Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/403

 —In hōn-zōgan, or true inlaying, a distinction is made between hira-zōgan (flat inlaying), where the inlaying is level with the surface of the field, and takā-zōgan (relief inlaying), where the outlines of the inlaid design are in slight relief.  —, in L'Art Japonais, dismisses the Goto family in a single paragraph, and sums up their style thus: Leurs décors sont monotones poncifs et d'un goût un peu chinois; leur invention est pauvre.  —There are some misapprehensions among European collectors with regard to this part of the subject. Errors of date are seldom of much importance in such matters, but occasionally they are worth noticing when they affect the history of the art's development. Thus M. Gonse depicts, among the oldest guards to which he refers, one by Toshiharu (of Yedo), and assigns it to the end of the fifteenth century. But Toshiharu was one of the "Three Masters" of the Nara family, and worked in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Again, M. Gonse puts Kaneiye at the close of the fourteenth century, whereas he flourished a hundred years later. He also shows a guard by Nagayoshi (of Yamashiro)—"incrusted [sic] with bronze and gold of different tones," having a design of monkeys and a vase of flowers—which, according to M. Gonse, shows plain evidence of Persian influence, and in that context the French critic explains that Namban-tetsu means "iron of Persia." Now this guard belongs to a comparatively modern class known in Japan as Heian-tsuba (guards of Heian), and justly condemned as most inferior specimens. They have no connection with any chapter of the art's history, but simply represent bad, vulgar workmanship. The design is borrowed from a Chinese picture. As for the term Namban-tetsu, it has nothing whatever to do with Persia, but was formerly applied to all iron imported from Occidental countries. The guard referred to by M. Gonse bears the date "1498," but that seems to be a capricious addition on the part of the maker. He might with equal truth have written "1948." Further, speaking of the use of trans-lucid enamels in the decoration of sword-furniture, the same author accredits the innovation to Kunishiro, whom he places at the end of the sixteenth century. Kunishiro was an insignificant workman of the eighteenth century. There is no record of his having employed vitrifiable enamels for such a purpose, and if he did, he had been long anticipated by the Hirata family. M. Gonse also makes Kinai of Yechizen a contemporary of Nobuiye, and puts them both at the end of the sixteenth century. But Nobuiye flourished in the first part of that century, and the great Kinai in the second half of the seventeenth. These comments are made simply in the interests of 