Ever since Japan has been opened to the world travelers have been telling wonderful stories of the great skill of the natives in this beautiful art. According to some writers, as soon as a child is born it is given a nickname, and with it, as a sort of totem, a design—a flower, for instance, for a girl—a tree or an animal for a boy—and the like. This design, worked out carefully, after due criticism from all the family elders, is drawn on brown paper and then carefully cut out with a sharp knife by some member or friend of the family. And this stencil is then sent to the local dyer to be used in dyeing the infant’s clothes. This same design, or a modification of it, is attached to the person through life, as his or her own private pattern, and whenever new clothes are needed they are dyed after this same pattern. =Japanese Stencils.=—_Paper._—It is a common fact that the very first thing noticeable about Japanese stencils, whether brought from some dyehouse in the interior, or whether made more or less mechanically, for the American market, to be sold to students or craftsmen, is the quality of the paper. It is thin, hardly heavier than ordinary writing paper, but exceedingly tough and strong, and cuts very easily, without tearing. It can occasionally be obtained from importers in sheets, and even better qualities can be secured, from among a mass of old stencils, by finding some which have been only partially cut or used up, and carefully cutting out from them the unused portions where these are large enough for the purpose. [Illustration: FIG. 13—JAPANESE STENCIL KNIFE] [Illustration: FIG. 14—JAPANESE STENCIL BRUSHES] _Knives._—In cutting stencil designs our American practice is to use a sharp penknife, or a Sloyd knife, or, as happens occasionally with some of my friends with amiable professional husbands, a surgeon’s scalpel. None of these, however, compare for neatness, accuracy, and ease and comfort of manipulation, with the very simple but extremely effective little Japanese knives shown in Fig. 13. The knife blade, of very highly tempered steel, is two or three inches long and fits between two flattened plates of wood, tied together tightly at the bottom but springing apart a little toward the top, as a handle. This little spring of the handle is most satisfactory. And as the blade, which is triangular and sharply pointed, is worn away gradually by the constant grinding and sharpening it must receive, the steel can be pushed forward from between the two halves of the handle, until the proper length is reached. _Cutting._—The Japanese draw their designs on paper with India ink, and then, with incredible swiftness and accuracy, the lines are cut, by pushing the knife blade, held with the back downwards, away from the workman, and through the paper which is placed flat on a piece of wood or small tray, with depressions in it half an inch or so deep, to avoid the danger and bother of running the knife point into the wood.