Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 8/Chapter 2
Chapter II
WARES OF HIZEN
Of the four principal islands forming the Japanese Empire, the most southerly is called Kiushiu, or the "Nine Provinces." It was here that the first European adventurers landed in Japan, and inaugurated a trade which flourished, in varying degree, until the final opening of the country four hundred years later.
Many erroneous inferences bearing upon the subject of keramics have been drawn from the circumstances under which this trade was conducted by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English. Connoisseurs have even ventured to fix the age of the first Japanese porcelain carried to Europe by reference to the date of the earliest commercial intercourse with the Portuguese. The existence of porcelain in Japan being assumed, there is little difficulty in the further assumption that such a novel and beautiful object must have attracted the attention of the shrewd foreign merchants. When hypothesis is substituted for history, the limits of a writer's statements depend mainly on his personal equation. Messrs. Audsley and Bowes, while admitting that no particulars are given by Kaempfer, the most trustworthy annalist of those early days, with regard to the nature of the commodities exported from the Portuguese factories in Hirado and Nagasaki, nevertheless assert that from what Kaempfer does state, "one may readily surmise that rare specimens of porcelain were among their exports." What Kaempfer wrote is as follows:—
Here I shall leave for a while the affairs of religion, to say a few words concerning the commerce and trade of the Portuguese. The merchants in their trade, and the priests in the propagating of the gospel, prospered equally well. The merchants married the daughters of the richest inhabitants, and disposed of their goods to the best advantage. The gold of the country was exchanged against European and Indian curiosities, medicines, stuffs, and other things of the like nature. Upwards of three hundred tons of this precious metal were exported every year, for at that time they had full liberty to import and to export what goods and in what quantity they pleased. At the time of their rising greatness they imported their goods in large ships, but upon the decline of their trade they came thither with only their galliots, as they call them, or smaller vessels. They first put into the harbours of Bungo and Hirado. Then they came only to Nagasaki. The gain upon the goods imported was at least cent. per cent., and they got not a little gain upon what they exported. It is believed that had the Portuguese enjoyed the trade to Japan but twenty years longer, upon the same foot as they did for some time, such riches would have been transported out of this Ophir to Macao, and there would have been such a plenty and flow of gold and silver in that town, as sacred writs mention there was at Jerusalem in the times of Solomon. It is needless here to enter into all the particulars of their trade, and I think it sufficient to mention, that even in the last years of their going to Japan, when their trade was in its greatest decline, I mean in 1636, 2,350 chests of silver, or 2,350,000 thails, were carried on board four ships from Nagasaki to Macao. In 1637 they imported goods, and exported money, to the value of 2,142,565 thails, on board six ships; and in 1638, to the value of 1,259,023 thails, only with two galliots. And I found it mentioned that, some years before, they sent away, on board a small ship of theirs, upwards of one hundred tons of gold.
There is nothing in this account to suggest "rare specimens of porcelain." The fact is that, while the Portuguese were trading at the ports of Kiushiu, the manufacture of porcelain, such as they would have been likely to purchase, was not carried on either there or anywhere else in Japan. Gorodayu Go-shonzui, returning from China early in the sixteenth century, manufactured a few hundred pieces of blue-and-white porcelain with the materials which he had brought from the Po-yang Lake, and died before the first "black ship" sighted Tanegashima. It is most improbable that any of his pieces came into the hands of the Portuguese. Produced in quantities too small and at too great cost to become an article of ordinary commerce, the specimens cannot have possessed any attraction for traders whose headquarters were in the country from which Shonzui had derived his knowledge and his materials. After Shonzui's death his immediate successors were unable to manufacture anything but stone-ware, which certainly was not of such a nature as to invite the attention of European traders; and the same may be said of the first Japanese porcelain, properly so called, the production of which commenced more than half a century after the arrival of the Portuguese in Kiushiu.
Hizen is one of the fairest provinces in Japan. Its eastern and northern districts are occupied by hills of gentle contour, fertile valleys, and picturesque streams. Its western portion consists of a multitude of lovely islets, the principal of which is Hirado. It has six mineral springs and thirteen famous cascades, and its soil is exceptionally fertile. In olden times it was included, with the neighbouring province of Higo, in the district known as Hi-no-kuni, or the "country of fire;" a name derived from a miraculous meteor which is said to have guided the celebrated warrior Take Ogumi (B. C. 97) in his campaign against the rebellious aborigines.
Arita is a mountainous district in Hizen. It has been stated in the preceding chapter that Shonzui settled there on his return from China. But the fact is not accurately established. Some authorities maintain that he built his kiln at a place called Midare-bashi, two or three miles beyond the limits of the Arita region. Be this as it may, his immediate successors certainly worked at Midare-bashi, their factory being known as Nangawara. Their productions were stone-ware decorated with blue sous couverte. The province of Hizen already possessed potteries of some reputation; notably that of Karatsu, to which more detailed allusion will be made hereafter, and one in the Matsuo district. Work had been carried on at the latter since the end of the fourteenth century, but nothing was manufactured that deserved to be classed with objects of art. Indeed, if the wares of Karatsu be excepted, it may be said that Hizen was practically unknown, from a keramic point of view, prior to Shonzui's time. And after his death the Hizen workshops would doubtless have relapsed into their previous state of insignificance but for an event which gave a marked impetus to keramic industry at all the great centres in Japan.
That event was the return (1592–1598) of the Japanese troops from Korea, bringing with them a number of Korean potters, as Hideyoshi the Taikō had directed. These foreign workmen were distributed chiefly throughout the nine provinces of Kiushu. Hizen received a good many, and their presence speedily made itself felt, less, perhaps, for the sake of what they were able to accomplish than because of the interest which the feudal barons thus acquired in the progress of the potter's art. The territorial magnates, having openly associated themselves with such an enterprise and taken the trouble to import experts from beyond the sea, were not likely to let the industry languish for lack of patronage. Hideyoshi doubtless anticipated this, and the event justified his forecast.
The second and more familiar variety of ancient Korean ware is céladon. In the "History of Ching-tê-chên Keramics" it is spoken of as having a pale green colour and resembling the well-known Lung-chuan-yao, the staple céladon of the Middle Kingdom. There is, however, an easily recognised difference between the céladon of Korea—namely, the ware manufactured before the close of the fourteenth century—and that of China: pâte of the former is not so dense or dark in colour as the pâte of the latter. The Korean glaze also is much thinner than the Chinese, and lacks the peculiarly solid yet soft appearance of the latter. Nevertheless the Song-do céladon presents attractive features. Bowls, cups, ewers, and occasionally vases, their biscuit thin, their glaze smooth, their colour a delicate green, their incised decoration graceful and chaste, and their general technique good, indicate that the potters of the peninsula were not altogether distanced by their Chinese contemporaries of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Mr. W. R. Carles, sometime British Consul in Han-chung, says, in his "Life in Korea": "Song-do was formerly the place of manufacture of the best Korean pottery, but on the removal of the capital the trade fell, and the workmen, refusing to follow the Court, gradually abandoned their industry, the knowledge of which has now been forgotten. In the winter after my return to Söul I succeeded in purchasing a few pieces, part of a set of thirty-six, which were said to have been taken out of some large grave near Song-do. These are, for the most part, céladon ware, glazed, with a pattern running underneath the glaze. As described by a gentleman who examined them carefully, the main patterns appear to be engraved on the clay as fine grooves or scratches, and the subsequently applied glaze is put on so thickly as to obliterate the grooves and produce an even surface. They are made of an opaque clay of a light reddish colour, and appear, as usual with Oriental fictile ware, to have been supported in the kiln on three supports, and the supports used, in several instances at least, have been small fragments of opaque quartz, portions of which still adhere to some of them. In one of the smaller pieces is a radiate ornament in the centre, which appears to be made up of a series of irregular white fragments of quartz or porcelain, which must have been embedded in the clay before the baking, and some of which project above the surface, though thickly covered with the glaze." The illustrations of these specimens convey a good idea of the shapes and decorative styles in vogue at the Song-do workshops. In some cases the designs incised in the pâte were filled with white clay before applying the céladon glaze. A delicate and attractive effect was thus obtained. In this type a favourite design appears to have been cranes flying amid conventional clouds, hence called by the Japanese Un-kaku-de, or cloud-and-crane variety. Céladon continued to be produced at Song-do, or in its neighbourhood, throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it is easy to identify these later specimens by the crude, garish aspect of their glaze, their coarse crackle,—the best early specimens are without crackle,—and their generally inferior technique.
The third principal variety of Korai-yaki (or Kao-li-yao) is faience. It has fine pâte, tolerably close, and varying in colour from light red to brownish grey. In the biscuit decorative designs are incised, and the incisions are filled with white clay, over which is run glaze of greater or less thickness and lustre. The glaze is seldom of exactly similar colour in two pieces. It varies from rich, full-toned brown to light grey, something of the tone being due to the colour of the pâte, which is partially discernible through its diaphanous covering. In occasional specimens the red biscuit is here and there sufficiently visible to impart an appearance of rosy flecks or clouds, a feature which, though apparently a technical defect, commands the admiration of Japanese connoisseurs. The decoration is elaborated, in very rare instances, by the use of a dark brown pigment—the juice of the Diospyros Kaki—under the glaze, but it is a curious fact that never, so far as is known, did Korean potters employ blue sous couverte. No fully satisfactory reason is assigned for this failure to adopt a style so much practised and so justly esteemed in the neighbouring empire of China. The generally received hypothesis is that supplies of cobalt did not exist in Korea.
Faience of the class described here ranked lowest among the keramic products of Korea. It is the ware alluded to in that passage of the Tao-lu which Julien somewhat perplexingly renders: "Si les vases sont ornées de branches de fleurs blanches, elles n'ont dans ce royaume (Corée) qu'une valeur médiocre." In China all surface ornamentation applied to porcelain or pottery is spoken of as "flowers," and what the author of the Tao-lu really intended to say was that specimens having decoration in white were counted of mediocre quality in Korea. Yet among such specimens there are many possessing great attractions for Western connoisseurs. Their white incised patterns looking out from beneath vitreous brown or grey glaze, represent a style at once effective and delicate. It will be seen, by and by, that this ware furnished the model for a beautiful Japanese faience known as Yatsu-shiro-yaki. Being not only the most characteristic but almost the commonest ware of the peninsula, it came to Japan in considerable quantities, whereas of the fine célodon and white semi-porcelain of Song-do very few good specimens seem to have crossed the sea. Even of the variety now under discussion it is doubtful whether really first-class examples came into the possession of Japanese collectors. Comparatively crude, homely features appealed to the severe taste of the tea-clubs, by whom the Kōrai-yaki was from the first taken into favour, and under their inspiration rustic and rough elements came to be regarded as preferable to the technical excellence of which Korean keramists were certainly capable five hundred years ago. Reverentially preserved in Japanese collections are cups, bowls, censers, bottles, and vases that fall ludicrously below any common-sense standard. They received from their sentimental possessors titles often, though unintentionally, suggestive of their inartistic character. Examples are the Mishima-gorai, so called because its incised decoration of white zigzags, arranged in regular lines, resembled the ideographic text of almanacks compiled at Mishima; and the Haké-me-mishima, or "brush-mark Mishima," a name suggested by the fact that the white glazing material employed to fill up the incised design is smeared over parts of the surface as though rudely daubed on with a brush. The Hana-mishima, or "Flower Mishima," is another type, distinguished only by the presence of petals or detached blossoms among the incised decoration. It should be noted that the white glaze with which the incised decoration is filled in all these varieties, has a creamy, lustrous appearance, and a fine network of crackle, and that sometimes it covers the interior of bowls and cups having their outer surfaces decorated as described above,—namely, with white incised designs in a brown or grey field. A fourth variety was called Go-hon-de, or "model" ware, because it was supposed to have originally served as a model for Japanese keramists in Kyōtō. Belonging essentially to the type discussed above, it is nevertheless distinguished by two features, the light grey colour of the translucid surface glaze, which is craquelé, and the presence of reddish clouds or spots, owing to the pâte peeping out through the glaze. It is generally in this Go-hon-de that dark brown pigment occurs in combination with white incised designs sous couverte. Yet another variety is called Komo-gai or Kuma-gai, a name of uncertain origin, but supposed to be connected with a river named the "Kuma-gawa," in the province of Higo, where some of the Korean potters brought over by the Taikō's generals settled. Of this class the most interesting is faience having dense, coarse pâte, over which is run creamy, buff-coloured glaze, finely crackled. There is no attempt at decoration. This is the unquestionable prototype of the first craquelé Satsuma-yaki. In the same class is included a faience of wholly different appearance. It has close, light grey pate, and opaque, milk-white glaze, applied in a very thin coat. This glaze stands alone in Korea, Japan, or China. Its colour is so pure and its opaqueness so complete that it acts like a coating of paint, converting a bowl of grey pottery into white, but of course non-translucid, porcelain.
Passing from these varieties, good specimens of which present features at least interesting if not pretty, wares are reached that could never have been tolerated outside the atmosphere of the tea-clubs. Of these the general character is repellent homeliness. One and all suggest the idea of pottery primitive in the extreme. They admirably illustrate the morbid æstheticism and perverted tastes of the tea-clubs. Among the most highly appreciated by Japanese connoisseurs and perhaps the least objectionable to Western eyes is a variety called Ido. It is distinguished by waxy white glaze, showing little lustre, covered with a network of coarse or fine crackle. The amateur may easily mistake this faience for the Japanese ware called Hagi-yaki, of which it was certainly the prototype. The Korean faience, however, is distinguishable by its greater weight and darker pâte. Mention may also be made here of a common characteristic of Korean ware, namely, that the lower rim is partially glazed; a peculiarity very rarely found in Japan. Classed with Ido ware is a kind called Ao-Ido, or green Ido, because its rough, coarse glaze is pervaded by a tinge of dirty green. This change of colour is obtained at the cost of even greater technical inexpertness than the Ido faience proper shows. Yet more valued in Japan is the Kata-de, or "hard variety." It has very heavy reddish paste, and thick, greenish blue glaze passing into white, delicate in colour and soft in texture, but associated with marks of such crude technique as to be quite unworthy of admiration. Belonging to the same species is the Ama-mori-Kata-de, or "rain-spotted Kata-de," so called because the numerous blemishes it possesses in common with all these primitive productions, are supplemented by irregular blotches, as though drops of dirty rain had fallen on and permanently corroded its surface. Sometimes this unsightly faience has the ideographs Kin-kai, or "golden sea," engraved in its pâte. It then becomes almost priceless. Similarly distinguished by engraved ideographs is a variety of the already described Mishima class, known as Tsuka-hori Mishima. A still more inscrutable faience is the Kaki-no-heta, so called because of the resemblance its rough, lustreless, rusty-iron-coloured glaze bears to the calyx of the persimmon (kaki). Worthy to stand side by side with it are the Ko-fuki, or "powdered" variety, in which a very heavy brown pâte is covered with dull, dark, ochrey glaze running into grey; and the Toto-ya, or "fish-monger's" variety, with similar paste and equally lustreless but thicker and softer glaze, showing a distinctly yellow tinge. But enough has been said to convey a general idea of the exceedingly homely kinds of Korean faience most affected by Japanese virtuosi. The amateur who desires to pursue the subject may be interested to know that, in addition to the varieties mentioned above, he can make himself acquainted with the Ido-waki, the Hori-Mishima, the Ma-kuma-gawa, the Oni-kuma-gawa, the Han-su, the Go-sho-maru, the Sobakasu, the Ko-irabo, the Ki-irabo, the Hari-bori, and the Koma-gorai. He will find each of these more astonishing, if possible, than the other in lack of attractive features and in abundance of blemishes. Yet by the Japanese chajin they are treasured with infinite reverence and affection. Their richly lacquered receptacles, their brocade wrappers, and the enormous prices they command—two or three hundred dollars for a patched old cup looking as though it had been cut out of rusty iron—enhance the incongruity and marvel of the whole affair. Here, in short, is another and a very striking example of the conventional side of Japanese æsthetics; the tendency to attach greater weight to tradition and association than to beauty and excellence.
