Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/290

 sun to thicken and blacken, may be seen daily in the streets of any Japanese city. New lacquer is so poisonous to many persons that the curious are content to watch at a distance, while the workmen apply coat after coat, set the article in a moistened box to dry slowly, and grinding and polishing surface after surface, add those wonderful decorations that result in a trifle light as air and precious as gold or gems. The “incense-shop” is one of the choicest and most truly Japanese of curio-shops. It looks, from the street, an every-day affair; but after propitiating the attendants by a purchase of perfume, the inner wealth is revealed in rooms filled with the choicest old wares. The salesmen tempt the visitor with rare koros, or incense-burners, and, in an elementary way, the master plays the daimio's old game of the Twenty Perfumes. He sprinkles on the hibachi’s glowing coals some little black morsels in the shape of leaves, blossoms, or characters; scattering green particles, brown particles, and grayish ones, and showing the ignorant alien how to catch the ascending column of pale-blue smoke in the bent hand, close the fingers upon it, and convey it to the nose. You cannot tell which odor you prefer, nor remember which dried particle gave forth a particular fragrance. The nose is bewildered by the commingled wreaths and mixed cathedral odors, and the master chuckles delightedly. There are certain curio-shops of an even more exalted kind, unknown to tourists, and reserved to Japanese connoisseurs and to those few eminent foreign residents who, in taste and appreciation, are Japanese. There, little tea-jars, ancient tea-bowls, and ornaments for the ink-box delight those to the manner born, and command great prices; and there one sees the precious iron pots of Riobondo lifted from brocade bags, and ancient pieces of wrought and inlaid bronze and iron, old 274