looked something like an old-fashioned medicine case hung from the sash by people of ancient time. The outside was marked with lines corresponding to the partitions in a medicine case, but when I opened it, I saw that instead of being a succession of layers, it was an open box divided into two upright partitions to hold playing cards. The lacquer was poor and the work roughly done, but it was an ingenious idea to make a box to hold a means of pleasure in imitation of a case to hold a cure for pain.
“What original people Americans are!” I said. “But I didn’t know that lacquer was made here.”
Matsuo turned the little box over, and, on the bottom, I saw a label, “Made in Japan.”
A few days after, I went down to Matsuo’s store and he showed me whole shelves of articles called Japanese, the sight of which would have filled any inhabitant of Japan with a puzzled wonder as to what the strange European articles could be. They were all marked, “Made in Japan.” Matsuo said that they had been designed by Americans, in shapes suitable for use in this country, then made to order in Japanese factories and shipped direct to America, without having been seen in Japan outside the factory. That troubled me, but Matsuo shrugged his shoulders.
“As long as Americans want them, design them, order them, and are satisfied, there will be merchants to supply,” he said.
“But they are not Japanese things.”
“No,” he replied. “But genuine things do not sell. People think they are too frail and not gay enough.” Then he added slowly, “The only remedy is in education; and that will have to begin here.”
That night I lay awake a long time, thinking. Of course, artistic, appreciative persons are few in comparison to the masses who like heavy vases of green and
