Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/307

 himself into his profession with his whole soul and spirit. Incessant experiments in the solitude of his laboratory and work room at night, and the zeal and patience of a Palissy at the furnace, conquered his province. He is still constantly studying and experimenting, and always fires his pieces himself, keeping long vigils by the little kiln in the garden. Hurry and money-making he despises. Gazing dreamily out into his garden, Nammikawa declared that he had no ambition to have a large godown, a great workshop, and a hundred workmen; that he always refused to take any large commissions or commercial orders, or to promise a piece at any given time. Neither good art nor good work can be commanded by money, he thought, nor did he want his men to work faster, and therefore less carefully, because greater prices are offered him for haste. It was his pleasure, he said, to take years for the execution of a single piece that might stand flawless before all connoisseurs, and receive its just reward of praise or medals. The latter are dearer to him than any sum of money, and in his own garden he finds happiness with them.

There is a Nammikawa of Tokio who is not to be confounded with this Kioto artist. The Tokio enameller has an entirely different style, a simple design thrown in a broad style upon an unbroken groundwork, easily distinguishing his work from any other; but Nammikawa of Tokio deals directly with the trade, even contracting with foreign curio dealers for seasons of work, and makes replicas of his exquisite pieces by the score for them. Imitators of his style have arisen, and already many cheap pieces, copying his best models, can be purchased in foreign cities.

The idling most delightful of all in Kioto is going over and over again to the same places, doing the same thing repeatedly, and arriving at that happy and 291