WEAPONS AND OPERATIONS
and superstitions connected with it. For him the attractive part is the furniture of the weapon; the chiselling of the guard as well as of the adjuncts of the hilt, and the remarkable skill with which various metals are combined for the decoration of these objects. There has been no finer work of its kind in the world. The attention it attracts in Europe and America is still very inadequate. A happy description calls the furniture of the sword the jewelry of the samurai. He did not deck himself with rings, or studs, or chains, or gemmed buckles, or any of the gewgaws affected in other countries. But upon the mountings of his sword, and, in a lesser degree, upon the ornamentation of his armour, he lavished loving care. From the fourteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, a great number of artists devoted themselves wholly to work of that kind, and it is a matter of lasting regret that their excellent skill was not employed to produce objects capable of appealing to a wider range of taste. This subject will be discussed in another place, but it may be noted here that if the shadow of the sword falls darkly over the life of mediæval Japan, much must be forgiven it for the sake of its strongly incentive influence upon the applied art of the nation. When the motive forces of Japanese artistic progress are catalogued, the majority are found to emanate from Buddhism, but militarism stands second on the list, and by no means a remote second. Each feudal principality was a compet-
155
