Now the shopman comes with two tortoises in bronze. The Japanese are experts in metal-work, and there is almost life and movement in these creatures. Now he throws on to the table a snake three feet long. It is composed of numberless small movable rings of iron fastened together, and looks marvellously life-like. Just at the door stands a heavy copper bowl on a lacquered tripod, a gong that sounds like a temple bell when its edge is struck with a skin-covered stick. It is beaten out of a single piece, not cast, and therefore it has such a wonderful vibrating and long-continued ring. Let us also go into one of the famous large silk shops. Shining white silk with white embroidered chrysanthemum flowers on it--women's kimonos with clusters of blue flowers on the sleeves and skirt--landscapes, fishing-boats, ducks and pigeons, monkeys and tigers, all painted or embroidered on silk--herons and cranes in thick raised needlework on screens in black frames--everything is good and tasteful. Among the most exquisite, however, are the cloths of cut velvet. This is a wonderful art not found in any other country than Japan. The finest white silken threads are tightly woven over straight copper wires laid close together, making a white cloth of perhaps ten feet square, interwoven with copper wires. An artist paints in bright colours on the cloth a landscape, a rushing brook among red maples, a bridge, a mill-wheel, and a hut on the bank. When he has done, he cuts with a sharp knife along each of the numberless copper wires. Every time he cuts, the point of the knife follows one of the copper wires, and he cuts only over the coloured parts. The fine silk threads are thus severed and their ends stand up like a brush. Then the copper wires are drawn out, and there stand the red trees, hut, and bridge in close velvet on a foundation of silk. In all kinds of handicrafts and mechanical work the Japanese are experts. A workman will sit with inexhaustible patience and diligence for days, and even months and years, executing in ivory a boy carrying a fruit basket on his back. He strikes and cuts with his small hammers and knives, his chisels and files, and gives himself no rest until the boy is finished. Perhaps it may cost him a year's work, but the price is so high that all his expenses for the year are covered when the boy is sold to an art-dealer. FOOTNOTES: [17] "Fuji," without equal; "yama," mountain. [18] The Emperor Mutsuhito died on July 30, 1912, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Yoshihito, who was born in 1879. XIV BACK TO EUROPE KOREA