Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/209

 puppy dog and a dragon-fly; the badger-bewitched pot; a rat gnawing a candle; a cicada shell on a walnut; the Seven Wise Men in the bamboo grove; frogs in all kinds of positions; a cock perched on a tile or a drum—each and every one of these used to exist by scores in Japan before dilettanti from Europe and America came to carry them away. But among a dozen specimens representing the same motive a little accuracy of observation will soon enable the connoisseur to recognise that one is incomparably superior to the other eleven. There is no special difficulty in carving rats, or rabbits, or cocks and hens, or imps, but the difference between a group of rats or rabbits by Rantei, for example, or Terutsugu, and the same group chiselled by a modern copyist who manufactures for the Western market, is that in one case the animals are instinct with life and motion; in the other, they are tame and nerveless. The same criticism applies throughout. Even a tortoise by Tomokazu is a vital, crawling creature, just as the discarded shell of a cicada by Rakuchika is seen to be a mere shell before its hollowness has been observed. No wise collector will trouble himself about names and dates until he has first become convinced that a netsuke has artistic claims to such attention.

For the satisfaction of collectors special mention may be made of a variety of netsuke which has caused some perplexity, though as an object of art it has no merit whatever. The subject is an uncouth figure, from three to six inches high and therefore of unusually large dimensions, wearing a strange costume and obviously intended to represent a foreigner. The material is generally of lacquered wood or bone, but in rare instances ivory is used, and the size of the netsuke