The Japanese, as already noted, have always fully understood that Korean keramic art entered upon a period of apparently permanent decadence after the removal of the capital from Song-do and the accession of the present dynasty at the close of the fourteenth century. When they speak of Chōsen-Hakeme or Chōsen-Unkaku—i. e. wares of the Hakeme and Unkaku types manufactured after the Kingdom received the name of "Chōsen"—they signify faience inferior, in their opinion, to Ko-Hakeme (old Hakeme) and Ko-Unkaku. The difference is easily detected by the distinctly vitreous character of the glaze and comparatively light, porous nature of the pâte in the younger specimens.
After what has been written above, it need scarcely be added that the descriptions given by Jacquemart, and following him by Miss J. Young, about Korean porcelains are myths. The statements contained in the third chapter of M. Jacquemart's "Histoire de la Céramique" must be regarded as a singular assemblage of misconceptions. The Koreans never produced anything bearing the faintest resemblance to the pieces he confidently ascribes to them. Siebold, whose experience was acquired after Japanese keramics had reached a stage of high development, wrote more truly when he said that the products of Korea were coarse and that they exhibited the infancy of the art. Even this verdict, however, though comparatively just, erred, in so far as it was founded on the Japanese chajin's favourite specimens of Korean faience and stone-ware. Looking, indeed, at the squalid, impoverished, and inartistic Korea of to-day, the student is puzzled to imagine that it could ever have given valuable aid to refined and æsthetic Japan. But if he turns to China and contrasts the present outcome of her workshops with their former masterpieces, it becomes easy to imagine that the artisans of Korea also may have lapsed into a slough of incompetence equally deep as compared with their original elevation. At the time of the Japanese expedition, however, the little kingdom was in a comparatively flourishing condition, and practical justification existed for the Taikō's idea of procuring keramic experts there.The Korean experts that came to Japan at the close of the sixteenth century were distributed throughout the factories in several fiefs, but for the present the student is invited to consider those only that reached the province of Hizen. The methods taught by Shonzui were then practised at the Nangawara factory, near Arita, but the results achieved were of little merit owing to the inferior nature of the material employed. Tradition asserts that the Nangawara factory was closed after Shonzui's death, and reopened by one Gosu Gombei towards the end of the sixteenth century. The story seems to be a popular record of the fact that, after Shonzui's death, his imported materials having failed and the production of porcelain being no longer possible, the work of his successors fell for a time into disrepute, but subsequently recovered a certain measure of public favour by the manufacture of stone-ware decorated with Chinese blue, which mineral has always been called Gosu by the Japanese. But, in truth, the history of the whole period from Shonzui's death (about 1550) to the close of the sixteenth century is wrapped in obscurity. Nothing can be affirmed except that at the latter date, the highest achievement of the Hizen potters was a stone-ware decorated, somewhat rudely, with impure blue under the glaze. Naoshige was then representative of the noble house of Nabeshima, whose fief the province formed. A number of the Korean immigrants had been placed at his disposal, and he caused four of them to build a factory called Hyakken-gama, in the neighbourhood of the Arita district. During the next few years the influence of these potters is distinctly traceable. Specimens of Hizen ware dating from the time of their advent show the peculiar white-slip decoration sous couverte which Korean keramists so much affected. But the quality of the ware had not undergone any improvement. The workmen were still unable to produce anything comparable with the excellent porcelain that had made Shonzui's reputation. Ignorant that in a hill within sight of their hamlet inexhaustible quantities of the much desired porcelain-stone were waiting to be used, they continued to employ the inferior clay of their old quarries.
The circumstances under which the true clay was discovered, though they mark an epoch of the greatest interest, are involved in some uncertainty. About the year 1620, a native of Toyotani, by name Takahara Goroshichi, arrived in Hizen. Of this man's early history nothing is known. Like Kato Shirozaemon and Shonzui Gorodayu, he seems to have conceived the idea of travelling, perhaps to China, in search of information, and, the fame of Shonzui's productions having reached him, he desired to make himself acquainted in the first place with the methods practised in Hizen. In that age intercourse between the vassals of different fiefs was difficult. Goroshichi was enabled to accomplish his purpose by the assistance of the priests at a temple called Shōten-ji in the province of Chikuzen. The potter to whom by their good offices he obtained an introduction was Sakaida Kakiemon, then, apparently, the principal Japanese workman at Arita, and destined, with his descendants, to occupy a prominent place in the annals of his country's keramics. Goroshichi thenceforth worked at Kakiemon's kiln. Of his technical ability nothing is recorded, but tradition says that he chanced one day to find by the roadside a fragment of stone which seemed to possess exceptional qualities for keramic purposes. Following up this clew, he and Kakiemon discovered a hill called Izumi-yama, composed almost entirely of excellent porcelain-stone. If this tradition be accepted, the manufacture of true Japanese porcelain dates from about the year 1625. But other, and apparently more trustworthy, authorities declare the whole account apocryphal. According to them, the honour of the discovery belongs to Kanagai Risampei, one of the four Korean potters who worked at Hyakken-gama. It is, at any rate, certain that from the grave of Risampei, opened a few years ago, there were taken specimens of true porcelain, manufactured with Izumi-yama clay and decorated with blue under the glaze. Further and stronger testimony is afforded by researches conducted on the site of the Hyakken-gama factory. It is known that this factory was closed and that the workmen were transferred to Arita at least fifteen years before the arrival of Goroshichi in Hizen. Yet among the ruins of the Hyakken kiln there have been found fragments of true porcelain of Japanese origin. It may be taken, then, as sufficiently proved that the Korean, Kanagai Risampei, was the discoverer of Izumi-yama, with its immense stores of porcelain stone, and that the date of the discovery was about 1605.
Risampei's three comrades were Iwao, Momota, and Fuka-umi Obasen. Shortly after the discovery of Izumi-yama, their kiln at Hyakken was closed by order and they were transferred to the Arita district. Doubtless the immediate purpose of this change was to bring the workmen within easy reach of their materials. But subsequently the secluded position of Arita-gōri conferred an additional advantage. Embedded among the spurs of Kuro-kamiyama, or "black-hair mountain," it could easily be guaranteed against all ingress, and when the unique nature of its mineral resources as well as the excellence of its experts' processes came to be appreciated, the feudal chief of the province placed guard-houses at the passes, caused every person and thing passing in or out to be strictly examined, and severely penalised the sale of the wares.
Some fifteen years after the transfer of the factory to Arita, the names of Kakiemon and Goroshichi began to be prominently associated with the manufacture of the new porcelain. The former is said to have been a man of remarkable enterprise and originality, and these faculties, as well as his artistic instincts, raised him to the head of the potters. One can readily conceive that whatever technical skill the Koreans possessed, their artistic inferiority must have placed them at a disadvantage compared with the Japanese. But as yet there was not much opportunity to display artistic inspiration. For some forty years after the discovery of the Izumi-yama stone it is probable that the Arita potters decorated their wares chiefly with blue under the glaze. Until quite recently it was believed that they were unacquainted with the processes of applying vitrifiable enamels over the glaze. But excavations undertaken two years ago by order of the authorities at the site of the Hyakken factory resulted in the finding of numerous fragments of porcelain decorated with vitrifiable enamels. None of these pieces show any traces of gold and silver: the colours used are red, green, and blue only. They suffice, however, to dispel all doubts as to the ability of the Hizen keramists to manufacture ware of this nature as early as 1620. On the other hand, the art of such decoration was evidently in its infancy. Blue sous couverte was preferred as a decorative agent. Some fine specimens of this class were probably manufactured, but in quality of glaze and purity of colour they were not yet comparable with the masterpieces of Shonzui, or the porcelains imported from the Middle Kingdom. Besides, in those early days, the difficulties of using the Izumi-yama stone must have been even greater than they were afterwards found. In manufacturing porcelain elsewhere, whether in China or Japan, the pâte was formed by mixing at least two materials, the one infusible, the other fusible. These are the Kaolin and the Petuntse of the Chinese; the "bone" and the "flesh" of the ware. But the Izumi-yama stone was employed from the first without any admixture of foreign matter. That nature should have provided in Japan only, and at only one place in Japan, material fit to be used in all its simplicity by the porcelain-makers, has always been regarded by the potters of Hizen as a sort of special dispensation. On the other hand, it has been shown of late years, that the Arita stone by no means corresponds with European ideas of an orthodox porcelain earth. Ordinary porcelain stone consists of 46.33 per cent of silica, 39.77 per cent of alumina, and 13.9 per cent of other matters. But among eight specimens of Arita clay analysed by Professor H. Wurtz, one only gave results nearly corresponding with this formula: seven were found to contain from 7.45 to 82.3 per cent of silica; from 12 to 19 per cent of alumina, and from 1 to 3.7 per cent of other matters. The eighth specimen (from Kudaru-yama) contained 49.9 per cent of silica; 38.7 per cent of alumina, and 7.6 per cent of other matters, thus approaching very nearly to the formula mentioned above for porcelain earth proper. From these figures Wurtz concluded that the porcelain of Hizen is made without Kaolin, and that its body consists entirely of Petuntse, or petro-siliceous minerals. This verdict of Wurtz is confirmed by the researches of an independent analyst, Gümbel, who examined six specimens of Arita porcelain, and found that only one (that made with material from Kudaru-yama) was earthy. It will be seen, therefore, that Kakiemon, Goroshichi, and Risampei had to work, with a somewhat difficult material. Indeed, it may be said generally of the Arita porcelain that its pâte is not naturally of fine quality. The utmost care was necessary in manipulating it, and so exhausting was the labour entailed that men were wont to speak of human bones as constituting one of the ingredients of the ware. There is, therefore, no reason to suppose that Kakiemon and his fellow-potters succeeded in producing anything very striking in those early days. Not many specimens of their work have survived, but they suffice to show that it was a somewhat rough porcelain, decorated with blue under the glaze, and copied, with more or less fidelity, from Chinese models. The designs of the Middle Kingdom were modified in accordance with Japanese taste, but the popular conception of choice porcelain having been already educated by specimens which the Ming keramists had been sending over during nearly two centuries and a half, there is no difficulty in understanding that the Arita productions did not excite much enthusiasm. That they found their way to Europe is incredible. For though the Portuguese, and later the Dutch, traded with Japan during the years when this first true Japanese porcelain was manufactured, not only was commerce in the Arita wares interdicted, but also it seems most unlikely that these merchants would have encumbered their ships with wares interesting only as specimens of a country's earliest efforts to imitate the already high achievements of a neighbouring empire. Had the Portuguese or the Dutch foreseen to what enthusiastic admiration the Western world would be stirred, some three centuries later, by its introduction to Japanese art, they would doubtless have been shrewd enough to carry away a few historical pieces of Arita blue-and-white. But these pious traders were neither prophets nor æsthetes.
The factory of Arita is within eight miles of Imari, a port situated at the head of a deep, well-sheltered bay on the northwest coast of Hizen. Imari, though itself an insignificant village, was the market town of the district, and the place to which all the porcelain was carried for distribution by water. It was thus that, when the Arita ware began to attract public attention, people fell into the habit of calling it by the name of the port of shipment rather than by that of the factory. Tradition says that the first wares manufactured by Risampei and his three Korean comrades were designated Kinko-yaki, Kinko being the name—according to Japanese pronunciation—of Risampei's native place. But this appellation very soon ceased to be employed.
Thus far the chief species of decoration employed was blue under the glaze, and the art of applying vitrifiable enamels had not advanced beyond a rudimentary stage. The credit of carrying it to a point of real excellence belongs to Sakaida Kakiemon and his fellow-worker Higashijima Tokuemon. These two men went to Nagasaki in 1646—the date has been preserved with exceptional accuracy—for the purpose of procuring information from a Chinese official who happened to be there at the time. Nagasaki was then a flourishing town of some 27,000 inhabitants. The Portuguese had been expelled thence nine years previously, but the Dutch had been settled in Deshima since 1641, and from seven to ten of their ships entered the harbour of Nagasaki annually. One account says that the original intention of Kakiemon and Tokuemon was to visit China and study there, as Shonzui and Kato had done in former years; but that, falling in with the master of a Chinese junk, they acquired from him information sufficient for their immediate purpose. The latter story is evidently less credible than the former. Both, however, agree in stating that the knowledge obtained on this visit to Nagasaki was only partial. The Chinese official explained the method of preparing and applying red and green enamels,—a method already familiar to Kakiemon,—but was either unable or unwilling to tell anything about the employment of gold, silver, or other colours. The Arita artists, though greatly chagrined, were not disheartened by this reticence. They worked with redoubled zest, and soon succeeded, by their own genius, in compensating for their want of instruction.
Up to this point Japan had sat at the feet of China and Korea in matters relating to the keramic industry. Alike in faience and in porcelain she owed practically the whole of her technical knowledge to her two neighbours. Naturally, therefore, one expects to find that when she first began to manufacture enamelled ware, she followed with more or less fidelity the decorative methods of China, her preceptor and only available model in this line. The Ming dynasty was drawing to its close in the days of Kakiemon, and the imperial factories at Ching-tê-chên were comparatively idle. But numerous specimens of their enamelled porcelains had already reached Japan. These specimens may be divided into two varieties, namely, those of the Cheng-hwa (1465–1425) and earlier Ming eras, and those of the Lung-ching (1567–1572) and Wang-li (1573–1619) eras. In the former the enamels may be said to have played a subordinate rôle. They were used to assist the modelling of a piece; as when a vase takes the shape of a melon with a stalk in brown enamel and leaves and tendrils in green; or they were employed, sparsely and delicately, to enhance the beauty of a cup which owed not less of its effect to the excellence of its pâte and glaze. In the latter—the Lung-ching and Wang-li productions—the enamelled decoration is everything: the quality of the ware itself becomes a secondary consideration. Brilliant colours, in which green and red predominate, and elaborate designs, seldom relieved by any trace of artistic instinct, cover the surface of porcelain that has little to recommend it apart from this profusion of ornament. It was with the latter class of wares that Japan was chiefly familiar in the days of Kakiemon and Tokuemon. Examples of the former had, of course, come across the sea, but so rarely that they never obtained popular recognition. Even to this day, ninety-nine out of every hundred Japanese experts believe that the representative enamelled porcelain of the Middle Kingdom is the Banreki Aka-e, or red (aka) pictured (e) ware of Ban-reki (Wan-li). There can scarcely be any question that the models which Kakiemon and his comrades had before them were of the Ban-reki Aka-ye class. But they did not imitate them. The art instinct of Japan asserted itself from the outset, and led to the manufacture of a less profusely decorated porcelain.
Instead of loading their pieces with diapers and archaic designs in red and green enamels, the Arita artists made enamelled brilliancy a subordinate feature, and sought, by careful painting and refined motives, to compensate for what was lost in richness of effect. The conception and execution of the ware were excellent. The pâte was fine and pure, having a clear bell-like timbre. The milk-white glaze, soft, yet not lacking in lustre, formed a ground harmonising well with the ornamentation, which was simple sometimes to severity. The enamels were clear and rich in tone, but of few colours: lustreless red, frequently showing an orange tint, grass-green, and lilac-blue (over the glaze) constituted nearly the whole palette. Of the decorative subjects, floral medallions were, perhaps, most common, but the dragon, the phœnix, the bamboo, the plum, the pine, birds fluttering about a sheaf of corn, other naturalistic subjects together with various kinds of diapers, were constantly depicted. The characteristics of this ware are not only the sparseness, but also the distribution of the decoration: instead of being spread over the surface, the designs are confined to a few places, the object apparently being to surround each little picture with as ample a margin as possible. This description applies to Arita porcelain after the processes of enamelled decoration and other technical details had been fully mastered, a condition which was probably attained about the year 1660. The chaste style then inaugurated continued thenceforth to be associated with the name of Kakiemon, and lost nothing in the hands of his descendants, who will be referred to in detail by and by.
