Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/58

Rh now resorted to a manual work of linking metal rings for making a sort of net-work; this chainwork, when finished, it is said, was made into something to be worn as an undergarment. Then he turned to take up the handicraft of making "koma," or bridges (a kind of small wooden or bamboo pillow inserted between the body of a musical instrument and its strings), of the shamisen, a Japanese guitar; and he was paid, I am told, one sen for a single piece of that koma, and to make twenty it took him three days. Fancy his earning of twenty sen for his steady work of three days! To recollect it in his later days must have been for him the source of tears. And fancy again his immense wealth when he died, the wealth which, not his greed, but his single-minded devotion to art invited! In fact, there was no person so unconcerned of money as this Gaho. It was his greatness to believe amid the sudden falling of art that the Japanese art which had grown from the very soil a thousand years old could not die so easily, and that the people's mind would open to it in a better condition; it was his prophetic foresight to behold the morning light in the midnight star. He was patiently waiting for his time when he should rise with splendour; and he never left himself to be ruined among the sad whirl of society and the nation's unsympathetic commotion. He walked slowly but steadily toward the star upon which he