JAPAN
the popular school, the Omori, the Hamano, the Iwamoto, and the Ishiguro, to whom Gotō Ichijo must be added as an unsurpassed master of their style. It is difficult to convey in words any general idea of the luxury of decoration, delicacy of chiselling, poetry of motive, and, withal, simplicity of subject exhibited in the masterpieces of experts like Omori Teruhide, Iwamoto Konkwan, Hamano Noriyuki, Ishiguro Masatsune, and many of their disciples and followers, as well as their contemporary artists of the naturalistic school. Perhaps the best plan is to describe briefly a few specimens which may be regarded as fairly illustrative. Here, for example, is a kozuka by Ishiguro Koreyoshi. The metal is shibuichi and the ends are tipped with gold. It may be noted, en passant, that many of the finest kozuka produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have their ends and backs of gold, though the face is shakudo, shibuichi, or even copper. The kozuka in question is made throughout of shibuichi, except the gold-shod ends, but the back is richly inlaid with gold in the style called kiribaku (cut leaf); that is to say, tiny squares of gold are scattered evenly over the whole field. On the face is chiselled, in high relief, a hawk which has just lighted among the branches of a blossoming plum, and in the distance a sparrow is seen flying away. The hawk's grey plumage is excellently suggested by the patina of the shibuichi, and its feathers and crest are etched with a delicate damascening of gold. The plum blossoms are softly chiselled in silver, and the sparrow's russet colour is well rendered by the copper in which it is modelled. The reverse has this couplet engraved in cursive script:—
306
