his own
special work with painful red eyes, on which are large bone-rimmed
spectacles. They all, as a rule, lose their sight early in thus poring
incessantly over this difficult and dainty work.

I ordered several pieces of cotton crepe of a certain design that I had
drawn myself, and it was during the execution of this commission that I
was brought into touch with the stencil-workers and dyers of the
country. Stencil-cutting is one of the most beautiful arts imaginable.
To see the stencil-workers cutting fantastic designs from the hard
polished cardboard beneath their instruments--so delicate that it is
like the tracery of a spider's web in its tenuity--is a sight that one
never forgets. Some of the designs are so cobweb-like that single human
hairs are used in parts to keep them from breaking to pieces.

Dyeing is also an art that is brought to a high degree of perfection in
Japan. Sometimes an elaborate design will need such a large number of
plates and colours, as well as finishing touches by the hand of the
operator, that in the end it looks almost like a water-colour, so
closely do the colours mingle one with another.

Then there were the carpenters, and here a whole series of surprises
awaited me. For example, I found that the teeth of their saws were set
in what may be called the opposite direction, and that therefore, when a
man pulled his instrument towards him, it cut the wood, rather than when
he pushed. In this, as in everything else, the Japanese are perfectly
right. One always has more strength to pull than to push, and with this
method you are enabled to use saws made of such thin metal that if their
teeth were set in the opposite direction they must needs cockle and
break. When a carpenter wants to plane some tiny piece of wood, perhaps
a portion of a miniature doll's house, he does not run a small plane
over it, as we do, but uses a large heavy one, very sharp, and turned
upside-down. In this way very delicate work can be achieved.

All the Japanese tools are designed with a view to their special
fitness. The chisels work in a totally different way from that of our
chisels, and lend themselves more readily to delicate work. As to their
little wood-carving tools, they are perfect joys! I shall never forget
the expressions on the faces of my British workmen as they unpacked the
cases of goods that arrived from Japan, and came across saws as thin as
tissue paper with their teeth set the wrong way; tiny