Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/92

RV 70 not have been of a uniformly high order. Occupations were hereditary, and it thus resulted that families generally bore the names of the industries they prosecuted. Over each organisation a chief presided, his title being Tomo-no-Miyatsuko (corporation master) or Tomo-no-O (corporation head). But these artisans evidently did not receive much public consideration. They generally formed part of a noble's household, and occupied there a position not greatly better than that of vassals in whom their patrons enjoyed a right of property. Not until the fifth century of the Christian era were they released from this state of bondage and granted the status of ordinary subjects.

The testimony of written records and that of relics exhumed from sepulchres indicate that the Japanese passed through two periods, a bronze age and an iron age. As to the time when the former commenced, it seems certain that the art of casting bronze, remote as was its origin on the Asiatic continent, did not lie within the knowledge of the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan, but was brought thither by immigrants from the mainland; that is to say, by the progenitors of the Japanese proper. It follows that the oldest bronze castings in Japan do not date from a period more remote than the sixth century, or, perhaps, the seventh before the Christian era, and that no special title to antiquity can be set up on their behalf as compared with corresponding works in various other countries.

On the other hand, if the Japanese cannot claim any distinguished antiquity for their knowledge of the art of bronze casting, they can certainly claim to have escaped any period of art degradation such as that