BRONZE-CASTING, ETC.
come true of her applied art in general. Foreign demand showed so little discrimination that experts, finding it impossible to obtain adequate remuneration for high-class work, were obliged to abandon the field altogether or to lower their standard to the level of common appreciation, or to have recourse to forgeries. Joun has produced, and is thoroughly capable of producing, bronzes at least equal to the best of Seimin's masterpieces, yet he has often been induced to put Seimin's name on objects for the sake of attracting buyers that attach more value to cachet than to quality. Even in the manufacture of the beautiful golden-patina bronze (ki-sentoku) for which Seimin was famous, Joun shows no inferiority. His vases are generally of medium size with decoration in high relief,—carp swimming in water, sprays of flowers, mythological beings, and so on. His pupil Nogami Yataro (art name Riuki) is a scarcely less skilled caster, especially clever in modelling insects and tortoises in Seimin's style.
Among modern bronze-casters the names of Suzuki Chōkichi, Okazaki Sessei, Hasegawa Kumazo, Kanaya Gorosaburo, and Tomi Yeisuke, in conjunction with those mentioned above, take rank as masters of their art and perpetuate its best traditions. Suzuki Chokichi has the title of Gigei-in, or expert to the Imperial Court. He has emerged from the days of false standards when he manufactured some pieces remembered by him to-day with shame—notably a huge censer now in the possession of the South Kensington Museum, a type of the meretricious confused style often adopted by Japanese artists in obedience to their mistaken conception of Western taste—and he now casts bronzes that comply with the pure canons of
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