Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/282

 a troop of men, women, children, and jinrikishas, all with glowing lanterns, figuring as silhouettes on Sanjio bridge.

When a whole tan of crape is to be painted, much of the design may be stencilled through perforated cardboard, but, in general, the best painted crapes display free-hand sketches, with patterns never exactly repeated, nor exactly matching at the edges. After the general outline is sketched, the tan, sewn together at the ends, is made to revolve horizontally on two cylinders, like a roller towel, passing before a row of seated workmen, each of whom adds a single color, or applies the “resist,” and slips it along to the next. Sitting on the mats, the soles of his feet turned upward in his lap, in a pose that a circus contortionist might envy, each workman has a glowing hibachi at his knees, over which he dries his own work. And such work! Hazy rainbows on misty skies, flights of birds, shadows of trees and rushes, branches of pines and blossoming twigs, comical figures, animals, and fantastical chimeras, kaleidoscopic arrangements of the most vivid colors the eye can bear. These painted crapes are beyond compare, and the English and Dutch imitations in printed delaines fall absurdly short.

Following the Chinese example, Kioto silk-weavers now make silk rugs equalling the famous ones of Pekin. Even when new they have a finer bloom and sheen than the old prayer-rugs of western Asia, but their designs, first made from the suggestions of an American house, are neither Japanese, Turkish, nor at all Oriental, nor do they allow the best effects to be obtained. At two dollars a square foot, these thick, soft rugs make the costliest of floor coverings in a country where the cotton and hemp rugs of Osaka sell for a few cents a square foot, and the natural camel’s-hair rugs of North China for eighteen cents a square foot. 266