JAPANESE APPLIED ART
China—that of Nanking—weighs only twenty-two tons, a size reached and surpassed by numerous bells in Japan. Dimensions apart, however, there is absolutely no comparison in the matter of beauty and grandeur of tone between the bells of China, the teacher, and those of Japan, the pupil. In what kind of esteem the notes of a really fine bell are held by the Japanese may be gathered from the fact that among the "Eight Beauties" (Hak-kei) of the celebrated Lake Biwa, the sound of the evening bell of Mii-dera stands fourth. Some have sought the secret of the Japanese bell's sweetness in the method of ringing; that is to say, not with a clapper,—metal clashing against metal,—but with a beam of wood swung horizontally so as to strike a boss on the outer surface of the bell. That may contribute to the result, but cannot, of course, be the reason of it. An eminent writer, discussing the bells of Europe, says that as celebrated violins—an Amati or a Stradivarius—are the outcome of innumerable experiments, extending over centuries, so the "perfect" bells of Holland, cast by the masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, "disengaged themselves after ages of empirical trials as the true models, and supplied the finished type for all succeeding bell-workers." The rules thus evolved and still implicitly obeyed were that the metal should be a mixture of copper and tin in the proportion of 4 to 1, that the thickness of the bell's edge should be one-fifteenth of its diameter, and that its height should be twelve times its thickness. Every one of these rules was ruthlessly violated by the founders of Japanese bells. As to the composition of the bell metal, there does not seem to have been any accurate formula. The
101
