This sometimes assumes a circular form, and is occasionally inlaid with the more precious metals; more often, however, it resembles the pear- or gourd-shaped screen. In the centre example illustrated, belonging to Mr. W. Harding Smith, the handle is of lacquered wood, the ornaments at its extremities, together with the rim of the fan blade, of bronze gilt; it bears an inscription on the obverse in Japanese, and on the reverse in Chinese, as follows:—
‘Kisei ai shozaru jun-kwan no hashi naki-ga gotoshi.’
‘Wrong and right (or odd and even) happen for ever, impartially, like the revolving ball.’
This may, possibly, be rendered by the following:—
‘Defeat and victory succeed each other by a turn of Fortune’s wheel.’
‘Sono toki-koto kazé no gotoku Sono shizuka-nuru koto hayashi no gotoshi.’
‘Its sharpness is as the wind, its softness as the grave.’
The fan in the possession of Mr. W. L. Behrens is ornamented with two dragons in low relief, the motto ‘Tenka tai hei’ (international peace).
In the folding battle-fan, the stick is of wrought iron, the branches varying from ten to fourteen in number; in many military fans, the stick is of bamboo, painted black, the guards of iron, often arrow-shaped, and richly inlaid with silver.[54]
The decoration of the mount, of thick paper, consists of the sun, moon, or north star, usually in red, but also in gold, on a black or coloured ground. An unusual example, illustrated, has a gold sun on the one side, and a silver crescent moon and nine golden planets on the reverse; the ground being light, the guards of yellow bronze, ‘seutoku.’
The fine fan in the possession of Mr. L. C. R. Messel has on the obverse a golden sun with two flying birds, and on the reverse a silver sun with similar birds.
The sun _motif_ is occasionally abandoned in favour of a figure-subject. M. Ph. Burty exhibited at Liverpool in 1877 a fan that belonged to a commander-in-chief; the leaf, of stout buff paper covered with silk tissue, is painted in india ink with the Seven Sages in the Forest of Bamboru. The brins are of plain whalebone, the panaches of oxidised iron, elaborately inlaid with scroll-work and crests in silver, the latter being of the powerful family of Nai-To. Another fan from the same collection belonged also to an officer of high rank. The brins are of bronze gilt, the panaches of polished iron, shaped like slips of bamboo, and chased with lions and flowers. On the inside of one panache is an inscription in inlaid gold, stating that the ironwork was made by U. Da-Kane-Signe; the leaf of glistening paper.