COMPOSITION OF THE PRINCIPAL PORCELAIN STONES
OF HIZEN
| Name of Material. | Silica. | Alumina. | Lime, Magnesia, etc. | Water. | ||
|
78.18 | 15.69 | 2.39 | 2.52 | ||
|
77.66 | 15.19 | 2.23 | 3.33 | ||
|
78.07 | 13.99 | 3.13 | 3.32 | ||
|
78.21 | 14.41 | 1.61 | 3.71 | ||
|
82.23 | 11.98 | 3.91 | 1.15 | ||
|
49.93 | 38.73 | 2.09 | 7.60 | ||
|
77.84 | 13.51 | 3.30 | 1.29 | ||
|
79.13 | 16.44 | 1.65 | 0.91 |
The Tsuji-tsuchi is a dull, white, coarse-grained, and coherent mass, not unlike chalk, but harder and much tougher. It is slightly adhesive; is composed of small granules which have a distinct but dull lustre, and, though apparently homogeneous, is not really so. In its pulverized form it fuses easily, but in the mass resists a very high temperature.
The Shiro-tsuchi is finer, tougher, and harder than the Tsuji-tsuchi, which in other respects it closely resembles. It contains some small, dark-coloured spots which under the microscope are found to be remnants of pyrite crystals. It appears dull to the naked eye, but under the lens the granulæ composing it are found to have a distinct lustre, almost equal to that seen on the surface of a porcelain fracture. It is much more fusible than the Tsuji-tsuchi.
The Sakaime-tsuchi is scarcely distinguishable from the Shiro-tsuchi, except that it is somewhat softer and coarser.
The Uwa-gusuri-tsuchi (which, as its name indicates, is used for glazing purposes) resembles the preceding varieties, but is much softer, more adhesive, and has many dark spots caused by the presence of pyrites.
The Indo-tsuchi is coarse-grained, and of uneven colour; some parts being white, while others are darkened by the presence of limonite. It is composed of soft and hard particles, the latter resembling undecomposed felspar. When heated its granulæ change to black and then to white, while the vapour given off shows acid reaction, probably due to the presence of sulphuric acid.
The Kudaru-tsuchi is a pure white substance, similar to chalk. It is friable and greasy to the touch, but less so than a true clay. In water it immediately disintegrates to powder, giving off air bubbles, but in the mass it has very little plasticity. It remains white after heating.
The Seiji-tsuchi has a much coarser grain than any of the preceding minerals, and a distinctly laminated structure. Although generally white, it is stained in places by limonite.
The Shirakawa-tsuchi has a finer grain than the Seiji-tsuchi, but coarser than any of the other varieties. It is white, with brownish stripes and spots; porous, rough to the touch, and friable only to a small degree.
It has been already stated that Izumi-yama furnishes a stone which, from the time of its discovery, served for the manufacture of the porcelain mass without any addition of foreign matter. But the reader will see from the above table that the Arita mineral presents varieties which, though differing very slightly in composition—excepting, of course, the Kudaru-yama-tsuchi which belongs to another category—are nevertheless sufficiently unlike to suggest that something might be gained by intermixing them. The Hizen potters early appreciated this possibility. They certainly combined these various stones, using the Tsuji-tsuchi and the Shiro-tsuchi as the principal materials of the porcelain mass. The former, the purest and whitest of all, being somewhat intractable in the kiln, is mixed with Shiro-tsuchi, in the proportion of 7 to 3, for the manufacture of egg-shell ware. The Shiro-tsuchi and Sakaime-tsuchi are accounted of equal quality, and are mixed in varying proportions, equal parts being taken to form the mass of common thick Arita porcelain. The Shirakawa-tsuchi is combined with Shiro-tsuchi or Sakaime-tsuchi to produce crackled porcelain. The Uwagusuri-tsuchi is used for glazing purposes, and the Seiji-tsuchi is similarly used in the manufacture of céladon (Seiji).
The first five minerals enumerated in the above table are found within a comparatively small district in the neighbourhood of Izumi-yama. They do not occur in strata, but are embedded here and there, and covered by felspathic rock. The Kudaru-yama-tsuchi is found in various places between layers of hard rock.
The first process to which the stone is subjected after quarrying is that of pulverisation. The implement employed for this purpose is of the simplest construction. It consists of a horizontal beam, to one end of which a vertical stamp is fixed, to the other a water-box. This contrivance is placed by the side of a stream, whence water is conducted into the box. The latter, filling and emptying itself, lifts and drops the stamp, which is shod with iron and works in a stone mortar containing the material to be pulverised. No other machinery is employed for the purpose, and the consequence is that such parts of the mineral as cannot be sufficiently reduced by this rude method, have to be thrown away. These rejected portions amount to as much as 40 or 50 per cent of the mass. Much of the loss is doubtless due to imperfect mechanical contrivances, but Mr. Korschelt, formerly Chemical Analyst to the Geological Survey of Japan, suggests that the minerals themselves are not homogeneous, but consist of harder and softer parts. The same expert draws attention to the important fact that, in pulverising the Arita porcelain stone, a separation of its materials is effected. Thus, though European machinery would work much more economically and efficiently than the Japanese stamper, it could not be introduced without some modification, since it would transform the whole stone into a homogeneous powder, and a porcelain of a different composition, containing more quartz, would be obtained.
The pulverised mineral is then placed in a reservoir of water, where it is allowed to settle. The most subtile particles, which naturally constitute the uppermost layer of the deposit, are used for the pâte of fine porcelain; the middle layer is reserved for the manufacture of coarser vessels, and the bottom layer is thrown away. The powder obtained by this method of decanting is carefully mixed, and afterwards transferred to pans where the moisture it contains is partly drained off and partly absorbed by a layer of sand covered with straw mats. The clay is finally made more consistent by putting it for a time on the warm ovens. It is then ready for the modellers. These are provided with the so-called potter's wheel. At Arita it consists of a driving and a working wheel, fixed about twelve to fifteen inches apart on a hollow wooden prism. On the lower side of the driving-wheel is a porcelain cup that rests on a vertical wooden pivot projecting from a round block of wood over which the system is placed. The pivot is planted in a hole of such depth that the rim of the driving-wheel is slightly raised above the surface of the ground. Beside this hole the modeller sits, and while turning the system with his foot, moulds a mass of material placed on the working-wheel. His only tools are a piece of wet cloth to smooth and moisten the vessel; a small knife to shape sharp edges; a few pieces of stick to take measurements, and a fine cord to sever the finished vase from its base of superfluous matter.
The pieces, having passed from the modeller's hands, are air-dried, after which they are again placed upon the wheel and their shapes perfected with iron tools. They are then coated with the white clay called Kudaru-yama-tsuchi, for the double purpose of imparting to the finished vase a pure, soft aspect, and providing a ground suited to the blue, intense or delicate, which is used in the decoration. The piece is now placed in the preparatory kiln, called Suyaki-yama (kiln for unglazed ware). The management of temperature in this kiln is a business demanding great care, the object being, not to bake the porcelain thoroughly, but merely to prepare it for the reception of the decoration and the glaze. After cooling, the pieces are carefully washed and passed to the decorator, who paints upon them various designs, using for pigment, nowadays, common smalt, whereas formerly he used cobaltiferous manganese imported from China. It would be difficult to exaggerate the difference, from an artistic point of view, between the colours produced by the two materials. That obtained from smalt is thin, garish, and superficial; that obtained from the Chinese mineral is deep, intense, and so intimately associated with the pâte as to appear inlaid. Chemists claim that to provide the pigment of former times is easily within their resources. Nevertheless, great interest attaches to its composition, and independent analyses made by Dr. Eykman, lately Professor of Chemistry in the Tōkyō Medical College, Dr. Matsui, of the Tōkyō University, and M. Salvetat, give the following results:—
COMPOSITION OF CHINESE COBALT BLUE FORMERLY USED
IN JAPAN
| Eykman. | Eykman. | Matsui. | Salvetat. | |||
|
14.90 | 05.63 | 04.97 | 37.46 | ||
|
29.64 | 19.90 | 28.70 | 04.75 | ||
|
04.24 | 03.28 | 01.65 | |||
|
02.49 | 05.97 | — | — | ||
|
09.75 | 12.90 | 19.05 | 05.50 | ||
|
01.25 | 01.68 | — | 00.44 | ||
|
34.91 | 48.11 | 45.24 | 27.50 | ||
|
00.66 | 00.22 | — | 00.60 | ||
|
Trace | Trace | — | Trace | ||
|
00.11 | — | — | — | ||
|
01.02 | 01.23 | — | — | ||
|
00.55 | 00.95 | 01.58 | 20.00 | ||
|
Trace | Trace | Trace | Trace |
With regard to the differences between the results of Salvetat's analysis and those obtained by Eykman and Matsui, Professor Korschelt observes that pieces of Gosu—as this cobalt blue is called by the Japanese—which were sent to Japan, would already have been subjected to refining processes, and that Salvetat probably examined not only a somewhat different but also an unrefined form of the mineral. It is of course possible that the gosu of old times may again come into general use, and that the grand colours of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may once more be produced. But against this much-to-be-desired consummation has to be set the refractory nature of the pigment. Specially educated skill is needed to obtain good results with it, and even in the most expert hands failures are numerous. European cobalt labours under no such disadvantage, and for this reason will probably continue to be preferred in these exceedingly practical times.
When applied to the surface of the porcelaine dégourdie, smalt and Chinese cobalt alike give a muddy black colour. Their blue tints are developed under the action of the furnace.
The decoration in blue having been completed, the next process is to apply the glazing material. This consists of the Uwa-gusuri-tsuchi, reduced to an impalpable powder, with which, to increase its fusibility, lixiviated vegetable ashes (obtained from the bark of the Distylicum racemosum) are mixed in proportions varying according to the recipes of different potters. In former days no pains were spared in the preparation of this glazing matter. Weeks were sometimes spent in treating it, and in special cases such particles of the pulverised mineral as had passed through a three-ply strainer of fine cotton-cloth were alone employed.[1]
The porcelain is now ready for the final stoving. The ovens where this operation is performed are generally placed on the slope of a hill, in rows of from four to twenty. They are built in a very simple and economical manner. The sill is first prepared, and around it side-walls are raised to a height of about three feet. An arched roof of rude timber is then superposed, and on it is laid a mixture of fire-proof clay, cement, and tiles, worked into a plastic condition. This mixture is pressed and pounded with heavy mallets, until it acquires sufficient consistency to stand without the roof-frame. The interior is afterwards beaten with small mallets to harden and smooth it. The oven is then complete. Should repairs be required, they are effected by breaking out the damaged part, applying a frame inside, and filling the space with fire-proof tiles. As these repairs are repeated, the oven gradually comes to consist entirely of fire-proof tiles. It lasts about fifteen years, and even when of the largest dimensions costs only about fifty dollars. It will be understood that the oven used for the final firing is here described. That used for the unglazed porcelain is of similar construction, but much smaller. Each manufacturer has his own Su-yaki-gama, but the ovens for the last baking belong to the community and are hired to the various factories as required.
It is worthy of note that, despite the somewhat primitive manufacturing processes of the Japanese and the imperfection of their business methods, they can sell their modern keramic products in Europe at prices considerably below those of the corresponding European articles. Even China can scarcely compete with Japan in this respect, although the conditions of production are approximately the same in both countries. Total neglect of all complicated appurtenances, wonderful simplicity of implements, and the unique possession of a class of artist-artisans who, working for wages little higher than those of a common labourer, exercise a degree of skill that would command large remuneration elsewhere—these doubtless are the circumstances which give Japan a marked advantage in competition with other countries. As yet she has failed to avail herself of her opportunities. She clings to her old custom of divided effort. Her potters, instead of combining for the wholesale production of house-hold utensils, are content to work at miniature kilns, and to contribute each his tiny quota of separate labour to a needlessly expensive total. As a gifted singer will sometimes forget the measure of the music to dwell upon a note of special beauty, so it may be said of the Japanese keramist that the exceptional nature of his productions and his inherited dexterity prevent him from appreciating the deficiencies of his manufacturing methods. He has yet to be led out of the limited sphere of his own experiences into the wide field of keramics, and to be taught that in these busy times art-genius must consent to walk hand in hand with manufacturing progress. Nowhere, perhaps, is there more room for improvement than in the matter of ovens, for however good in principle and cheap in construction the Japanese oven may be, it gives most uncertain results in practice. The question of fuel, too, is beginning to force itself upon the manufacturer's attention. The hills in the neighbourhood of Seto, in Owari, are completely denuded of timber, and the cost of transporting firewood becomes yearly more serious. The recently invented gas-ovens of Europe are doubtless fitted to solve this dilemma, and it is probable that intelligent enterprise to utilise these or other reforms will not long be wanting among Japanese keramists.
It may be remarked here that a great difference existed between the methods of the Chinese and the Japanese potters of past times. The former did not stove their porcelain until after they had applied both the decoration in blue and the glaze. Thus, as the "History of Chinese Keramics" shows, the utmost care was necessary in handling a piece before putting it into the oven: any undue pressure spoiled its shape. Moreover, the Chinese plan not only required specially educated skill on the part of the workman, but also deprived him of the assistance which he might have derived from the natural absorbent properties of a porcelain pâte rendered porous by firing.
The analyses which have hitherto been published furnish data for a tolerably accurate comparison of the porcelains of Japan, China, and Europe. Ebelman and Salvetat, in their well-known treatise on chemistry and physics, arrive at the conclusion that no material technological difference exists between the porcelains of China and those of Europe. Later writers regard this verdict as somewhat premature. The most recent researches upon this subject are embodied in the following table:—
| Japanese Porcelain —Arita. |
Chinese Porcelain. |
European Porcelain. | |||
|
75.00 | 75.93 | 72.02 | ||
|
18.31 | 15.86 | 18.84 | ||
|
03.78 | 05.91 | 06.00 |
The figures for Japanese Arita porcelain are the average of thirteen analyses of porcelain masses recently made by M. Korschelt. The composition given for Chinese porcelain is that determined by M. Pabot. It agrees very closely with the researches of MM. Salvetat and Ebelman, as interpreted by Liebig and Kopp. Among European porcelains, ware of Germany, analysed by M. Müller, is taken. The well-known geologist, M. Gümbel, has recorded his opinion that Izumi-yama and the surrounding district of Arita are of volcanic character, and that the porcelain stone found there closely resembles the trachytic clay stones of Hungary; while M. Pabot concludes that the Chinese porcelain stones of Ching-tê-chên belong to the archaic formation, and most nearly approach the minerals called hälleflint, eurite, and petrosilex. With regard to the constituents of Arita porcelain, the mean of fifteen analyses made by Korschelt, Matsui, and Wurtz is as follows:—
| Felspar. | Clay Substance. | Quartz. | ||
| 20.64 | 31.23 | 46.66 |
No porcelain of similar composition is to be found among European wares. The closest approximation is shown by German porcelains, the composition of one class of which is felspar 20.3, clay substance 46.8, and quartz 31.8.
Mr. Korschelt has analysed the ashes obtained from the bark of the Distylicum racemosum, which, as has been said, are mixed with the glazing material of Arita porcelain. The result is as follows;
|
28.27 | ||
|
3.10 | ||
|
0.66 | ||
|
0.24 | ||
|
8.23 | ||
|
10.65 | ||
|
3.61 | ||
|
1.27 | ||
|
0.45 | ||
|
26.85 | ||
|
2.16 | ||
|
1.43 | ||
|
2.61 | ||
| 100.33 |
"The ashes, therefore," writes M. Korschelt, "consist of 61 per cent calcium carbonate, and also considerable quantities of calcium, potassium, magnesium, silicate, and phosphate. The faint greenish colour of the glaze obtained from these ashes is remarkable when we consider that they contain a small quantity of manganese."
The quantity of fuel consumed and the degree of heat developed in the ovens at Arita are points still demanding investigation. The practical experience of the workman is his guide, and he can only say that the process of baking occupies from four to five days, and that from first to last each article of porcelain passes through seventy-two hands.
