Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/294

 swordsman of Owari, Yagiu by name, who in the sixteenth century had fifty fine sword-guards made by the best experts of the time. He placed all the guards in a mortar, pounded them with a heavy pestle, and used only those that survived the ordeal. Subsequently Yagiu's guards came to be the fashion, and were preferred to much finer work which had not undergone the same test. There is, however, an explanation of the cast-iron theory advanced by European writers. Many of the guards sold to foreign collectors in recent times have been of cast iron, made expressly for the unwary curio-hunter. From these a deceptive inference has been drawn as to the nature of the genuine old work.

In describing briefly the progress of the art from the time of its early prosperity until the present day, the most convenient method will be to follow the method of division into centuries.

Two eminently great names of this century are Nobuiye (Miyōchin) and Kaneiye, but enough has already been said about their work. It may be added here, however, that although the great Kaneiye certainly flourished at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, Japanese traditions refer to an earlier expert of the same name whom they distinguish as O-shodai Kaneiye, or the "remote first-generation Kaneiye." Nothing accurate is known about him, and the few specimens attributed to him are of such inferior quality that no interest attaches to their history.