Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/96

RV 74 duction of Buddhism, they cannot be supposed to have been part of temple paraphernalia. Perhaps the most tenable supposition is that they served for the external decoration of the first buildings made in Japan after Chinese models, having been suspended from the corners of the eaves in the manner of the bell-shaped pendants of pagodas. Already in the seventh century of the Christian era they had become antiquities, and it seems natural to infer that the fashion, architectural or otherwise, with which their employment was connected, went out of vogue in the first or second century. Occasionally there are cast upon the surfaces of these bells decorative designs indicating a very crude stage of pictorial art; for example, figures even more rudimentary in outline than the conventional sketches of ancient Egypt.

There is evidence that by the time of the Emperor Nitoku (313–399) considerable skill had been developed in the use of bronze, iron, and gold for decorative purpose. Gold plating was applied with dexterity to bronze and iron alike; decoration not without delicacy and grace appears upon the hilts of swords, and cleverly conceived motives, modelled and chiselled with ability, are seen upon the pommels,—motives indicating that the artists of that early epoch had passed the stage of merely copying natural objects and had learned to conventionalise them. Helmets formed of numerous thin iron plates riveted together and overlaid with gold, had bands of incised ornamentation and peaks chiselled à jour, and were altogether objects of fine workmanship, though the incised ornamentation—conventionalised fishes, birds, and animals, enclosed by borders of undulating lines—showed very imperfect command of the graving