Jinrikisha Days in Japan

Their range of stitches, their ingenious methods and combinations, and the variety of effects attained with the needle and a few strands of colored silk, easily place the Japanese first among all embroiderers. Although China taught them to embroider, they far surpass the Chinese in design, color, and artistic qualities, while they attain a minute and mechanical exactness equal to the soulless, expressionless precision of the best Chinese work. They can simulate the hair and fur of animals, the plumage of birds, the hard scales of fishes and dragons, the bloom on fruit, the dew on flowers, the muscles of bodies, tiny faces and hands, the patterned folds of drapery, the clear reflection of lacquer, the glaze of porcelains, and the patina of bronzes in a way impossible to any but the Japanese hand and needle. Sometimes they cover the whole groundwork with couched designs in a heavy knotted silk, and this peculiar embroidery has the name of _kindan nuitsuké_. With floss silk, with twisted silks, with French knots, and with gold and silver thread, couched down with different colored silks, with silk threads couched, and with concealed couchings, a needle-worker attains every color effect of the painter; nor does the embroiderer disdain to use the brush, or to powder and spatter his designs with gold, nor to encroach upon the plastic art by his wonderful modelling of raised surfaces, rivalling the sculptor with his counterfeit faces. His invention and ingenuity are inexhaustible, and the modern craftsmen preserve all the skill of their ancestors.

The oldest existing piece of Japanese needle-work is the mandalla of a nun, kept at Tayema temple in Yamato, which is certainly of the eighth century, although legend ascribes it to the divine Kwannon. Pieces of equal antiquity, doubtless, are in the sealed godowns of Nara temples, but very little is known of them. The latest triumphs of the art, pieces showing the limit of the needle's possibilities, are the ornamental panels and makemono executed for the Tokio palace, and other work by the same artists exhibited at Paris in 1889. This exhibition work was executed under imperial command at Nishimura's, the largest silk-shop in Kioto, a place to which every visitor is piloted forthwith. Solid brown walls, black curtained doors, and the crest of three hexagons are all that one sees from without; but the crest is repeated at door-ways across the street and around corners, until one realizes what a village of crape-weavers and painters, velvet-weavers and embroiderers, is set in the heart of Kioto by this one firm. The master of the three hexagons has taken innumerable medals, gold, silver, and bronze, at home and abroad, and, in response to every invitation to make a national exhibit, Government commands are sent him at Kioto. The blank outer walls and common entrance, the bare rooms with two or three accountants sitting before low desks, do not indicate the treasures of godown and show-room that lie beyond. In an inner room, with an exquisite ceiling of interlaced pine shavings, curtains, kakemono, screens, and fukusa are heaped high, while others are continually brought in by the small porters. In spite of the reputation and the artistic possibilities of the establishment, it sends out much cheap, tasteless, and inferior work to meet the demands of foreign trade, and of the tourists who desire the so-called Japanese things they are used to seeing at home.