Kioto abounds in curio-shops, ranging from the half-mile long row on either side of the Manjiuji to the splendid accumulations and choice art collections of Ikeda, Hayashi, Kiukioda, Takada, and the bazaar at the foot of Maruyama. At Ikeda’s, which is really an art museum filled with precious things, the processes of damascening and lacquering may be watched. It has been proven of late that, when patrons will pay a price to warrant the endless labor and care, as good lacquer may be made to-day as formerly. Connoisseurs admit that they are often deceived, and that they are able to tell the quality only, and not the age, of any really choice piece. The new is as indestructible as the old, if carefully made. A pin-point or a hot coal leaves no mark, a year’s bath in sea-water no trace, and amateur photographers have found it proof against the acids and chemicals of developing fluids. Yet this substance, enduring as crystal, is made by coat upon coat of an ill-smelling black varnish, which, stirred in a tub with iron-filings, and set in the 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 helmets and swords, such as are to be found nowhere else.
Tokio and Osaka rival the Kioto makers of the finer modern metal-work, all three cities having been equal capitals and centres of wealth and luxury in the feudal days, when the armorer was the warrior’s right-hand. The descendants of the ancient metal-workers of Kioto still labor at the old forges, and marvels of art, as well as of patient labor, come from the various workshops of the town. Both old and new designs are employed to beautify new combinations of metals, but at the present day the metal-workers’ art expends itself on trifling things. Instead of adorning armor and weapons and fashioning their exquisite ornaments, the artists’ taste and skill must be lavished on vases, placques, incense-burners, hibachis, water-pots, and flower-stands, and the countless cheap trifles and specimens of bijouterie made for exportation. In the coloring, cutting, and inlaying of bronze the Japanese are unrivalled; but for the great metal-work of the empire the student of native art must visit private collections and the treasures of the great curio-shops.
Feudal life invested swords and armor with their high estate, and gave the armorer his rank. The fine temper of the old blades has long challenged European admiration, and the sword-guards, the knife-handles, and the minute ornaments of the hilt are beyond compare. Sentiment, legend, and poetry glorify the sword, and the edict of 1871, which forbade their use as weapons, increased their value as relics, and brought thousands of them into the curio market. In rich and noble families they have always been treasured, but collections of fine blades are found in other countries as well, and the names of Muramasa and Masamuné and the Miochin family, are as well known as that of Benvenuto Cellini to connoisseurs of metal-work anywhere.
In the earlier uncommercial times little distinction was recognized in the comparative value of metals. Their fitness for the purpose required, and the effectiveness of their tints and tones for carrying out ornamental designs, were what the artist considered. One metal was as easily wrought by him as another. Iron was like clay in his competent hands, and he moulded, cut, and hammered as he willed, using copper, gold, silver, iron, tin, zinc, lead, and antimony simply as pigments, and combining them as a painter would his colors. The well-known shibuichi, or mixed copper and silver, and shakudo or mixed iron, copper, and gold, are only general names for the great range of tints and tones, shading from tawniest-yellow to darkest-brown and a purple-black, and from silver-white to the darkest steely-gray. Silver and gold were inlaid with iron, the harder metal upon the softer, and solid lumps of gold, silver, and lead are found encrusted in bronze in a way to defy all known laws of the fusion of metals. While good and even marvellous work is still done, the old spirit is gone, and the objects of to-day seem almost unworthy the art lavished on them.
The magic mirror is still manufactured in Kioto, and although the tourist is often assured that it does not exist, innumerable specimens prove that the face of a common polished steel mirror, of good quality, will reflect the same design as that raised in relief on its back. With small mirrors ten inches in diameter, as with the largest, in their elaborate lacquered cases, one may throw, with a ray of sunlight, a clear-cut image on wall or ceiling. The pressure of the uneven surface at the back, the varying density of the metal, and the effect of polishing, all combine to give this curious attribute to these kagami, which are gradually giving place to foreign glass and quicksilver.