SWORD-FURNITURE
has been among the remarkable achievements of Japanese workers. The Miyōchin master used iron only. As to guards having designs chiselled à jour (sukashi-bori), it is generally believed that up to the close of the fifteenth century they were more or less roughly executed. Some connoisseurs claim that Miyōchin Nobuiye, who worked during the early part of the sixteenth century, was the first to carry this method of decoration to a point of really high excellence. Nobuiye was third of the Nochi no San-saku, or "Three Later Masters," of the Miyōchin family, and it is scarcely credible that his two immediate predecessors, Yoshimichi (1530) and Takayoshi (1490), the other two of the renowned trio, who worked during the epoch when the Goto family's skill had given new importance to the decoration of swordmounts, can have failed to produce fine guards in the sukashi style. Indeed many delicately chiselled and artistically conceived guards exist in Japan which are attributed, with apparent reason, to makers of earlier eras than Nobuiye's. But the question need not be discussed here. Nobuiye himself did not generally approve of weakening a guard by pierced carving of such an elaborate character as was subsequently adopted, nor must his methods be inferred from the numerous specimens bearing his name, since, in the first place, many of them are forgeries by makers of later epochs, and, in the second, two other experts of the same name—one of Aki, the other of Kishiu—manufactured guards some of which have been confounded with the work of the Miyōchin master. In Nobuiye's finest guards there are found two styles: first, line engraving combined with chiselling in very low relief; and secondly, decoration
263
