The art of enamelling upon metal is, with some exceptions, comparatively a new one in Japan, but is now very popular. The wares are known to the Japanese as _Shippō-yaki_, and in general, in the West, as cloisonné. The centres of the enamel-workers are Tōkyō, Kyōto, and Nagoya, and the best-known makers are Namikawa, of Tōkyō, the inventor of the “cloison-less” enamel, and his namesake of Kyōto. One of the most distinctive of the arts of Japan is that of lacquering, and the Japanese product far excels that of any other makers. The lac, which is a varnish made from the poisonous sap of a tree of the sumac (rhus) family, is applied in thin layers on a carefully prepared ground, usually of wood, and after being dried in a moist oven or steam-chest, is carefully rubbed down and polished. This is repeated with each layer. Various substances, metallic and other, are mixed with the lac or applied to its surface before it is dry, and it may be carved and inlaid in different ways. This is a bare outline of a process which is long and tedious and which has many variations. Extended accounts with many interesting details will be found in Rein’s “Industries of Japan,” in the ninth volume of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, and in Volume VII. of Captain Brinkley’s “Japan.” [Illustration: PAINTING BY YASUNOBU: HERON AND LOTUS] Embroidery, like the designing for brocades and other fabrics, is an art which follows closely the analogies of the art of painting, and is governed by the same æsthetic principles. The embroiderers in Japan are not women but men, and in their work they often display remarkable taste and ability as designers, as well as craftsmanship of the highest order. To Occidental ears Japanese music, set, as it always is, in a minor key and abounding in discords, seems unworthy of the name of music. To characterize it as merely “strummings and squealings” because it does not conform to our ideas, is, however, an unfair aspersion. The fact is that it is based upon a scale which differs from that which we use, one of its peculiarities being the introduction of a semi-tone above the tonic. In the Japanese mind music is so closely related to the sister arts of poetry and dancing that neither can well be treated separately. As Captain Brinkley tells us: “There is no Japanese music that will not serve as accompaniment for the Japanese stanza, and the stanza, in turn, adapts itself perfectly to the fashion of the Japanese dance. The law of the unities seems to have prescribed that the cadence of the stanza should melt into the lilt of the song, and that the measure of the song should be worked out by the ‘woven paces and waving hands’ of the dance. The affinity between them is so close that it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends.”