The reader will perceive that the decoration described above is that known as blue under the glaze. Blue thus applied enters into the decoration of all the enamelled porcelain produced in Hizen, with the exception of certain wares of Kakiyemon and his imitators. As a distinguishing feature the amateur will find this point worthy of note. The decoration with vitrifiable enamels was a process subsequent to the stoving of the glazed piece, and was, in fact, added to a vase which, without it, would have been a finished specimen of blue-and-white. To vitrify and fix the enamels another stoving was required. At Kakiyemon's factory the bleu sous couverte was frequently omitted, but the other processes were identical with those described above.
The colouring oxides of the Imari potters were not numerous. They consisted of copper, manganese, antimony, red oxide of iron, impure oxide of cobalt (for black), and finally gold, which, with a small admixture of white lead or borax, served for gilding, and, added to powdered glass, was used for carmine. The enamels did not undergo any preparatory melting, but were mixed and applied directly by the painter, so that their colours appeared only after firing. The manner of painting differs much from that of European keramists. First, the whole pattern is drawn in black outlines, and the shadows, if any, are merely indicated by black lines. The coloured enamels, if opaque, as red, yellow, and black, are laid on in thin layers, but are applied more thickly if, after melting, they are intended to produce the effect of a coloured glass through which the black lines of the pattern are to be visible. Sometimes designs in relief are produced by first applying white opaque enamel which contains no oxide of tin, but is only a mixture of glass, white lead, and pulverised stone, and then painting the pattern upon this. Mr. Atkinson has analysed ten substances used in preparing colours for the decoration of Japanese porcelain. From these analyses Mr. Korschelt concludes that the substances are quartz (Hino-oka-seki); oxide of iron (Beni-gara); carbonate of lead (To-no-tsuchi); lead-glass (Shiratama); lead-glass coloured dark-blue with copper (Koise); lead-glass coloured light-blue with copper (Usu-se); smalt (Kongo); lead-glass coloured violet with manganese (Murasaki); ultramarine (To-kongo) and metallic antimony (Toshirome).
According to the traditions of the Arita potters, seggars were not used in the early years of the factory's existence. The pieces were piled up in the ordinary manner within the kiln, being thus exposed to the direct action of the fire. The advisability of enclosing choice ware in a sheath of some sort is said to have been discovered by accident. Some small vessels having fallen, after the kiln was closed, into a pot near which they had been placed, were inadvertently stoved in that position. On emerging from the oven these pieces were found to have profited so much by the protection they had obtained that the idea of using seggars was at once conceived. This event is referred to the closing years of the eighteenth century. The seggars served only once; they were broken to remove the pieces they contained. Only the choicest wares were protected by seggars, and consequently received the distinguishing title of Goku-hin-yaki (superlative ware).Sakaida Kakiemon's success gained for him no little reputation. It is said that he had the rare honour of a personal interview with one of the great feudal chiefs of the time, Maeda Toshiharu, Lord of Kaga. This would apparently indicate that Kakiemon visited Kaga,—a circumstance of obvious interest in connection with the development of the Kutani (or Kaga) potteries.
In the annals of Nagasaki it is recorded that a bazaar for the sale of Hizen porcelain was opened in that town in 1662. This may probably be taken as the date of the first export of Japanese porcelain, though local tradition refers the event to the time of Sakaida Kakiemon's son and successor, a few years later. Both the Chinese and the Dutch traders are said to have been ready purchasers of the new ware. There is no record of the prices paid, but they were probably very small. A story told at Arita to-day illustrates the simple manners of the potters of the seventeenth century. A hawker of quack medicines, passing through the Arita district, saw a quantity of newly baked porcelains stacked outside a house. Not supposing that articles of any great value would be thus carelessly treated, he proposed to the master of the house an exchange of a modicum of medicine against one or two pieces of porcelain. The master assented, but to the hawker's surprise bade him take as much of the ware as he could carry. The people of Arita supplement this tale by a regretful contrast between the generous artist of those times and the haggling trader of the present degenerate age.
The specimens of Arita ware that found their way to the factory of the Dutch in Deshima did not fail to attract attention. These shrewd traders were very ready to add another item to their list of exports, but they had their own ideas as to the sort of wares calculated to attract European fancy. Kakiemon's pieces did not satisfy them. Something more likely to appeal to vulgar taste was required. One need only consider the state of keramics in Holland at that epoch to comprehend how improbable it was that the traders of Deshima would appreciate the chaste style of Kakiemon or the motives of his refined art. During the first fifty years (1610–1660) of the industry in Holland, the potters of Delft imposed no restraint upon the intemperance of their imagination. Their ideal of a choice vase was one loaded with ornamentation, crowded with figures, and distinguished chiefly by evidences of minute effort. It was during this period that Tomes Janz produced his Jugement dernier, a plaque encumbered with four hundred personages; Adriaan Van de Venne his Pêcheurs d'âmes, where one sees a mob of thousands of tiny beings swarming beside a river; and Herman Pietersz his Choc de cavalerie, in which a mêlée of two squadrons takes place within the limits of a dish. People educated in a school of such unnatural art would not be at all likely to pay profitable prices for porcelain decorated after the fashions of Kakiemon. But, on the other hand, the Dutch merchants at Deshima foresaw rich possibilities in the porcelain trade if ware suited to European markets could be manufactured. It happened that the factory in Deshima was then under the charge of a Dutchman who possessed a fertile fancy and some knowledge of designing. Jacquemart, quoting from Les Ambassades Mémorables, thus describes the influence exercised by this man upon the porcelain of Japan: "Pendant que le sieur Wagenaar se disposait à retourner à Batavia, il reçut 21,567 pièces de porcelaine blanche, et un mois auparavant il en était venu à Déshima une très-grande quantité, mais dont le débit ne fut pas grand, n'ayant pas assez de fleurs. Depuis quelques années les Japonais se sont appliqués à ces sortes d'ouvrages avec beaucoup d'assiduité. Ils y deviennent si habiles que non seulement les Hollandais, mais les Chinois mêmes en achètent …. Le sieur Wagenaar, grand connaisseur et fort habile dans ces sortes d'ouvrages, inventa une fleur sur un fond bleu qui fut trouvée si belle que de deux cents pièces où il la fit peindre, il n'en resta pas une seule qui ne fût aussitôt vendue, de sorte qu'il n'y avait point de boutique qui n'en fût garnie."
Especially interesting as one of the very few trustworthy allusions to Japanese porcelain to be found in European records, this extract is noteworthy, in the first place, because it confirms the dates obtained by independent research into Japanese annals. For the Ambassades Mémorables here speak of the porcelain industry as having been practised for some years only before the middle of the seventeenth century. It had, in fact, been practised for not more than fifty years, while the enamelled ware which became a staple of the Dutch export trade had first been produced at Arita some fourteen or fifteen years before "le sieur Wagenaar" conceived the idea of meddling with its decoration.
A theory recently advanced by English writers is not only that the celebrated "Hawthorn pattern" was invented in Japan, but that many fine specimens of ware thus decorated were exported by the Dutch during the seventeenth century. Messrs. Audsley and Bowes suggest that the "fleur sur un fond bleu," attributed to Wagenaar, was no other than the "Hawthorn." It has already been stated that this pattern is found on pieces manufactured by Gorodayu Go-shonzui, nearly a century and a half before Wagenaar's time, and it may now be added that the "Hawthorn"—known in Japan as Korimme—was seldom if ever employed by Japanese decorators as a principal subject. They used it, not infrequently, as a subordinate design; and with the conception of a white pattern on a blue ground they have been familiar for more than three hundred and fifty years. But the "Hawthorns" of American and European collections are essentially Chinese. Nothing that could be mistaken for them was formerly manufactured in Japan.
As for Wagenaar's "fleur sur un fond bleu," it may reasonably be interpreted by the light of what Japanese tradition tells about the early fashions of decoration at Arita. Kakiemon's pieces were of milk-white porcelain, generally with scanty designs in vitrifiable enamels only. Wagenaar's order to the potters was that they should add enamel decoration over the glaze to pieces already decorated with blue under the glaze. There thus came into existence the familiar Imari-yaki; the "Old Japan" of Western amateurs; the Nishiki-de or "Brocade Pattern" of the Japanese themselves. It was a brilliant ware, depending chiefly upon wealth of decoration and richness of colouring. The pâte was good, but the glaze seemed to lose something of its softness and purity by the second firing which it had to undergo for the sake of the enamels. Frequently the bleu sous couverte also suffered by the same process. Assuming the quality of the pigment to be good, blue under the glaze depends for intensity and purity of tone principally upon the temperature of the furnace. Now nothing is rarer in enamelled Imari porcelain than a good blue, and nothing is commoner than a specimen in which the decoration over the glaze gives evidence of great care and skill, while the blue designs under the glaze are blurred or of impure tone. But the enamels were not applied until after a piece was finished so far as concerned the glaze and the designs under it, and it seems therefore a reasonable conclusion that, in specimens with elaborate enamel decoration, any imperfections shown by the blue under the glaze were the result of processes subsequent to the application of the enamels. The conscientious, labour-loving potter of old times would not have been likely to continue the decoration of a vase which had already ceased to be a complete success. In China, where, owing to the peculiar process of applying glazes, the difficulty of preserving a piece from accidents until it emerged from the furnace was considerably increased, risks of injuring the colour by a second firing were as far as possible avoided. On the surface of his blacks, soufflé blues and reds, the Chinaman often preferred to superpose a partially fixed tracery of gold, which could not hope to escape speedy obliteration by use, rather than to subject the vase to new perils by re-stoving. And as in Japan, so also in the Middle Kingdom, when enamel decoration is added to bleu sous couverte, the tone of the latter can seldom compare in purity and brilliancy with the blue of pieces which have not passed twice through the furnace.
It is almost certain that the "flower" spoken of in the Ambassades Mémorables as Wagenaar's invention, may be interpreted in the sense of floral decoration. Probably the Dutch agent suggested redistributions or modifications of Japanese designs, but it may be doubted whether he originated anything worthy of preservation. Among the really good specimens of "Old Japan" preserved in the great collections of Europe, there are few examples of styles which may not be found upon Japanese lacquers or brocades dating from a period long antecedent to the establishment of the factory in Deshima. By the Japanese themselves it is universally believed that the most favourite design of the Arita potters, during the first fifty or sixty years of the "Ornate Period" (1655–1710), was the Hana-kago-de, or Flower-basket Pattern. This, as the term suggests, is a basket or jar supporting a profusion of tastefully grouped flowers, generally peonies, but sometimes alao chrysanthemums, and sometimes a mixture of both. The Hana-kago-de was capable of almost infinite modification, and could be so arranged as to occupy a space of almost any shape. On the bottoms of plates and bowls, in the panels of vases, and medallions, and, in short, everywhere, it is employed with charming effect. But it is not a Japanese conception. There is a painting by a Chinese artist of the early Ming period (circa 1400), in which a girl is represented carrying in her hand a basket of peonies which might have been the original of at least half of the Japanese Hana-uago designs. In truth, so soon as the potters of Arita set themselves to produce highly decorated porcelains, they found a wealth of designs already elaborated and classified by the weavers, lacquer-makers, embroiderers, and metal-workers of their country. It is doubtful whether the artists of any nation ever carried the decorative art farther than the Japanese have carried it. In diapers alone they have devised some four hundred, each bearing a name by which it is immediately known among native experts. The Dutch, in 1660, had only to say that they wished for pieces highly ornamented. There was no need to supply designs. The potters simply took as a model the brilliant and innumerable combinations of diapers, scrolls, floral subjects, and mythical conceits painted on the lacquers or woven in the brocades of their country. The new ware naturally received the name Nishiki-de (brocade pattern). Figure subjects were very rarely chosen. The Japanese artist has never appreciated the contours of the human figure; and that for a very simple reason. From the oldest times, to expose any part of the person, except the face and hands, has always been deemed in Japan a gross breach of etiquette. The aristocrat loved to cover his body with deftly folded garments of rich stuffs, and to move amid the graceful sweep of flowing drapery. Studies from the nude would have shocked the sense, not of decency, but of refinement. When the Japanese artist sets himself to depict figure subjects, he pursues one of three aims: a delineation of cleverly disposed drapery; a suggestion of the music of motion, as seen in the "woven paces and waving hands" of the Kagura and Nō dances: or a portrait of features convulsed by passion or sentiment. With such pigments as vitrifiable enamels these effects could scarcely be produced. Therefore they were seldom attempted. Sometimes copies were made of the stiff, puppet-like Mandarins, warriors, and ladies in which the Chinese keramist delighted. But these, too, are happily rare. In a word, if to floral subjects, scrolls, and diapers are added the mythical phœnix (Dragon), unicorn (Kirin), and lion (Shishi), landscapes in medallions or panels, and figures of women in sweeping robes or of warriors in brightly pointed armour, a complete catalogue is obtained of subjects from which the Arita potter made his choice. The dominant colours of his pieces in those early days were blue and red; the former under the glaze, the latter over it. The quality of the red in all specimens of good Imari ware deserves careful attention. The rich, soft colour of the ancient keramists is no longer present, except in special cases: the common red of modern potters can be compared to nothing but sealing-wax. Gold was used in some profusion during the early period, and, indeed, has always been used. Gold scrolls on a blue ground, phœnixes with gilded feathers, flowers with gilt petals, and leaves with gilt veins are commonly found.
The result of all these modifications was eminently satisfactory to the Dutch. They exported large quantities of the brilliant ware. In 1664 no less than "44,943 pieces of very rare Japanese porcelain" arrived in Holland, and in December of the same year there were shipped from Batavia 16,580 specimens of porcelain of various kinds collected by the Netherlands Company. But that all these specimens were made in Japan is most improbable. At only one factory in Hizen was enamelled porcelain produced in the early years. The supply was, therefore, limited, and even if the workmen had occupied themselves in executing Dutch commissions alone they could not have turned out such large quantities. It must be remembered that a Japanese porcelain-factory does not signify a large establishment employing many scores of workmen, but rather a sort of household industry, of which the most skilled processes are carried on by the members of the family. Especially is this true of the Arita factory where Tokuemon and Kakiemon worked. Not in their own interests alone, but also in obedience to the imperative commands of their feudal chief, they were careful to throw a thick veil of secrecy over the methods of enamel decoration which they had discovered, and it is certain that the practice of those methods was confined to the smallest possible number of persons. Among the wares exported by the Dutch, those of Chinese manufacture doubtless predominated, and to this commixture is probably attributable much of the subsequent perplexity of European amateurs. Further, of the pieces actually procured by the Dutch in Japan, some bear strong witness to mischievous foreign interference. Then, as now, Japanese artisans were quite willing to humour the vitiated suggestions of European taste. In the Royal Keramic Collection at Dresden there is a large triple-gourd-shaped vase, figured in Messrs. Audtley and Bowes' "Keramic Art in Japan." Judged by the canons of Japanese art proper, this piece is execrable. A triple gourd is in itself a monstrosity. A Japanese modeller, of his own motion, would be about as likely to choose such a shape as a European painter to put the conventional triple-hat of a Jew upon the head of a Grecian hero. The decoration of the vase is even more offensive. On the lowest globe peonies and sweet flags (Kaki-tusbata) grow vertically upward with mathematical precision and at regular intervals, while from the stems and roots of the peonies spring leaves of the sweet flag. On the second globe chrysanthemums and sweet flags grow spirally from the same stem. On the third and uppermost globe a branch of red plum grows vertically downward. In the same collection are several large covered jars, which, though their decoration does not offend and their general effect is very striking, were nevertheless designed altogether for the European market. In Japan such jars are only used to ornament drug and oil stores. To put them in the alcove of a Japanese gentleman's private dwelling would be equivalent to taking the blue glass bottles from an apothecary's window and placing them on a drawing-room table in America or Europe. There is, of course, no reason why an Occidental should not adorn his parlour with the utensils of an Oriental shop. But the point is that in the Dresden collection these jars are decorated en suite with flower-vases, a combination which would never have been made for Japanese use. The lesson to be deduced from these facts is that even from specimens of Japanese porcelain carried to Europe by the Dutch traders of Deshima in the seventeenth century very false notions of Japanese keramic art may be acquired.
