JAPAN
rare carvings are not to be obtained easily, being preciously treasured up by their possessors. Hence there is nothing at hand really suitable for publication. I have thought, however, that since my father carved only as a pastime in the intervals of his work as a painter, his reputation will suffer no injury by letting the public see even such mediocre specimens of his glyptic work as happen to be available. Hence I have sketched a few and sent them to my friend."
It will be observed that already in the year 1781 the netsuke carved by Shūzan were very scarce, that all his works were coloured (from which it may be inferred that the only material employed by him was wood), and that imitations were numerous even during the lifetime of the immediately succeeding generations. Indeed, the fact that a netsuke carries the name of one of the early celebrities ought generally to inspire distrust, and to suggest possibly the work of an inferior craftsman without either reputation or skill to justify the use of his own name.
It is frequently alleged that no good netsuke have been made in modern times: a conception derived, doubtless, from the fact that after the opening of the country to foreign intercourse in 1857, the netsuke ceasing, on the one hand, to be valued by the Japanese themselves, and becoming, on the other, an object of curiosity and admiration to foreigners, hundreds of inferior specimens were chiselled by inexpert hands, purchased wholesale by treaty-port merchants, and sent to New York, London, and Paris, where, though they brought profit to the exporter, they also disgusted connoisseurs and soon earned discredit for their whole class. But it was a mistake to conclude from
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