Thirty years ago Louis Gonse, a French authority, wrote that the Japanese had done little in cloisonné, [Illustration: _Courtesy Brooklyn Museum of Art_ Chinese Cloissonné Palace Censer, Chia Ching Period, 1552-1567] [Illustration: _Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_ Japanese Armour of the Feudal Period, showing Swords with their Sword-Guards (_Tsuba_)] but since that time its production has increased enormously. While much of this modern work is inferior in quality, that which is truly _fine_ is well worth the collector’s attention. With the rapidly changing conditions, both in China and Japan, such objects will greatly enhance in value in a few years hence and come to be properly esteemed. CHAPTER XXXIII JAPANESE SWORD-GUARDS Small objects beautiful to contemplate, exquisite in workmanship, intrinsically valuable, and at the same time rich in historical associations have attracted men of all ages. Little wonder it is that the collector of the objects for art of the Japanese craftsmen finds in them an ever refreshing delight. The _tsuba_, or sword-guards of Japan, are famed for their workmanship, beauty of design, and historic interest, while their rarity is not such as to discourage the collector. A few years ago, indeed, these remarkable examples of the skill of the old-time Japanese metal-workers could have been picked up in the Japanese shops in America and Europe for a song. Though the price has advanced precipitously, fine specimens of sword-guards may still be had at far from prohibitive prices, when one considers that almost every tsuba can be counted a supreme example of the metal-worker’s art. There are no two genuine Japanese sword-guards precisely alike. Each is distinctly an original and unique object into whose fashioning has gone the best effort of those tirelessly patient and conscientious craftsmen of the Flowery Kingdom. Feudal Japan has disappeared, and with it the need of the old armorers’ art. Fifty-eight years ago a noted Japanese official sought in vain throughout Yedo--now Tōkyō--for a countryman who might prove to be conversant with the English language, a fact that gives one an intimation of the rapidity with which the old order of things has been thrown off and the new taken on. It was just forty years ago that an imperial edict abolished the wearing of swords. The edict was obeyed without a single known instance of resistance, and the shops of Kyōto, Tōkyō, and Ozaka dealing in art objects soon bristled with ancient swords and sword “furniture” from those samurai who a few months before held their swords as sacred as their persons.