The engravers of pipes, pouch clasps, and the metallic discs (_kagami-buta_) attached to certain netsuke, sprang from the same class and were not less original. They worked, too, with a skill little inferior to that of the Gotos, Naras, and other aristocratic sculptors of sword ornaments, and often with a refinement which their relative disadvantages in education and associations render especially remarkable. The netsuke and the pipe, with all that pertained to it, were for the commoners what the sword-hilt and guard were for the gentry. Neither class cared to bestow jewels upon their persons, but neither spared thought or expense in the embellishment of the object they most loved. The final manifestation of popular glyptic art was the _okimono_, an ornament pure and simple, in which utility was altogether secondary in intention to decorative effect. Its manufacture as a special branch of art work dates from the rise of the naturalistic school of painting and the great expansion of the popular school under the Katsugawa, but the okimono formed an occasional amusement of the older glyptic artists. Some of the most exquisite and most ingenious of these earlier productions, such as the magnificent iron eagle in the South Kensington Museum, the wonderful articulated models of crayfish, dragons, serpents, birds, that are found in many European collections, came from the studios of the Miyochins; but these were the play of giants, and were not made as articles of commerce. The new artisan makers of the okimono struck out a line for themselves, one influenced more by the naturalistic and popular schools than by the classical art, and the quails of Kamejo, the tortoises of Seimin, the dragons of Toun and Toryu, and in recent years the falcons and the peacocks of Suzuki Chokichi, are the joy of the European collector. The best of these are exquisite in workmanship, graceful in design, often strikingly original in conception, and usually naturalistic in ideal. They constitute a phase of art in which Japan has few rivals. The present generation is more systematically commercial in its glyptic produce than any previous age. Millions of commercial articles in metal-work, wood and ivory flood the European markets, and may be bought in any street in Europe at a small price, but they offer a variety of design and an excellence of workmanship which place them almost beyond Western competition. Above all this, however, the Japanese sculptor is a force in art. He is nearly as thorough as his forefathers, and maintains the same love of all things beautiful; and if he cannot show any epoch-making novelty, he is at any rate doing his best to support unsurpassed the decorative traditions of the past. Sword-making Families.