SWORD-FURNITURE
the sword-ornamenter has greater range and freedom. That, indeed, is a necessary result of the well-recognised law that the more direct and complete the imitation effected by any art, the less the range and the number of the phenomena it can imitate. The netsuke being, for the most part, a sculpture in the round, the actions, expressions, and accessories represented by it must be limited by the principles of stability and simplicity that govern the "space-arts;" whereas, in the decoration of sword-furniture, the artist may introduce a much wider range of objects and a much greater complexity of actions. The student of these beautiful creations finds that Japanese sculptors have exercised to the full their proper latitude of motives and methods. The carver of sword-furniture did, in fact, make "pictures" in metal; that is to say, pictures within the limitations found applicable to all Japanese pictorial art, wherein such subtleties of appearance as are due to the incidence of light and shade find scarcely any place.
The Japanese samurai carried two swords in his girdle. They are spoken of collectively as dai-shō (long and small), and separately as katana (the long sword) and wakizashi (the companion sword, that is to say, the short sword). There were four other kinds of sword; namely, (1) the tachi (called also jintachi, or "war" tachi), a long curved blade carried by samurai of high rank; (2) the tsurugi, a straight, double-edged sword used in ancient times (the katana, the wakizashi, and the tachi were all one-edged); (3) the aikuchi, a dagger (without guard), used originally for stabbing or decapitating a prostrate foe, and subsequently worn by the samurai when the dai-shō were removed (as on entering a friend's house); and
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