anese merchant, and half the collections of curios
ticketed and placed in museums in England as fine and unique specimens
are in reality worthless imitations.

The really fine productions never leave the country at all. Westerners
visiting Japan expect to secure fine works of art by paying a small sum
for them; but it cannot possibly be done. In that country they know the
value of productions, and will not easily part with them. Inchie,
becoming very serious and natural, would give me a little lecture on
the absurdity of Westerners coming to Japan expecting to buy really fine
old curios and pictures at a small price, when no Japanese would part
with them for any consideration. "A man," he said, "will come from your
country who thinks he understands Japan because he has read some books
about it, and has seen some examples of bad art in England. That man has
no eyes--he can't see the really beautiful things. He comes to buy the
old kakemono. He won't buy the new kakemono by the good man that lives
now. He no understand if it good or bad; but it must be old. Well, we
make him the old one;" and here Inchie gave me an exact description of
how they make the old kakemonos. They first begin by making the paper
look old, and every producer has his several methods of bringing about
age. This is how Inchie does it. He has eight various stains in eight
separate baths, in which he puts his paper, holding the two opposite
corners and dashing it from one bath to another in one quick, dexterous
sweep. Then the paper is left to dry, and out of about one hundred
sheets stained in this way, in all probability only a dozen will be
found sufficiently perfect to deceive the buyer. That is the beginning
of the manufacture of an imitation old kakemono to be sold to the
European connoisseur for hundreds of dollars, afterwards to find its
resting-place in some celebrated museum.

[Illustration: MAKING UP ACCOUNTS]

What chance has a European against a genius like this? and how can he
detect deception in objects that have been the result of such minute
care and consideration? The Japanese can imitate postage stamps so
accurately that the only hope of discovering a fraud lies in analysing
the gum at the back of a stamp. When we stain paper in coffee or beer to
give it the effect of age, we consider that we have gone far in the art
of imposition; but in this direction, as in many others, we are mere
babies compared with the Japanese.

"But then