treatment," the same superficial texture by friction, and, as a matter of fact, both are produced abundantly in the workshop of the forger. On the other hand, there are a score of artists in modern Japan who can carve a netsuke not inferior in any respect to the best types of former times. The skill has not been lost; it is merely exercised in other directions. Age, then, is valuable solely as an assistance to identifying the work of celebrated masters who flourished in past centuries. Imitations were less frequent in former eras than in the present, and if a netsuke bearing the signature of Miwa, of Tomochika, of Issai, or some other great expert, is unquestionably old, its age becomes a partial justification for crediting the genuineness of the signature. Only partial, however, for from the time—a hundred and fifty years