Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/398

 Torii Kiyonaga in 1775, are called tsuzuki-mono. Of nearly contemporaneous origin was the hashira-kakushi-ye (post-concealing picture), a long narrow chromo-xylograph; and to Katsukawa Shunsho (1789) is due the hoso-ye (slender picture), which often shows remarkably clever examples of designing.  —Practically all knowledge hitherto collected of the sepulchral relics of Japan is due to the patient and scientific researches of Mr. W. Gowland, and to those of the late and Professor Tsuboi of the Imperial Japanese University.  —Similar moulds exist in Korea, a fact which helps to establish the theory of an industrial connection between Japan and that part of the Asiatic continent in early ages.  —It is noteworthy that the mirrors of the ancient Greeks were exactly similar to those of China and Japan, with the exceptions that the Greeks did not use quicksilver and that their decorative designs were engraved.  —It is interesting to compare these facts with the historical records on which the Japanese themselves have hitherto been accustomed to rely. Their oldest tradition tells that the Sun Goddess gave a mirror to her grandchild, bidding him worship it as her invisible soul no less fervently than he had previously worshipped her visible presence. There is not any serious attempt to state arithmetically the time when that event occurred, but it necessarily antedates the era of Japan's terrestrial sovereigns, and must therefore be referred to the seventh or eighth century before Christ. Yet Japanese archologists speak of the art of metal casting as having been acquired from Korea in the first century before the Christian era, and even record the names of two Korean experts—Mai Jun and Sho Toku-haku—who came to Japan to teach the process. In other words, they represent the first exercise of the art as having taken place six or seven hundred years after its products had come into actual use. There is not any irreconcilable contradiction, of course. The Japanese historian may maintain that the mirror had been in his countrymen's possession and had been regarded by them as a rare and wonderful object, long before they understood the processes of its manufacture. But, as a matter of fact, he does not appear to have yet noticed the discrepancy between attested facts and the statements he advances.  —Indra and Brama are generally coloured red and green, respectively.  —It is significant that painting also was not applied to purposes of portraiture in Japan. A few artists made portraits of themselves, but the professional portrait-painter had no existence. 