Most curious were the interactions of the keramic arts of Holland and Japan. In the middle of the seventeenth century, when Arita enamelled porcelains began to be exported from Deshima, the genius of Aelbregt de Keizer was inaugurating a new era at the Delft factories. He no sooner saw the imported wares than he appreciated their beauties and set himself to imitate them. Here is what Henry Havard writes on this subject: "Aelbregt de Keizer, dans un temps où la porcelaine du Japon constituait une nouveauté des plus coûteuses, eut l'idée de la contrefaire. Il s'y appliqua et y parvint au point que 'ceux-là mêmes,' nous dit Gerrit Paape, 'qui pouvaient a bon droit se vanter d'avoir les premiers introduit la porcelaine des Indes orientals dans leurs provinces, s'étonnaient de la beauté de l'imitation, et, quoique en possession des plus magnifiques pièces originales, n'hesitaient pas tant il les estimaient, à acquérir des copies.' Cette contrefaçon est en effet de tout point admirable. Cherchez, dans les grandes collections, ces fines assiettes, ces tasses délicates et légères, décorées en camïaeu bleu, ou encore ces délicieuses soucoupes à fond 'persillé.' Même la pièce en main, l'illusion est complète; il faute une fêlure, un éclat, quelque menue accident, ou bien encore la marque, pour qu'on soit certain de n'avoir point sous les yeux une œuvre japonaise. Cette marque, sera contrefaite … Mais ce qu'on ne pourra contrefaire, c'est la légèreté de ces pièces charmantes, leur délicatesse, leur finesse, et surtout l'admirable élégance de leur ornementation." It is necessary to make large allowance for the enthusiasm of this writer. That the faience of Delft could be mistaken for Japanese porcelain, whatever the nature of the decoration, is incredible. Certain it is, however, that the greatest Delft keramist of the seventeenth century took Japanese porcelain for his model, and that he was followed by Adriaen Pynacker and other artists, of whose copies of the blue-red-and-gold "Old Japan" it is related that "their lightness was astonishing, their éclât surprising, and that in fidelity of imitation they were even better calculated to deceive the amateur than the works of Aelbregt de Keizer." Meanwhile Wagenaar, the head of the Dutch factory at Deshima, and his successors were impressing their own ideas of European taste upon the potters of Arita; and these latter, obedient to the whims of their largest customer, were manufacturing for export pieces which Japanese connoisseurs would have rejected with disdain. Then, as years went by, the shrewd traders of Deshima, beginning to understand the chaste taste of the Japanese generally and the archaic fancies of the tea-clubs in particular, imported specimens of Delft faience worthy to vie with the most rustic, homely ware of the Seto and Karatsu factories. Whether these specimens were specially manufactured for the Japanese market, or whether they were merely chosen from among the coarsest productions of the Delft workshops, their novelty and unpretending character endeared them at once to the devotees of the Cha-no-Yu, and a new but limited field of profit was opened to the Dutchmen in Deshima. Finally, nearly a hundred years later, the potters of Kyōtō, as will be shown by and by, undertook to imitate the faience of Delft, and delighted to copy pieces as far as possible removed from the fashions of their own art.
It may be added here, that of the porcelain trade between the Dutch and the Japanese subsequent to the seventeenth century few records are known to exist. Kaempfer says that during the latter half of that century the annual exports from Deshima comprised about one hundred bales of such ware, and it is known that the Dresden collection was put together by August II. between the years 1698 and 1724. On the whole, it may be concluded that small and probably diminishing quantities of Japan's keramic productions continued to be shipped to Europe until the middle of the eighteenth century, by which time the manufactures of the European potteries had become so cheap, so plentiful, and so excellent that the preëminence of specimens from the Far East was rudely challenged. With regard to the possibility of Japan's porcelain having found its way to Eastern countries in the early years of its manufacture, it appears from the evidence of a terrestrial globe constructed in 1670 and preserved in the Tōkyō Museum, that Japan had commercial relations with the Philippines, Cambodia, Tonquin, Annam, Siam, and various parts of China, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Among her exports to Cochin China and Tonquin keramic wares are mentioned, and it is on record that her ships trading with China carried back considerable quantities of Chinese porcelain and faience.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the number of factories had increased to twenty, all situated within a radius of a few miles. A book (the Sankai-meisan-dzuye) published in 1799 tells that even at that date the processes of enamel decoration were practised at one only (Akaye-machi) of these factories. Meanwhile the art had made much progress. Greater skill had been developed in the preparation of the pâte, but, above all, in the use of vitrifiable enamels. During the first half-century of the manufacture the decorator's palette was limited, with perhaps some very rare exceptions, to blue, red, green, and gold, the blue being applied chiefly under the glaze. By and by, however, he added to his enamels lilac-blue (over the glaze), russet-brown, purple, black, and lemon-yellow, the last three being reserved for his choicest pieces. The eighteenth century may, indeed, be regarded as the most flourishing period of the Hizen factories. The country had then enjoyed a long spell of peace. The castles built by Hideyoshi in Fushimi and Ōsaka and by Iyeyasu in Yedo (Tōkyō), with their huge moats and towering parapets, were the forerunners of a number of similar edifices, in which elaborate gate-defences, mighty keeps, turret-crowned curtain walls, moats of extraordinary size, and drawbridges were substituted for the low wooden buildings, enclosed by small trenches and wattled fences, which had served as fortresses before the advent of the Portuguese and the Dutch. In these huge structures, upon which gold and labour were lavished without stint, it was natural that the character of the apartments reserved for the noble owner should partake of the general magnificence of the whole. The artist found an extended field of employment in the painting of panels, screens, and sliding doors; the lacquerer, in the decoration of framework and ceilings. Never before had art patronage been so universal or so munificent. Not only to each other, but also to the Court of the Tokugawa Shōguns in Yedo, the feudal chiefs sent frequent presents of the art manufactures of their fiefs, and so far was the enthusiasm carried that it became the fashion for every young lady of rank or wealth to have among her trousseau a painting by one of the old Chinese masters. The keramic industry benefited, of course, by all this. Exquisite specimens of enamelled ware were produced at the Arita factories, but the workmen generally adhered to a custom handed down from the days of Tokuemon and Kakiemon,—instead of marking their vases with their own names or those of the year periods, they either copied Chinese seals and dates, or used a conventional ideograph or group of ideographs, quite useless for purposes of identification. The amateur is, therefore, without any easy guide to determine the age or maker of a piece. He must look only to the quality of the pâte, the brilliancy of the enamels, and the purity and intensity of the blue under the glaze. Any appearance of chalkiness in the clay indicates youth, and, as a general rule, the clearer and more metallic the ring of the biscuit, the greater the age of the piece. The colour of the bleu sous couverte is also a help. The tone is richest and most pleasing in specimens manufactured during the eighteenth century; in vases of earlier date it is often impure and blurred. To very choice, elaborate, and carefully finished examples of enamelling it will generally be unsafe to assign a greater age than one hundred and fifty years, and, from what has been stated above, the amateur will see that the colours of the enamels afford some slight assistance: the red should be deep and even, with a dull, rather than a glossy, surface; while lemon-yellow, purple, and black in combination are evidences at once of choice ware and of middle-period (1700–1830) manufacture. Another easily detected point is the colour of the biscuit. In the wares of Kakiemon, or rather in those of his school, there is found a cream-white surface, sometimes almost equal to the ivory-white of Korea and China. But specimens of this sort belong to the Nabeshima-yaki, which will be described presently, rather than to genuine Imari-yaki, or "Old Japan." The biscuit of the latter, also, ought to be white—the whiter the better—but a perfectly pure white is seldom, if ever, found. This, however, may be stated: that a surface showing a marked tinge of blue is not of fine quality, and that the more pronounced the tinge the less valuable the specimen. With regard to the glaze, too, there is another point which merits close attention. Examined attentively, the glaze of Imari-yaki presents the appearance of very fine muslin. It is pitted all over with microscopic points, which become more and more distinct as a later and less careful period of manufacture is approached. It should be mentioned here that no reason whatsoever exists for the often alleged difficulty of distinguishing between the enamelled porcelain of Arita and that of China. To those who cannot identify the comparatively coarse pâte of the Japanese ware, an easy aid is afforded by the superior lustre and closer texture of the Chinese glaze. It may also be asserted that with the exception of the well-known famille rose porcelain of Ching-tê-chên, no Chinese ware shows decoration as delicate and faithful as that found on almost all specimens of Japanese manufacture. A rough rule, useful in the case of plates and other flat objects, is that on the bottom of Japanese pieces are frequently found "spur marks," three or five in number, being the remains of little clay pillars upon which the specimen was supported in the furnace. These are never seen on Chinese porcelain.
Among the wares of the Arita factories in former times, specimens of pierced or reticulated porcelain are often found, especially in plates and censers. Work of this sort is seldom very delicate in polychrome Imari-yaki. It must rather be regarded as a specialty of the Mikawachi, or Hirado, potters. Nevertheless, medallions filled with reticulated diapers were often employed, with excellent effect, to give lightness and variety to a profusely decorated surface. Another device was to model portions of the design in relief. This method was employed most frequently in the case of scrolls or bunches of chrysanthemums, the raised petals of the flowers producing a highly artistic effect. Much less common, but even more pleasing in its results, was a method of deeply pitting parts of the surface, especially the shoulders of a vase or bottle. The play of light and shade upon the rounded edges of the pits combined with the brilliant colours of the enamels to produce a softness and richness which must be seen to be appreciated. In connection with this part of the subject, it may be well to caution the amateur against Jacquemart's phantasies with regard to Japanese porcelain. His "Porcelaine à Mandarins" and "Porcelaine des Indes à Fleur" are examples of the remarkable misapprehensions into which the most conscientious and painstaking connoisseur may be betrayed by building broad theories upon slender hypotheses suggested by his own imagination. These wares never came out of Japanese factories. In short, of Jacquemart's four representative examples of Japanese porcelain, depicted with great care in his plates, two only, the first and the last, are what they profess to be: the others are Chinese.
It has been shown that the use of lacquer for decorating faience dates from the latter part of the fifteenth century, when Sōshiro of Fushimi applied this material to the surface of his pieces. The manufacture of lacquer is, perhaps, the oldest of Japan's art industries. As early as the seventh century lacquered articles were received by the Government by way of taxes, and in the days of Yoshimasa the lacquer-workers of Kyōtō were numerous and wonderfully skilled. It was probably owing entirely to Yoshimasa's passion for lacquered wares, and to their consequent popularity that Sōshiro conceived the idea of decorating faience by this process. The fashion was rarely adopted by the renowned potters of Kyōtō in later times. Lacquer only became a recognised substitute for vitrifiable enamels at Arita in the third, or degraded, period of the Hizen industry; namely, from the second advent of Westerns in 1858. Almost immediately after the revival of foreign trade at Nagasaki, by the Americans, Dutch, English, and French in 1858–1860, the potters at Arita began to pander to the vulgar demands of foreign taste. Size and showiness were regarded as the main objects to be attained in the manufacture of a vase; and lacquer, being not only much cheaper but also more easily used than vitrifiable enamels, became the staple of decorative material. According to the records of the Arita potters themselves, the idea of employing lacquer in this way was due, originally, to an accident. Some pieces of size having emerged from the kiln in a blemished condition, their defects were concealed by a coating of lacquer, and in that condition they were exposed for sale. They immediately attracted the attention of foreign buyers, and the manufacturers obtained a suggestion from this unanticipated result.
It is impossible to condemn too strongly the wretched products of this mercenary impulse. Everybody knows and abhors them nowadays. Their representative is a vase, from three to six feet in height, in shape resembling a truncated soda-water bottle, with its neck spread out into the semblance of a scalloped trumpet. Over the surface of this is scrawled an elaborate decoration in thin, washy red paint; and in reserved panels are rudely drawn figures of women or warriors with lacquered drapery and armour. Frequently the space between the panels is covered with black lacquer which serves as a ground for scrolls in gold or red. The whole thing is vulgar and meretricious in the extreme. Nevertheless, great quantities of this "Nagasaki Ware" were exported, and many an American or European amateur flatters himself that in the big, obtrusive vases which disfigure his vestibule he has genuine specimens of Japanese art, whereas he has, in truth, nothing more than a Japanese estimate of his own bad taste. Some manufactures of this degraded period have their surfaces completely covered with lacquer, upon which are designs in gold and colours. In such pieces the porcelain base might equally well be wood. In others the outer surface is coated with lacquer, while the inner has decoration in enamels or blue under the glaze. In others, again, there are reserved, in the lacquer, medallions or panels which are filled with decoration. And finally figures, scrolls, and diapers, in raised or flat gold lacquer, are applied to the surface of old pieces which were originally manufactured without any ornament. Of this last variety great quantities have been shipped to Europe and America, where they pass among ignorant persons as genuine representatives of early Japanese keramic art.
There remains to be noticed a method of decoration very rarely employed by the potters of Arita. A paste formed of chalk and glutinous rice was used to mould flowers—chiefly chrysanthemums and peonies—in relief. This decoration was not fired, but only sun-dried. It had therefore little durability, and pieces thus adorned possessed no value for the Japanese connoisseur. They appear, however, to have been occasionally exported.
Happily for the permanent reputation of Japanese keramics, the vitiated styles of the Nagasaki ware described above began to be replaced, some ten years ago, by fashions more consistent with the true canons of the country's art. Allusion will be subsequently made to this part of the subject.
Okawachi-yama—which is written "O-kawa-uchi-yama," or "the hill within the great river"—lies in the district of Nishimatsu-ura, about eight miles from Arita. The keramic industry was commenced in this district at a factory called Hirose. The first potters were Koreans, who settled there, about the year 1600, by order of Nabeshima Naoshige, feudal chief of the province. Their productions were faience, rudely decorated with white slip under the glaze and having pâte sufficiently dense to be called stone-ware. A few years later, when the methods of porcelain manufacture came to be understood at Arita, some of the Hirose workmen turned their attention to the new ware. A special kiln was opened for its production, and about the same time, or a little later, certain of the Arita potters moved to Ichinose, in the same district, and there began to manufacture porcelain with materials procured from Izumi-yama. It docs not appear that the wares of either of these two factories showed any remarkable excellence. At the middle of the century (1660), however, the feudal chief of the province, desiring to establish a factory for the production of choice porcelains, selected the district of Nishimatsu-ura, and caused the best workmen of Hirose and Ichinose to open a kiln at Okawachi (generally pronounced Okōchi). Up to this time wares for official use had been manufactured at Iwaya-gawa, but the latter factory was now closed and its experts were employed at Okawachi. The feudal chief of Hizen, by whose orders this change was made, was a liberal patron of art industries. He appropriated considerable sums for the support of the Okawachi factory, and he further adopted the very exceptional course of raising to shizoku rank any potters of conspicuous skill. Materials were procured from Arita, and the most stringent measures were adopted to prevent the sale of the pieces manufactured. It will readily be understood that ware produced under such auspices attained a very high standard of excellence. The Nabeshima-yaki, as the Okawachi manufactures were subsequently called, stands first among Japanese porcelains decorated with vitrifiable enamels.
