yet it is evident that the primitive Japanese were able to work iron and apply it to many uses.  There were other metals, though the tell-tale etymology of their names in Japanese metallurgy, as in so many other lines of industry and articles of daily use, points to a Chinese origin.  It is the almost incredible fact that the Japanese man or woman wore on the 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 of Europe and the United States.[6]

The Purveyors of Civilization.