Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/385

 strewing gold dust over a field of russet brown. The most highly esteemed variety of nashi-ji was termed giyōbu-nashi-ji, after the name of the artist (Giyōbu) who invented it at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In this variety the surface is evenly covered with tiny squares of gold-foil, laid one by one in their places, a work demanding infinite patience, accuracy, and delicacy of manipulation. The sense in which the term makiye-shi came to be applied to the decorator of art lacquer will be plain from these facts, indicating, as they do, that his task originally was limited to sifting gold dust over the lacquer.

It may be stated as an almost invariable rule that either kin-nashi-ji, kin-ji, or giyōbu-nashi-ji is found associated with the finest lacquer, whether it enters into the decorative scheme, or appears on the reverse of the object. A ground of golden wood-grain (kin-moku-me), which costs the artist much trouble and requires not less skill than the giyōbu-nashi-ji, ranks also among choice varieties of secondary decoration. But the most difficult task of the makiye-shi is, of course, the application of the decoration. The variety of motives is virtually unlimited, ranging from elaborate landscapes, sea-scapes, battle-scenes, figure subjects, flowers, foliage, birds, insects, fish, and animals, to formal designs of scrolls, arabesques, and diapers. His palette includes several colours,—red, green, blue, silver, and gold being the principal,—but in all fine lacquers gold predominates so largely that the general impression conveyed by the object is one of glow and richness. Not infrequently the most elaborate part of the decoration is found on some comparatively inconspicuous part of the object. This is especially true of letter-boxes (bunko) and writing-