The factory received the name of O-dogu-yama (the hill of the honourable ware). A retainer of the feudal chief, by name Soeda Kizaemon, who had studied keramic processes and who enjoyed the reputation of being a man of refined taste, was appointed superintendent of the factory, an office which was filled by his descendants for many generations. Other officials were associated with him, their instructions being to prevent the sale of any of the porcelains produced, to restrain the potters from taking employment at other kilns, and to exclude all travellers or workmen from other districts. The factory thus escaped the influence of the Dutch traders, and its decorative methods were governed virtually by the canons of Japanese taste. The ornamentation of the pieces is consequently less profuse than that of the Imari-yaki, and the ware altogether is characterised by chasteness and delicacy. The pâte is finer and whiter, with less admixture of foreign particles than that of the "Old Japan," though in some very excellent specimens it has a marked tinge of red. The glaze also is distinguished by purity and lustre: examined carefully, it shows minute pitting similar to that seen in the porcelain of Imari, but of the two the granulation of the former will be found less marked. The most strikingly distinctive feature of the Nabeshima porcelain is that decoration in blue under the glaze is relegated to a subordinate place. In many specimens, indeed, the style of Kakiemon is strictly followed: bleu sous couverte is not employed at all, the designs being executed entirely in vitrifiable enamels. As a general rule, however, cobaltiferous manganese is sparingly used, but it is evidently a mineral prepared differently from that of the Arita potters. The tone is lighter and more delicate, so that, even in pieces where a blue scroll constitutes the chief part of the decoration, nothing is seen of the rich, massed effect of the Imari colours. Gold is applied in moderation, and the deep, dark red of the "Old Japan" is replaced by a pigment of lighter tone, often justifying the appellation "orange." Pieces decorated entirely with blue under the glaze are not uncommon, but can scarcely be accorded a high place among wares of this description, the tone of the blue being neither sufficiently intense and brilliant to compete with Chinese colours of the Ming and Kang-shi periods, nor yet so soft and refined as to rank with the outcome of the Hirado factories, presently to be described. It is difficult to convey, in writing, any definite rules by which the wares of Nabeshima and Imari may be distinguished, though in practice the amateur is in little danger of confounding them. The Nabeshima-yaki is altogether the less gaudy ware of the two. It seldom suggests that decorative effect was the potter's object, neither on any specimen are there seen those masses of dark blue and deep, dull red which constitute the staple of the Imari decoration. As for the designs, they are confined almost exclusively to floral subjects, scrolls, and diapers. Occasionally figures and landscapes are copied directly from the Chinese, but the commonest types are cherry branches and blossoms, chrysanthemums, hydrangeas, peonies—not flowers alone, but also leaves and sprays—floral scrolls in blue with additions such as conventional butterflies, birds, blossoms, and so forth, in orange-red and gold. Combinations of carefully executed diapers surrounding medallions of flowers and fruits are sometimes seen. In many pieces, especially plates or dishes with raised bases, the bottom, instead of being sunken within its rim, as is usual in such vessels, will be found to have no rim, but only a hole in the centre. The object of this troublesome method of construction is doubtless to make the dish stand more firmly on the soft mats which cover a Japanese room. Round the base of small plates, bowls, etc., the potter constantly traced, in blue under the glaze, a pattern serrated like the teeth of a comb. By some connoisseurs this has been deemed a mark of high quality, but such an inference is erroneous. The "comb pattern" was chosen thus frequently because it was easily traced, and because its appearance of regularity and strength rendered it specially suitable to occupy the lower rim, or base, of a piece. The Nabeshima potters, as a rule, did not use marks, or copy Chinese marks, except on pieces which were obvious reproductions of Chinese originals. The obvious reason of this was that the productions of the Okawachi factories were destined solely for the house of Nabeshima. Okawachi, in fact, was a private kiln.
The "comb pattern," though doubtless intended originally as an ornament, soon came to be regarded as a factory mark; but being found sometimes on old Kutani ware, its presence cannot be taken as a conclusive sign of Nabeshima porcelain. At Okawachi, as at other factories that enjoyed the patronage of local magnates, pieces were frequently manufactured for presentation to the Court at Yedo or to some of the feudal barons. In such cases the crest of the prince or noble for whom the specimen was destined, was occasionally worked into the decoration; but as the Nabeshima style did not readily lend itself to these additions, they are comparatively uncommon on Okawachi ware.
Special note must be taken of the céladon, or Seiji, manufactured at Okawachi. It has already been mentioned that among the wares of the Middle Kingdom none enjoyed such a high reputation in Japan as the céladons of the Sung, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. To imitate these successfully would naturally have been the first ambition of a Japanese expert. The Okawachi workmen were eminently happy in this direction. At no other kiln in Japan were céladons of equal quality produced. The colour of the glaze in some of the best specimens is indescribably beautiful. Only a practised eye can perceive that, in point of delicacy and lustre, the advantage is with the Chinese ware. It has been stated above that the materials used at Okawachi were procured from Izumi-yama, in the Arita district. But within the Nishimatsu-ura district there was found a clay of fine quality, well suited for the manufacture of stone-ware. This clay appears to have been mixed with the Arita stone in the preparation of céladon pâte, the object of the workmen being to obtain a semi-porcelain mass showing the reddish tint seen in old Chinese celadons. Such a method was not, however, invariable. A close-grained, white pate—the Arita clay prepared with special care—is often found in good specimens of old Nabeshima-yaki, whether céladon or enamelled porcelain. From a later period—about the close of the eighteenth century—when the Okawachi potters, no longer enjoying so large a share of official patronage, were obliged to economise the cost of transporting materials, the clay of the district began to be more freely used, and the pâte suffered in respect of both texture and purity.
Since the abolition of feudalism in Japan (1868) the Okawachi potters have been obliged to materially alter the character of their work. They seldom manufacture fine specimens of richly but delicately enamelled porcelain. Their staple production is thick stone-ware, covered with brown or céladon glaze, coarsely crackled and decorated with gold and red. Though far inferior to the beautiful porcelains of other days, this Nabeshima-hihi-yaki (Nabeshima craquelé) is not without merits.
Another renowned factory is that of Mikawachi-yama—written Mikawa-uchi-yama, or "the hill between the three rivers," and generally pronounced Mikochi-yam. Here was produced Hirado-yaki, perhaps the finest porcelain manufactured in Japan. The story of this beautiful ware is connected, indirectly, with the Korean immigrants who came to Japan in the train of Hideyoshi's generals (1579). Matsura Hōin, feudal chief of Hirado, a large island lying off the coast of Hizen, caused some of these Koreans to settle at a place called Nakano, in the district of Kita-Matsura. Among them the most skilled—in fact, the only one whose name has been transmitted—was Koseki Tonroku, sometimes called Kyōkan, who was subsequently placed on the roll of the Hirado vassals under the name of Imamura. This potter was afterwards transferred to the factory of Karatsu, but some twenty years later (1630) he moved again to a place called Yoshi-no-moto, and worked there with his sons.
Very little is known of the ware manufactured by these Koreans. Tradition says that it was a coarse faience, rudely decorated with designs in blue, but no specimens appear to have been thought worthy of preserving. Tonroku, or Imamura, died about 1640. He left two sons, Ton-ichi and Ton-ji. In 1650 these potters moved to Mikawachi. They are said to have taken this step at the instance of a brother artist called Nakazato Moemon, but it seems more probable that their purpose was to avail themselves of a superior variety of clay which had been discovered by Joen, son of Imamura Ton-ichi (or San-no-jo, as his name is written by some), at the hill of Mitsu-ga-take. The new material—ajiro-tsuchi, or plait-grained clay—gave a greatly improved pâte; by no means a true porcelain, however, but heavy reddish stone-ware, over which the glaze assumed bluish grey colour. The decoration was confined to simple scroll patterns or conventional designs in impure blue sous couverte. The factory of Mikawachi was not then under official patronage. It was a private enterprise, as is proved by the fact that Higuchi Joen (Joen's father had changed his family name of Imamura to Higuchi) and Ishimaru Yaichiemon, a grandson of the well-known Risampei, together with other potters of the district, petitioned their feudal chief to sanction the digging of the Ajiro-tsuchi. Their petition was granted, but the result was so unsuccessful that the factory must have ceased working had it not been supported by Oyamado Sahei, a wealthy enthusiast, and had not its prospects been completely changed by an event that occurred in the year 1712. This was the discovery of a very fine porcelain stone at Fukae, in the island of Amakusa. The discovery is attributed by some to Yajibei, a descendant of Higuchi Toen; by others to Yokoishi Tōshichibei, also a man of Korean origin. The former tradition would seem to be correct, inasmuch as Yajibei was afterwards worshipped at Mikawachi under the deified title of "Joen Daimyōjin." The Amakusa stone was not used alone. It was mixed with the ajiro-tsuchi of Mitsu-ga-take, and a porcelain pâte of exceptional fineness and purity was thus produced. During the next thirty or forty years the potter's industry existed, but did not thrive, at Mikawachi. The method of using vitrifiable enamels was not known, or, if known, was not practised, and the expense of transporting materials from Amakusa, as well as the difficulty of procuring choice blue for decorative purposes, nearly led to the closing of the factory. But in 1751 Matsura, feudal chief of Hirado, took the kiln under his patronage, and guaranteed the potters against vicissitudes of trade by granting them ample rations. This nobleman was a most munificent connoisseur. He bestowed scarcely less attention on the potteries of his fief than Louis XV. did on those of Sévres. The pieces produced at Mikawachi were reserved entirely for his own use or for presentation to other noblemen, as well as to the Court of the Tokugawa Regents in Yedo. Regulations were enacted peremptorily forbidding the sale of any of the manufactures, and guards were appointed to see that this injunction was not violated. Porcelains produced under these special conditions were distinguished as Kenjo-mono, or "presentation pieces." Matsura is said to have particularly patronised the families of Nakazato and Imamura (Higuchi) in recognition of the fact that their ancestors had opened the first potteries in his fief.
To the ware potted at Mikawachi from 1750 until the era of Tempō (1830–1843) may be assigned the first place among the porcelains of Japan. The pâte of this Hirado-yaki was finer, purer, and whiter than that of either the Nabeshima-yaki or the Imari-yaki. Much was doubtless due to the excellence of the materials employed, but much also to the care bestowed upon their selection and manipulation. Of the stone brought from Amakusa not more than five or six parts in every hundred were used, and this serviceable portion was obtained by the most laborious processes of pulverising and straining. With the Amakusa stone was mixed a proportion of the ajiro-tsuchi of Mitsuga-take, but in the choicest wares the latter material was replaced by Satsuma ash (vide Satsuma-yaki). The cost of transporting one thousand pounds of stone from Amakusa was about £1, and of that quantity not more than fifty or sixty pounds were used in the manufacture. The Satsuma ash must have been still more expensive, and after this heavy outlay had been incurred on account of raw materials, no limit was set to the labour of purification and preparation. Remarkable results were obtained. The pâte of good Hirado-yaki is milk white, and as fine as pipe-clay. Examined attentively, it is found to be virtually free from the dark, gritty particles so common in Imari ware. The glaze is pure in tone, its surface velvet-like, lustrous and almost entirely without the minute granulations usually observable in "Old Japan."
It is not, however, till the decoration is considered that the incomparable beauties of this Hirado-yaki become fully apparent. With rare exceptions, blue is the only colour employed. It is not the intense, fathomless colour of the old Chinese keramists, nor yet is it the light, comparatively bodiless blue of the Nabeshima ware. It is a tint between the two, exquisitely soft and clear, but remarkable for delicacy rather than brilliancy. Connoisseurs whose standard of excellence as to bleu sous couverte is fixed by the rich, solid body-colour of first-class Chinese "Hawthorns," have been disposed to place the Hirado blue in a lower category, and to assume that the Chinese colour could not be imitiated at Mikawachi. That is a misconception. The Japanese potter preferred the more delicate colour, and spared neither trouble nor expense to produce it. In the eighteenth century supplies of the cobaltiferous mineral employed at Ching-tê-chên were freely imported into Japan, and sold to the factories at the rate of fifty shillings a pound (avoirdupois). The Hirado potter, instead of using this mineral—gosu he called it—without further preparation, subjected it to various processes of refinement, until at last not more than one-sixth of its original bulk remained available. That he could have produced a colour fully equal in depth and brilliancy to that of the Chinese keramist, there is no reasonable doubt. But he preferred a delicate tint, and counted its production a genuine tour de force. Of the execution of the designs it is impossible to speak too highly. One is puzzled to conceive, in the first place, how etching so wonderfully fine and outlines of such detailed accuracy can have been transferred to a surface of baked clay, and, in the second, how every process of glazing and stoving can have been effected with sufficient skill to preserve these delicate pictures. There are few subjects which the artists of Mikawachi did not depict upon their pieces, and fewer still in which they fell short of marked success. It will be understood that, for the general reasons already detailed, they seldom introduced human figures into their designs. Yet even here an exception must be made in favour of children, Rishi, Bōdhisattva, and so forth. Little boys at play—a design known in Japan as Kara-ko-asobi) are constantly found upon cups, wine-bottles, water-holders, and plates of Hirado-yaki. These figures are generally associated in good specimens with a variety of cord-and-tassel pattern, known as yo-raku-de. The number of the children was seven, five, or three, indicating, respectively, first, second, and third class ware. In the decoration of larger pieces the artist went farther afield in search of a subject, selecting flowers, trees, landscapes, or mythical incidents. He also set himself technical tasks like those in which his Chinese confrère revelled. He would enclose a tiny censer in a basket of porcelain, or spread under the surface of a milk-white glaze designs in relief, executed with mechanical and artistic fidelity superior even to the work of the Chinese. He delighted, too, in modelling little figures of his favourite Karako, rampant dragons, mythical Shishi, wrinkled old men, fishes, and so forth. In this sort of work he excelled all other porcelain manufacturers in the Orient. Vitrifiable enamels he did not use, but the drapery of his Karako, and the details of other modelling, were often picked out with three coloured glazes, rich blue, russet-brown, and black. The potters of Mikawachi were also renowned for their egg-shell porcelain, but their reputation in this kind of ware was not acquired till a late period, and in producing it they seem to have confined themselves to the manufacture of cups, rice-bowls, and plates. Strange to say, neither they nor any other Japanese keramists attempted to imitate the lace-pattern (commonly called "grains-of-rice pattern") porcelain of China. To cut designs in the biscuit and fill them with glaze was a feat apparently beyond Japanese skill in former times, though it has been accomplished by the potters of to-day.
It should be noted that the Hizen potters seldom manufactured pieces in biscuit (i. e. unglazed porcelain). Specimens of such ware are exceptional. When of Imari clay, they are generally censers or wine-bottles with designs in high relief—as arabesques, floral scrolls, mythical animals, and so forth. At the Mikawachi factory glaze was nearly always applied; but in very rare instances designs in low relief, executed with the utmost delicacy, were left uncovered. Excellence in modelling was, indeed, characteristic of the Mikawachi keramist. It is difficult to conceive anything more perfect in this line than some of his tiny figures of children or old men; and the mythical Shishi and Kirin became, in his hands, animals instinct with life and motion. At Arita, also, modelling was practised with fair success. A favourite subject, which afforded scope for the art both of the modeller and the decorator, was the figure of a girl, dressed in flowing robes of rich silk and brocade. Considerable numbers of these were produced, and many have found their way into Western collections. But it must be admitted that in the vast majority of cases they are by no means chefs-d'œuvre. The folds and fall of the drapery generally show skilful management, but the faces do not command admiration: the delicacy of their outlines is marred by the glazing material. Warriors in armour, seated on Shōgi (a kind of stool), and forming censers, were more happily treated. Their features, generally unglazed, were often excellently modelled, and the details of their armour were produced with the utmost fidelity in coloured enamels.
With rare exceptions Hirado porcelain is not marked. The habit—so common elsewhere—of copying Chinese marks was not contracted at Mikawachi, and on pieces manufactured by command of the feudal chief of Hirado the potters seldom put their names. When, however, they worked for the ordinary market, they sometimes stamped the name of both kiln and maker on the bottom of a specimen. This is especially true of wares destined for export to China through the medium of Chinese dealers in Nagasaki. Specimens thus distinguished were not of the finest quality, and probably for this reason they do not appear to have been carefully preserved. Throughout the Tempō era (1830–1843) the practice of marking—in blue under the glaze—seems to have become commoner, but the outcome of the factory was so small that very few specimens of that period survive.
