person neither gold nor silver jewelry. In later times, decoration was
added to the sword hilt and pins were thrust in the hair.

Possibly a prejudice against metal touching the skin, such as exists in
Korea, may account for this absence of jewelry, though silver was not
discovered until A.D. 675, or gold until A.D. 749. The primitive
Japanese, however, did wear ornaments of ground and polished stone, and
these so numerously as to compel contrast with the severer tastes of
later ages. Some of these magatama--curved jewels or perforated
cylinders--were made of very hard stone which requires skill to drill,
cut and polish. Among the substances used was jade, a mineral found only
in Cathay.[3] Indeed, we cannot follow the lines of industry and
manufactures, of personal adornment and household decoration, of
scientific terms and expressions, of literary, intellectual and
religious experiment, without continually finding that the Japanese
borrowed from Chinese storehouses. Possibly their debt began at the time
of the alleged conquest of Korea[4] in the third century.

In Japanese life, as it existed before the introduction of Buddhism,
there was, with barbaric simplicity, a measure of culture somewhat
indeed above the level of savagery, but probably very little that could
be appraised beyond that of the Iroquois Indians in the days of their
Confederacy. For though granting that there were many interesting
features of art, industry, erudition and civilization which have been
lost to the historic memory, and that the research of scholars may
hereafter discover many things now in oblivion; yet, on the other hand,
it is certain that much of what has long been supposed to be of
primitive Japanese origin, and existent before the eighth century, has
been more or less infused or enriched with Chinese elements, or has been
imported directly from India, or Persia,[5] or has crystallized into
shape from the mixture of things Buddhistic and primitive Japanese.

Apart from all speculation, we know that in the train of the first
missionaries came artisans, and instructors in every line of human
industry and achievement, and that the importation of the inventions and
appliances of "the West"--the West then being Korea and China, and the
"Far West," India--was proportionately as general, as far-reaching, as
sensational, as electric in its effects upon the Japanese minds, as, in
our day, has been the introduction of the modern civilization