JAPAN
who, under his art name of Kokō, stands in the foremost rank of sword-mount chisellers. The same description applies to the Mizuno family. Its founder, Yoshinori, learned his art under Gotō Yenjo, and neither he nor his successors made any departure from the methods of the Kyōtō masters. It may, indeed, be said that the glyptic movement in Kaga was entirely permeated by Goto influence, and that the greatest artists of this school in the seventeenth century were Hiroyoshi (Kokō), who has just been mentioned; Kuninaga (the first, not the second, of the name); Yoshishige[1] (1620), a younger brother of Kuninaga's, who, as well as Kuninaga, had studied under Gotō Takuzō; and Uji-iye (1630) of the Katsugi family, who had the official title of Gon-dayu. On the whole, however, the characteristic feature of the Kaga work may be said to have been profuse inlaying with gold. Many Japanese connoisseurs are accustomed to credit Kuninaga with having been the first to use gold inlaying in the decoration of sword-furniture. That is an historical inaccuracy. But it is certain that Kuninaga's inlaying was so fine as to become proverbial, the term Jirosaku-hori—Jirosaku was Kuninaga's personal name—being used to indicate specially delicate specimens of that nature, to whatever expert they owed their manufacture. Perhaps it will be correct to say that groove-inlaying (hon-zōgan), as distinguished from surface damascening (nuno-me-zōgan), began to be practised with marked success at the beginning of the seventeenth century, for it appears that while Kuninaga was winning admiration for such work in Kaga, Gotō Kiyoshi, his contemporary, was becoming equally famous in the same line
- ↑ See Appendix, note 38.
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