The names of the Mikawachi potters and their order of descent are as follows:—
THE IMAMURA FAMILY, FOUNDED BY
THE HIGUCHI FAMILY, FOUNDED BY
| 5. | Higuchi Keikichi, |  |
still living. |
| Higuchi Yorasaku, | 
| ||
| Higuchi Jiujiro, | 
|
THE YAMA-NO-UCHI FAMILY, FOUNDED BY
In addition to the above, another group of potters worked at the factory of Hikiba in the neighbouring district. This factory was established in 1662 by Moto-ishi Hachirobei, Fukuda Gen-no-jō, Fukuda Sukehei, and others. Its early productions were a somewhat rude stone-ware manufactured with clay found at an adjacent hill called Nagao. A century later, however, considerable improvements were introduced, and in 1784 four potters, Moto-ishi Heishichi, Fukuda Juemon, Fukuda Chūzaemon, and Fukuda Seimon, developed so much skill in the production of coarsely crackled glazes that teacups of their manufacture attracted the attention of their feudal chief and were thenceforth regularly presented by him, through the Governor of Nagasaki, to the Court at Yedo. The usual decoration on these cups was a branch of peach, with fruit and leaves, in blue sous couverte. Porcelain does not appear to have been manufactured at Hikiba until 1860, when the Amakusa stone began to be used in conjunction with materials from the Goto islands and Tsushima, Representatives of the Moto-ishi and Fukuda families still work there; namely, Moto-ishi Heishichi, Fukuda Yazaemon, Fukuda Katsuzaemon, and Fukuda Iemon.
Mention is here made only of potters whose families have included artists of distinction. The number of families actually engaged in the industry at Mikawachi in the days of the factory's prosperity was thirty-six. The kilns were all under the nominal superintendence of officials appointed by the Baron of Omura (i. e. the Hirado Chief), a special directorate for the purpose having been appointed as far back as 1666, though it was not until the middle of the following century that official interference assumed a helpful form.
From the Tempō era (1830) the Hirado porcelain began to show marked signs of inferior technique, and with the abolition of feudalism (1868) the production of fine pieces ceased altogether for a time. About 1878 an attempt was made to popularise the ware by decorating it with colours in the well-known Kutani style. This effort was very short-lived. It was followed, shortly afterwards, by a more wholesome impulse, the result of which is that the porcelain of Hirado has recovered much of its ancient reputation. This subject is more fully discussed in a subsequent chapter on modern keramic developments.
By foreign collectors few Japanese wares are better known than the Arita egg-shell porcelain. Very erroneous ideas prevail with respect to its antiquity, an age as great as two centuries being attributed to some pieces. The date of its first production cannot be fixed with absolute accuracy, but there are very strong grounds for believing that it was not manufactured before the latter part of the eighteenth century. There are two varieties, the one decorated with blue sous couverte; the other with red, gold, and sometimes light blue above the glaze. The latter is essentially modern. It was made originally for export, and considerable quantities of it have been shipped from Nagasaki during the past twenty years. Figure subjects—warriors in armour or courtesans in elaborate drapery—constitute the general decoration, which is seldom executed with any conspicuous skill. A pretty conception was to protect wine-cups of this fragile ware by envelopes of wonderfully finely plaited basket-work (ajiro-gumi). The envelopes were manufactured at Nagasaki, whither the cups were sent for sale,—usually in nests of three, five, or seven.
The blue-and-white egg-shell porcelain of Hizen, though commonly attributed to the Arita factories, was produced almost entirely at Mikawachi. Doubtless some pieces were originally manufactured at the former place, but the stone of Izumi-yama was ill-adapted to the purpose. It is recorded that about the year 1820 a fire, occurring at one of the Arita factories, destroyed nearly the whole hamlet. The potters were reduced to great straits, and had almost despaired of carrying on their industry, when one of their leaders, Hisatani Yojibei, assembled his comrades and suggested the expedient of manufacturing porcelain expressly for foreign markets. It is not to be inferred that the productions of Arita had hitherto been confined to Japanese use. They were unquestionably exported by the Dutch. But the pieces sent to Nagasaki with this object were the surplus rather than the staple of the manufacture. Hisatani's idea was that an effort should be made to develop foreign sales, as no other prospect offered of recouping the losses caused by the fire. The potters adopted his counsel. A quantity of porcelain was soon ready for sale, but the question was how to sell it. The consent of Nabeshima, chief of Hizen, had to be first obtained; after which Hisatani himself proceeded to Nagasaki to manage the business. There, however, he found that the number of merchants permitted to engage in foreign trade was strictly limited to ten. These monopolists refused peremptorily to imperil the porcelain market by throwing on it a sudden profusion of Arita wares. Hisatani did not succumb to such adverse circumstances. He set himself down in Nagasaki, and after ten years of perseverance, varied only by differences in the degree of hardship endured, he succeeded in purchasing the privilege of one of the monopolists. During this interval of waiting he had time to study the tastes of European customers, as interpreted by the Dutch. He learned that the thinner the pâte the more highly was porcelain valued in the West. Then visiting Mikawachi, he urged the Hirado potters no longer to limit their manufacture of egg-shell ware to wine-cups and other diminutive utensils for Japanese use. The result of his advice was the blue-and-white egg-shell familiar to foreigners. Very little of it now remains in Japan, but at one time bowls, plates, and cups might be found without great difficulty. The ware was as thin as paper, and the decoration—blue sous couverte—was not only well executed but of pure, brilliant colour. This porcelain was almost invariably marked Zo-shun-tei Mi-ho-sei (made at the factory of Zoshun by Miho), a mark which began to be applied at Mikawachi, about 1825, to ware manufactured at the factory that owed its establishment to Hisatani's suggestion. The name of this enterprising potter, Hisatani Yojibei, is revered in Hizen to the present day. "Miho" was his artist name. His grandson, Hisatani Genichi, is now working.
The Sakaida family, founded by Sakaida Kakiemon (1615–1653), who in conjunction with Higashijima Tokuemon manufactured the first enamelled porcelain in Japan, is still extant, its present representative being Sakaida Shibunosuke, twelfth in descent from Kakiemon. Throughout the eleven generations between the first Kakiemon and Shibunosuku, each representative of the family bore the same name—Sakaida Kakiemon. These potters, whenever they marked their wares, employed the ideographs Saka-kaki.
The Fukagawa family, founded by a potter whose second name is not known (about 1650). The present representative is Fukagawa Ezaiemon, who succeeded to the hereditary business in 1856. The factory occupied itself in the manufacture of wares for home use entirely until 1868, when, owing to the downfall of the feudal system and the withdrawal of baronial patronage, Japanese keramists were everywhere obliged to turn their attention to foreign markets. Ezaiemon opened a warehouse for the sale of Arita porcelain at Deshima, in Nagasaki. In 1876 he took the lead in establishing a keramic society called the Kōran-sha. This name, which literally signifies "the company of the fragrant orchid," was that of a factory at which the Tsuji family had for many years been engaged in the manufacture of porcelain for official use. A spray of orchid flowers and leaves had long been a favourite mark on Arita ware (vide Marks and Seals). Tsuji Katsuzo, then head of the factory, joined the new association, and by the enterprise of these artists the manufacture of Arita porcelain began to recover much of its old excellence. They did not indeed succeed in preparing a fine pâte and a lustrous, uniform glaze, equal to the work of the old potters; but their management of vitrifiable enamels and their fertility in decorative designs left little to be desired. In 1880 Tsuji seceded from the Kōran-sha, in company with several other experts, and established a separate association, to which they gave the name of Seiji-sha (pure ware company). The original purpose of the Seiji-sha was to produce porcelain for export only, but it soon began to supply the home market also. The principal artists are Tsuji Katsuo, Tetsuka Kame-no-suke, Fukami Takeji, and Kawara Chujiro. Their work, already admirable, gives earnest of steady improvement. At a recent exhibition in Tōkyō, vases in fine white biscuit with delicately executed designs in relief, and large pieces richly decorated with enamels of great brilliancy, established the Seiji-sha's title to be regarded as the leading factory in Arita. They are now working with machinery procured from France, and it is safe to predict that unless they revert to the degraded fashions of the years immediately succeeding the fall of feudalism, when Japanese artists generally fell into the error of pandering to the lowest form of Western taste, the Arita porcelain of the future will be equal in brilliancy and superior in decoration to the Imari-yaki of the past.
The family of Fukami, founded by Fukami Obasen, one of the Koreans who came to Japan in the train of Hideyoshi's generals.—Obasen's descendants have been engaged as potters at Arita ever since the close of the sixteenth century, but they employed no marks by which their productions can be identified until the time of Fukami Sumi-no-suke, one of the founders of the Seiji-sha. Sumi-no-suke developed great skill in the manufacture of porcelain decorated with blue sous couverte. Excellent pieces made by him are to be found. They bear the mark "Made by Toshi-kian Kiso" (vide Marks and Seals). He died in 1886, and was succeeded by his younger brother, Fukami Takeji.
The Iwayo family, founded by one of the Koreans who worked with Risampei.—The artists of this name appear to have engaged chiefly in the manufacture of middle-class porcelain. The present representative is Iwao Kanetaro.
The Tashiro family, founded by an expert of that name, about 1780.—Its fame depends chiefly on the present representative, Tashiro Sukesaku, a man of great enterprise. He established a porcelain warehouse at Nagasaki in the Ansei era (1854–1859); and in 1860 he obtained from the local authorities a monopoly of the sale of Arita wares to foreign dealers. In 1867 Sukesaku opened a store in Shanghai, and another in Yokohama in 1871. A branch of the same family, represented by Tashiro Yasukichi, is also engaged in the production of porcelain.
The Iwamatsu family, founded by Iwamatsu Samuro (about 1750).—Samuro acquired such a high repute that purchasers came to acquire complete confidence in his wares, and it is related that porcelain dealers did not think it necessary to open bales stamped with his trademark, the ideograph Iwa within a square. His factory was specially commissioned to manufacture porcelain for the use of the Court in Yedo. The present representative is Iwamatsu Heizo, an expert of such skill that his pieces may easily be mistaken for old Imari-yaki. On choice specimens he generally writes the ideograph Hei in gold.
The Setoguchi family, founded by an artist of that name, about 1680.—This family has long been noted for the decorative skill of its members. The present representative is Setoguchi Tamiemon.
The Imaizumi family, founded by an artist of that name, about 1780.—Its members have always confined themselves to the decorative industry. Imaizumi Imaemon, who died in 1871, acquired great reputation in this line. The present representative is Imaizumi Toda.
The Kajiwara family, founded by an artist of that name, about 1680.—Of late years the Kajiwara experts have been famous for the production of monster plaques. Kajiwara Kikujiro manufactured a plate four feet in diameter in 1866. His son, the present representative, is scarcely less skilled.
The Fukushima family, founded by an expert of that name, about 1835.—This Fukushima is said to have manufactured a plate three feet in diameter in 1848. His son Fukushima Kojiro, the present representative, is reputed to be able to produce plates four feet in diameter and bowls over twenty feet in circumference.
The families of Okushi, Takeshita, Maeda, Iwasaki, have worked at the Okawachi factories since the latter half of the last century. They are now represented by Okushi Tatsuji, Okushi Moemon, Takeshita Shoshichi, Maeda Tetsuzo, and Iwasaki Kimbei, who produce thick wares covered with céladon glazes, coarsely crackled.
The Hayashi family, founded by Hayashi Jin-no-suke, a pupil of Takahara Goroshichi (1620).—Eleven generations have succeeded each other since then. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the family name was changed to Fuji, and the present representative is Fuji Shinsuke.
The Soejima family, founded by a Korean potter named Soejima Unkaku, who, with seventeen other keramists, was ordered to settle at Sarayama, in the district of Yoshida-mura, about 1600. Moemon, son of Unkaku, discovered porcelain stone at Nashi-noki-da, in the neighbourhood of the factory, and Prince Nabeshima, by whom the settlement of potters had been formed, directed that the newly found porcelain stone only should be used at the factory, and that the number of potters should be strictly limited to eighteen. Moemon, the discoverer, was appointed keramist to the Prince's house. The wares produced at this period were not, however, of first-rate quality. It was not till the Gembun era (1736–1741) that Soejima Jirobei, grandson of Unkaku, by mixing local materials with porcelain stone from Amakusa, succeeded in manufacturing choice specimens. In 1840 the representative of the family was Soejima Kaneyuki. He acquired considerable reputation by introducing improved methods of kiln building. The present representative is Soejima Risaburo. In 1878 he found, at Daikokugen in the vicinity of the pottery, a porcelain stone similar to that of Amakusa, and the workmen were thus saved the expense of procuring their materials from so great a distance. Two years later Risaburo formed an association called the Seisei-sha. Hitherto, for some unexplained reason, the manufacture of large pieces had been forbidden to the potters of Yoshida-mura, but, this restriction being now removed, plaques three feet in diameter and other important specimens began to be produced. Two other descendants of Soejima Unkaku are also engaged in the potter's trade. The first is Soejima Rinzo, whose ancestor, a son of Unkaku, opened a pottery in the Kuan-ei era (1624–1643); the second is Soejima Jisaku, whose father, Moemon, flourished from 1830 to 1843. Moemon acquired a name for his skill in manufacturing blue-and-white porcelain after the Chinese style. He used to sell much of this ware to Chinese merchants in Nagasaki. His work obtained such popularity that his feudal chief gave him the artist name of Ungetsu, with which he thenceforth marked his best pieces.
Considering the circumstances of the development of the porcelain industry in Hizen, the student expects to find that representatives of the same family of potters worked at different factories. The story of the Odashi potteries illustrates this. In 1598 Nabeshima Naoshige, feudal chief of Hizen, caused a number of Koreans to settle in the Odashi district. They opened kilns at Shirakiwara and Kamezo, the traces of which are still to be seen. Other Koreans, who had settled in the neighbouring district of Hakama-no, coöperated in the work. The wares then produced were pottery or stone-ware, and the potters appear to have led a very struggling existence. In the Kyōhō era (1716–1735), however, at the neighbouring factory of Yumi-no-yama porcelain was manufactured. It was distinguished by the term Nankin-yaki, as opposed to Nami-yaki (common ware), the name applied to pottery. The Yumino factory was then under the superintendence of Fuji Magoemon of the Hayashi family (vide supra, "Hayashi family"), who also directed the Odashi works. Magoemon, in conjunction with Mizoguchi, Ichibei, and Takada Tobei, attempted to introduce the manufacture of porcelain at the Odashi kilns. It is recorded that he did not succeed, but the failure was only temporary, since in the year 1804 the Odashi potters were officially directed to produce both porcelain and pottery for the use of the Nabeshima house. Owing to some unascertained reason, the factory subsequently experienced such vicissitudes that it had almost ceased to be a centre of production when, in 1827, Higuchi Chikaharu (vide "Higuchi family") of the Mikawachi factory, Fuji Tsunekata, and others opened a new kiln, the present one, and restored the business to considerable prosperity. Chikaharu, a distinguished expert, was officially appointed potter to the house of Nabeshima. About 1835 retired from business in favour of his younger brother Harutaka, whose reputation was not inferior to that of Chikaharu. Another member of the same family, Higuchi Shinkichi, is also mentioned in conjunction with Harutaka and Tsunetaka as an enterprising and skilled potter. These men rebuilt one of the ruined kilns of the district, and gave it the name of Furu-nobori. In 1873 one of the Odashi potters, Matsuo Kisaburo, became known as a decorative expert. This Kisaburo had been for nineteen years a pupil of Higuchi Harutaka. Subsequently he abandoned the keramic industry and became a merchant. Resuming his original profession in 1869, he found that the wares of Odashi had fallen into great disrepute, owing to the fact that the clay used in the construction of the kilns was incapable of resisting a high temperature. After many experiments he discovered clay suitable for kiln building in the district of Shitayado. He also effected a great economy by mixing with this clay the stone of Uchino, instead of that imported from Amakusa, and by devising a mechanical method of tracing decorative designs. The design was cut in paper, and the latter being laid on the surface of the porcelain, a few strokes of the brush sufficed to transfer the picture. Fortunately for Japanese keramic art this degrading device is confined to the manufacture of common utensils.
