Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/223

 these parodies that the sculptor had lost his old ability. He still retained it, though its exercise was circumscribed, and in Tōkyō, Ōsaka, and Kyōtō netsukes of high quality continued to be produced. During recent years the artists have turned their attention to a somewhat different class of object, the okimono, or statuette, but it is not to be supposed that they are a whit inferior to the old-time experts in conception and execution. The collector may be satisfied that a netsuke bearing the signature of a comparatively modern artist is not necessarily inferior to a genuine specimen by Seibei, Tomtoda, Miwa, or Issai.

The passing reference already made to Nara ningyo (puppets of Nara) requires to be briefly supplemented. Visitors to the celebrated temples of Nara find for sale there some roughly chiselled wooden figures, two or three inches high, generally representing the old couple of Takasago and a few other familiar motives. The figures are painted in two or three colours. They can scarcely be called art objects, but belong rather to the category of toys. Yet they are connected with a once flourishing industry which occupies a prominent place in the history of Japanese wood-carving. In 1588, when the Taikō had the honour of receiving a visit from the Emperor in the newly constructed "Palace of Pleasure" at Fushimi, 1 he ordered the sculptors of Nara to exert their utmost skill in producing a congratulatory carving which should stand in the alcove of the reception chamber. The form of such an object was limited by tradition to the shimadai, or "island-stand," a motive derived from the Japanese cosmogony in which the creator and the creatrix, Izanami and Izanagi, are