Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/232

 in a temple at Nara, exhibits features of considerable decorative beauty. It is a combination of plate and chain defence, and the chiselling of the helmet, breastplate, and brassarts indicates that Japan possessed, at that comparatively early era, workers in metal not unworthy to rank with the sculptor of the Siris Bronzes. Indeed Yoshitsune's armour forcibly recalls that celebrated relic of the school of Praxiteles, for just as the Grecian artist adorned the shoulder-pieces of the armour with repoussé pictures of a combat between an Amazon and a warrior, so on Yoshitsune's shoulder-pieces the Japanese craftsman affixed repousse representations of the Dog of Fo, and on the helmet, flying pheasants. These adjuncts, however, are a minor feature in the case of the Japanese suit of mail. The chief characteristic is a wealth of designs—peony sprays, the well-known combination of plum, bamboo, and pine, chrysanthemum scrolls, and birds—in high relief, à jour, and in low relief. The craftsman who could execute such work had not much room for improvement, and indeed it is not surprising to know that a family which through many generations gave Japan her greatest artists in iron—the Miyōchin family—was founded by an armourer, and had a celebrated representative in the second half of the twelfth century.

While, however, this fine work was lavished on the decoration of armour certainly from the twelfth century and probably from an earlier date, the adornment of the sword did not receive commensurate attention until the fifteenth century,—a curious fact from the point of view of mere incongruity, but doubly curious when it is remembered that whereas armour was worn only on special occasions, the sword