Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/326

 that must have existed at the moment when the edict of 1876 went forth? This is one of the most curious pages of the iconoclastic chapter opened simultaneously with the opening of Japan to foreign intercourse. As the old order changed, the beauties it had bequeathed to the country were swept away with the blemishes it had begotten; and if the process was sometimes slow in the latter case, it was often almost miraculously rapid in the former. Incredible though the fact may seem, it is nevertheless a fact that when, about the year 1880, United States' collectors began to interest themselves keenly in Japanese sword-mounts, and to acquire them in the resolute manner of New York and Chicago, the supply of genuine specimens could not meet this fitful and comparatively paltry demand, and the forger drove a brisk trade for a season, casting where he could not chisel, and substituting flash and profusion of ornament for force and delicacy of sculpture. To-day, an amateur applying himself in Japan to make a representative collection of fine sword-mounts could not hope for more than very partial success. Those that are already fortunate in the possession of such objects may therefore congratulate themselves, for while in every other branch of Japanese art no serious break has occurred in the continuity of successful production, the sword-mount is altogether a thing of the past and will never again occupy the attention of great sculptors.

As to the assertion made above that sword-mount experts continued to work with undiminished skill down to the year 1876, a better illustration cannot be adduced than that of Gotō Ichijo. The reader will probably have observed that, in these records of centuries, no reference is made to the Goto family.