Excerpt from Notes on the History of Lacquer: A Paper Read Before the Japan Society of London<br><br>In the eighth century the official State department for lacquer-making appears to have been abolished, and the Emperor Mommu appointed twenty well-known artists to study the production of works in lacquer, and ordered them to sign' their names on. The articles they produced, so that inferior work might be the more readily detected. In the same period an order was issued commanding every subject possessing land to plant from forty to one hundred trees in five years, according to the amount of ground. Taxes were ordered to be received in lac in lieu of rice, the ordinary means of payment.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.