Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/382

 a time ship-loads of porcelains, bronzes, and lacquer were sold for a song; fine bells going for ship ballast, and ships’ cooks using veritable old Satsuma jars to put their drippings in. But that time is not now. A collection of old Satsuma lately gathered up in Europe by a Japanese buyer brought five times its cost when disposed of in Japan. Some notion of the wealth of art works, and of the great stores the country contained in the old days, may be conveyed by the drain of these twenty years, since Japanese art began to revolutionize the art world. The Restoration, the Satsuma rebellion, the adoption of foreign dress for the army and the court, each sent a flood of rare things into the curio market, and hard times still bring forth treasures. The great collectors and connoisseurs are now so generally known that sacrifices of choice curios are made directly to them by private sale, and not in the open market. Government has begun to realize the irrecoverable loss of the country, and the necessity of retaining what still remains, and lists and photographs are being made of all art treasures stored in the Government and temple godowns throughout the empire. Much has been destroyed by fire, of course, and it is said that the priests themselves have put the torch to their temples at the approach of the official commission that would have discovered what priceless temple treasures they had sold in times of need. All the Buddhist establishments suffered loss of revenues after the Restoration, and only by secretly disposing of the sacred objects in the godowns were many priests kept from starvation.

While the Dutch were there, Nagasaki had a large trade with China, and still does a great business with that country in the exportation of dried fish. It smells to heaven all along the Bund, and in the court-yards of the large warehouses men and women turn in the sun and pack into bags oblong brown things that might be 366