Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/264

 five days, and occupying altogether about two months. If the expert judges that a good patina has been obtained, he now washes the metal carefully and polishes it with a brush (tawasbi) of rice-straw. This preliminary polishing is a long business, and when it has been carried far enough, the final burnishing is done with dried spikelets of the pine-tree, after which it remains only to damp the object repeatedly with an infusion of tea-leaves during four or five days. Such is the method pursued by Ito Katsumi, a modern expert of the highest skill. Another plan, more curious and said to be very efficacious, is to substitute for the mixture of red and black earth mentioned above some charcoal ashes taken from beneath the gridiron on which eels have been roasted. Into an open vessel containing this ash a small bag of sulphur is inserted, and the mixture is exposed in the open air for two or three years, by which time the ash has become thoroughly impregnated with sulphur. Repeated coats of it are then applied to the iron object at intervals, for about two months, after which polishing and burnishing are effected as before. Tradition says that the early Miyōchin masters burnished their iron with a cotton cloth dipped in the juice of the lacquer-tree, but there is no certainty as to that point. It is understood, of course, that the processes here described are peculiar to certain experts. Many quaint recipes might be obtained by setting down the alleged hiden of this family or that. But it is plain that the published accounts of these methods are intended to deceive rather than to instruct.

Scarcely less important in Japanese eyes than the chiselling of the decorative design itself is the preparation of the field to which it is applied. This part