Although a little engraving on copper has been practised in Japan of late years, it is of no artistic value, and the only branch of the art which calls for recognition is the cutting of wood-blocks for use either with colours or without. This, however, is of supreme importance, and as its technique differs in most respects from the European practice, it demands a somewhat detailed description. The wood used is generally that of the cherry-tree, _sakura_, which has a grain of peculiar evenness and hardness. It is worked plankwise to a surface parallel with the grain, and not across it. A design is drawn by the artist, to whom the whole credit of the production generally belongs, with a brush on thin paper, which is then pasted face downwards on the block. The engraver, who is very rarely the designer, then cuts the outlines into the block with a knife, afterwards removing the superfluous wood with gouges and chisels. Great skill is shown in this operation, which achieves perhaps the finest facsimile reproduction of drawings ever known without the aid of photographic processes. A peculiar but highly artistic device is that of gradually rounding off the surfaces where necessary, in order to obtain in printing a soft and graduated mass of colour which does not terminate too abruptly. In printing with colours a separate block is made in this manner for each tint, the first containing as a rule the mere lines of the composition, and the others providing for the masses of tint to be applied. In all printing the paper is laid on the upper surface of the block, and the impression rubbed off with a circular pad, composed of twisted cord within a covering of paper cloth and bamboo-leaf, and called the _baren_. In colour-printing, the colours, which are much the same as those in use in Europe, are mixed, with rice-paste as a medium, on the block for each operation, and the power of regulating the result given by this custom to an intelligent craftsman (who, again, is neither the artist nor the engraver) was productive in the best period of very beautiful and artistic effects, such as could never have been obtained by any mechanical device. A wonderfully accurate register, or successive superposition of each block, is got mainly by the skill of the printer, who is assisted only by a mark defining one corner and another mark showing the opposite side limit.