Two bear cubs at play

Another technique that was used to even greater effect was repoussé work. This method of tooling sheet metal from the back is well demonstrated in this small hammered iron study of two bear cubs at play by Muneyoshi. The technique that usually involved hammering the design over two pitch moulds and then soldering or welding the two halves together with an almost invisible seam has been abandoned for this study. The bears have been hammered from a single piece of iron, carefully worked to produce a sensitively detailed naturalistic study. They were exhibited at the 1910 Anglo-Japanese Exhibition at White City, London. Interestingly, the V&A also has an unfinished, almost unrecognisable, preparatory study for these bears. Muneyoshi claimed lineage from the Myochin family, traditional armour makers since the Muromachi period.

Writing in 1911, Professor Jiro Harada refers to Muneyoshi as being the ninth of the line, and calls him 'the greatest artist in hammered metalwork that Japan has seen in recent times'. Certainly some of his other works, notably a large study of an eagle now in the Tokyo National Museum, justify this title. There are also descriptions of a sculpture of a pair of lions, over 120 cm in height and hammered from a single piece of iron, which were also exhibited at the Anglo-Japanese exhibition of 1910.