Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/375

 tive features of Japanese lacquer. It is not found in the lacquers of either China or Korea. With it, in that respect, may be classed aventurine lacquer, called "pear-ground" (nashi-ji) in Japan. This, too, has never been produced elsewhere. Briefly, nashiji may be described as a surface presenting the appearance of golden sand pervaded by a faint glow of russet brown. The gradual emergence of such a type from the gold dusted fields of earlier epochs is not difficult to conceive, but to the experts of Yoshimasa's era belongs the credit of having indicated the possibilities of this beautiful decoration.

No lacquerers prior to the days of Yoshimasa, that is to say, the second half of the fifteenth century, attained sufficient renown to be remembered by posterity. Then for the first time the annals speak of Hidetsugu of Nara, who constructed tea-boxes after designs by the celebrated chajin Jōo, and whose descendants continued to work through several generations; of Hadagoro of Kyōtō, whose lacquers were known as Hokkai-nuri-mono from the name of the locality where he resided; of Kōami Dōchō, who obtained designs from Tosa Mitsunobu, from Nōami and from Sōami, and who excelled in all the processes of flat lacquer as well as lacquer in relief, bequeathing his art to his descendants, of whom his great-grandson Sozen, the latter's son Sokei, and his grandson Sohaku were all famous lacquerers; of Kōami Dōsei, the second of the Kōami family; of Taiami and Seiami and of Igarashi Shinsai, who also founded a long line of skilled artists. It is plain that from the era of Yoshimasa—commonly spoken of in art circles as "Higashi-yama"—the expert lacquerer began to rank with the pictorial artist or the sculptor.