A distinguished pupil of Fuji Tsunetaka was another member of the Higuchi family, Higuchi Chuzaemon. After twenty years of apprenticeship he was entrusted (circa 1840) by Tsunetaka with the manufacture of wares for official use. In 1840 the feudal prince of Hizen caused a private kiln to be built within the precincts of his castle, and placed it under the control of Chuzaemon. Many excellent pieces were manufactured at this factory. In 1886 Chuzaemon succeeded Fuji Tsunetaka in the control of the Odashi workshops, and was himself succeeded by his son Higuchi Heibei, who now carries on the industry. Heibei and his associates built, some years ago, a new and improved kiln at Higashi-yama.
Other experts whose names deserve to be recorded are as follows: Urakawa Yoemon, who lived in the Tempō era (1830–1843). He restored to some degree of prosperity the factory of Nishiyama. His wares were widely sold under the name of Yoemon-yaki, but their quality was not sufficiently fine to entitle them to a high place among Hizen wares.
Nakashima Nobunari, a man of gentle birth, who in 1869 discovered porcelain stone at Fujiwara and established a factory there.
Tanaka, Eiichi, a potter of Sarayama, in the Shirakabe district. Dissatisfied with the materials used at the factory, Tanaka, after much search, succeeded in finding good porcelain stone at Taohi-ishi, and subsequently formed an association called the Kyōryoku-Kaisho, in 1884.Special mention must be made of a factory in the neighbourhood of Nagasaki called Kame-yama. There are various traditions with respect to the origin of this factory. Some say that it was due to official inception; others that it was purely a private enterprise. All accounts agree, however, in fixing the date of its opening at about 1803. The idea of undertaking the manufacture of porcelain in this place was doubtless suggested by the vicinity of the island of Amakusa—whence porcelain stone of excellent quality was obtainable—and by the accessibility of the Nagasaki market. The first potter was Okami Jingoro, a citizen of Nagasaki. The style inaugurated by him and followed by his successors was that of the Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. The ware speedily attained popularity, owing to the skill of the artists engaged in decorating it. Painters of reputation were easily procurable in Nagasaki. Okami availed himself of their services, with the result that many of the Kame-yama porcelains show admirable artistic decoration. Okami Jingoro was succeeded by Okami Buhei, who died in 1839, his successor being Okami Jingoro (the second). The last-named potter did not work long at Kame-yama. He abandoned the enterprise in 1846 and moved to Nawashiro-gawa, in Satsuma, where he died in 1878. An attempt to revive the industry was made in 1872 by Kamei Sahei, a potter of Arita. He built an exceptionally fine kiln, and baked two or three batches of porcelain, but, the ware proving of inferior quality, he sustained heavy loss and gave up the attempt. The Jingoro family marked their pieces. They used Amakusa stone in the manufacture of their pâte mixing with it ash procured from Satsuma. Glazing material was obtained at Daishō-mura and Haryo in Hizen. In addition to porcelain, a curious kind of pottery was also made at Kame-yama. It was manufactured from the covers of earthenware wine jars, numbers of which, filled with liquor, came to Nagasaki from the province of Szechuen, in China. Such pieces were marked "Made at Kame-yama with clay from Soshu in China."
It is on the enamelled porcelains of Imari and Nabeshima that Japan's keramic reputation rests with the majority of Western collectors. These wares alone were exported in the days when the foreign trade of the country was in the hands of the Dutch. Much of the Imari porcelain owed its manufacture entirely to European demand, and its decorative motives were modified to suit European taste. Its most characteristic features being brilliancy and decorative effect, large, imposing pieces were chiefly sought after, and it is for this reason that nearly all the specimens preserved in European collections under the name of "Old Japan," are either jars with covers, tall vases with spreading necks—the so-called "trumpet-shaped vases"—beakers, gourd-shaped vases, or plaques. Probably the finest examples are to be seen in the Dresden collection and the Palace in Madrid. Solidity, a useful quality for purposes of export, and profuse ornamentation accomplished at a minimum of cost, being prescribed by the Dutch merchants, this "Old Japan" did not convey a just idea of either the Japanese keramist's technical skill or the Japanese connoisseur's natural taste. M. du Sartel, in his work "La Porcelaine de Chine," judging by the majority of examples preserved in great collections, says that its shapes were generally heavy and inelegant; that its paste was thick, with little transparency and of doubtful whiteness; that its glaze was greyish, or slightly tinged with greenish blue; that the decoration consisted, for the most part, of designs in impure, dark blue sous couverte, and polychromatic painting over the glaze, the principal colours of the latter being red and gold, with very exceptional additions of black, and still rarer touches of dull yellow and enamel green; and that the subjects were seldom more varied than the colours, being limited to bamboos, pines, large peony and chrysanthemum flowers growing stiffly from rocks, symbolical animals, birds, butterflies, and personages apparently suspended in the air, with the addition of rough reliefs and rudimentary reticulation. Messrs. Audsley and Bowes, also, speaking of the Dresden collection, say with true instinct: "One is somewhat at a loss while examining these works to account for their markedly peculiar artistic treatment,—a treatment that the student of Japanese art would scarcely be prepared to pronounce strictly natural. They are ancient, certainly, and of necessity present art thoughts of schools long passed away; but making full allowance for this, one cannot help asking if there could have been an external influence at work which modified their artists' national taste. Jacquemart mentions that the Dutch exercised a considerable influence over the porcelain manufacture of Japan. … If such was the case, the difficulties of the student disappear. This theory certainly has probability on its side; and the lavish richness of much of the ware, in many cases absolutely overcrowded with ornamentation, tends to prove its truth." These writers unfortunately mar the soundness of the above judgment by depicting in their plates and describing as "a type in which Japanese treatment is most marked," a triple-gourd-shaped vase which is in every sense an offensive monstrosity and in no sense true to Japanese canons. The plain fact is that it fared alike with the Japanese in ancient and in modern times: by attempting to adapt themselves to the requirements of foreign markets, they outraged their instincts and injured their reputation. Imari porcelain manufactured for use in Japan was of very different quality and style. It consisted nearly entirely of plates, bowls, cups with or without covers, dishes, ewers, bottles, and so forth, flower-vases and ornamental pieces being the exception. Many of these utensils, as may well be supposed, were comparatively coarse and crudely decorated. But many were excellent in every respect,—fineness of pâte, lustre, tone, and uniformity of glaze, brilliancy and purity of enamels, tasteful conception and delicate execution of decorative designs. They had thicker biscuit and a character generally more solid than choice Chinese porcelains, but on the whole they could claim superiority to the latter in beauty of decorative conception, while they certainly were little if at all inferior in skill and care of execution. Setting aside any question as to whether the Arita decorator borrowed his subjects from other branches of his country's art industry or conceived them himself, the connoisseur cannot hesitate to admit that his range and wealth of fancy were remarkable. From this point of view he excelled his Chinese rival. For whereas the latter's field of subjects was so narrow that he rang the changes on them with tiresome iteration, the former scarcely repeated himself at all. One may collect—or rather might once have collected—thousands of old Imari specimens—usually sets of five, ten, or twenty pieces—no two of which are exactly alike, and though they necessarily vary in degrees of technical and artistic excellence, every one of them shows some charming feature. It need scarcely be said that the choicest are always painted with extreme care, their enamels pure and brilliant, their blue sous couverte rich and clear, their red soft, uniform, and solid. The history of the world tells of no people whose utensils for eating purposes were so refined and ornamental as the Imari services of the Japanese. By these, not by the "Old Japan" of eighteenth-century Europe, the ware should be judged. Since the opening of the country in 1857 much finer examples have been sent westward than those exported by the Dutch, but the reputation of the latter still survives and prevents Imari-yaki from occupying its proper place in Western esteem.
Although the Dutch factory at Deshima confined its purchases of Hizen porcelain chiefly to profusely ornamented and comparatively rough pieces, specially designed for sale abroad, specimens of the much chaster and more delicate Nabeshima ware were also shipped to Europe in small numbers. In two striking respects this Nabeshima-yaki differed from the ware of Imari, the so-called "Old Japan." In the first place, its glaze, instead of being pervaded by a more or less marked tinge of bluish green, was of the purest milk-white, soft and restful in tone. This feature constituted one of the chief and most easily detected points of superiority in Nabeshima porcelain, and the importance of the distinction should be carefully noted. It is more marked in porcelain decorated entirely with enamels over the glaze than in the variety where blue sous couverte also occurs, but in both classes milky whiteness of surface is a test at once of origin and of quality. In the second place, blue under the glaze, which always enters largely into the decoration of Imari ware, is either relegated to a secondary rank in Nabeshima porcelain or does not appear at all. The specimens sent to Europe by the Dutch traders in the early days seem to have been principally, if not altogether, of the latter class; that is to say, their decoration consisted entirely of enamels over the glaze. Differing essentially from the familiar "Old Japan," this porcelain greatly perplexed European amateurs of later times. M. du Sartel's description of the ware, as known to Western collectors, and of the confused ideas prevailing about it, is interesting. "These porcelains," he writes, "remarkable for their fine ivory-white pâte, always soberly decorated with paintings executed in colours, the ensemble of which, blue under the glaze being absolutely excepted, is identical with what one finds on choice products of the Hizen factories, have been variously judged by the keramists whose attention they have attracted. If we may credit some connoisseurs, they are almost as ancient as the first porcelains that made their appearance in China, and while certain persons still attribute them to Japan, others think that they are due to Korean keramics, although no other ware of similar nature is recognised as belonging to Korea. It would necessarily result from the latter view that the Korean potters limited themselves to this solitary and unique variety, made no one can tell where, at an epoch not determined, and exported by unknown hands in an unascertained manner. … This variety, the cause of so much controversy, is tolerably rare to-day. It is usually found only in incomplete specimens of little importance, often garnished with ancient mountings, of which some, in silver gilt, bear witness to the value set on the ware of the last century. This was the porcelain that our faience-makers first imitated, and after them the potters of France, England, and specially of Saxony, where reproductions so perfect are made that one must be a clever connoisseur to avoid occasional deception. These porcelains, so-called Korean, were the first brought from Japan by the Dutch, but the arrivals seem to have ceased at the end of the seventeenth century, so that specimens were formerly much sought after by connoisseurs, in whose collections they occupied an important place under the designation of ancienne première qualité colorié du Japon. Here is what Juillot said of them in his descriptive catalogue of Oriental porcelains, forming part of the collection of M. Randon de Boisset, which was sold in 1777: 'The late M. Randon de Boisset, gifted with delicate and severe taste, collected capital pieces of different varieties, above all of ancient Japanese porcelain called première qualité colorié, for which, as a true connoisseur, he had a great predilection. This porcelain, the composition of which is entirely lost, has always attracted the attention of amateurs by the fine texture of its beautiful white pâte, the seductive softness of its rouge mat, the velvet-like character of its soft yet brilliant green and deep blue colours. Such is the veritable and recognised merit of this porcelain, so that all choice collections have been and are composed of it, which alone is a sufficient eulogy.' " It need scarcely be said that M. Juillot is entirely mistaken in supposing that the art of manufacturing the pâte of the Nabeshima porcelain had been lost before the time (1777) of his dictum. Neither is there any sufficient reason to credit M. du Sartel's conclusion that the import of such ware ceased at the end of the seventeenth century. The history of its manufacture shows that it was always produced in limited quantities, and that it was not offered for sale in the open market. The Dutch doubtless exported it whenever they could obtain specimens, but their instinct as active traders induced them to turn rather to the Arita factories, the more plentiful outcome of which offered a larger field, while the amenability of the potters to foreign suggestions made them convenient to deal with. It should be observed also that the superiority ascribed by European connoisseurs to the Nabeshima enamels has no foundation in fact. In brilliancy, purity, variety, and accuracy of application, the enamels of choice Imari specimens have never been surpassed. "Old Japan," with its masses of blurred, impure blue sous couverte, and its dominant red and gold above the glaze, must not be taken as a type of the decorative or technical skill developed at Arita. First-class examples of Imari-yaki stand on a wholly different plane. For the clearer guidance of amateurs, the enamels generally found on the finest pieces may be recapitulated here. First among them is purple, a peculiar amethyst-like tinge, verging upon lilac. Then comes opaque, yet lustrous green, the colour of young onion-sprouts,—a beautiful enamel, much prized by the Japanese, who called it tampan (sulphate of copper). Then follows turquoise blue, and finally black, the last, however, being exceptional. Add to these, red, grass-green, gold and blue (sous couverte), and the palette alike of the Arita and the Nabeshima keramists is exhausted. Neither factory can claim to have excelled the other in the preparation and application of enamels. The one difference is that the Arita potter, with true artistic instinct, employed stronger masses of colour and more profuse decoration to relieve the impure white of his porcelain field, whereas the Nabeshima keramist made his milk-white glaze a distinctive feature and subordinated the decoration to this special excellence. Arguing from the fact that the progress of the keramic art at Arita and Okawachi was on the whole uniform, the amateur will be prepared to learn that the earliest Nabeshima porcelains exhibited the same paucity of enamels as their Imari contemporaries; red, gold, green, and light blue (over the glaze) were the colours chiefly employed. Purple, yellow, and the other enamels enumerated above, seem to have come into use from the close of the seventeenth, or the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Seeing that blue under the glaze played such a large rôle at the Arita factories, the student is led to anticipate that porcelain showing decoration of this class only would be common among specimens of ancient Imari-yaki. But in truth very few large examples of Old Japanese blue-and-white are to be found. In plates, bowls, saké bottles, and other household utensils, pieces of great beauty are sometimes found, the blue of which is scarcely inferior to the richest colour obtained by the potters of the Middle Kingdom. This is especially true of the Goku-hin-yaki. With the exception of such classes, however, blue sous couverte is almost invariably associated with enamel decoration. Ewers for placing outside or on a verandah, flower-pots, and dishes make up the total of large blue-and-white specimens, and it will be understood that keramists seldom put their best work into such pieces. Big pots with covers—called in Japan Jinuo (dust vessels)—so many of which do duty as the highest types of "Old Japan" in European collections, sometimes have designs in blue sous couverte only; but the inferior quality of their pâte and glaze, and the muddy tone of their blue are fatal blemishes. It is to the products of the Hirado workshops that the connoisseur must go for the best and most valuable examples of Old Japanese blue-and-white. He will there find close fine biscuit, pure white glaze, and blue which, if not so deep or strong as the most esteemed Chinese colour, is of unsurpassed delicacy and æsthetic beauty. During the comparatively short period of its existence the Kame-yama factory, near Nagasaki, turned out many fairly good pieces of blue-and-white, essentially of the plate-and-bowl type. But the connoisseur should not experience any difficulty in distinguishing these, for, as compared with Imari ware, their pâte, though free from grit, is more chalky, their glaze even less pure in tone, and their blue colour emphatically wanting in richness and body. It is further to be observed that the decorative designs on Imari blue-and-white porcelain were nearly always of the formal type, as diapers, scrolls, and so forth, whereas the subjects taken by the Hirado potters were chiefly pictorial,—landscapes, trees, figures, and flowers.
Neither at Arita nor at Okawachi was the art of producing crackle successfully practised by the porcelain manufacturers. Yet in old pieces of Imari ware, both enamelled and blue-and-white, craquelé is sometimes found. The pâte of such specimens is always much softer than ordinary porcelain biscuit: it was evidently a special mixture of clays. But there is no evidence to show whether the object of thus mixing different varieties of material was to produce crackle, or whether the composition, and therefore also the 
Hirado Ware.
Great as is the progress made of late by the Arita potters, their method of preparing and applying vitrifiable enamels is still separated by a considerable interval from the skill of their predecessors of feudal times. It is to this point before all others that the instructed connoisseur will look. Daubing the surface of porcelain with perishable pigments and jewelling it with enamels that retain their fulness and lustre after decades of wear and tear, are two wholly different grades of technique. The former is the brummagem of keramics, inspired by purely mercantile instincts. Those whose eyes have become accustomed to the beautiful porcelains of the Orient with their imperishable pictures in brilliant yet soft enamels or blue under the glaze, can never again look without disgust at the productions of that hybrid branch of Western art which smears upon the surface of porcelain dull, lustreless paints, adapted only to canvas or paper, and incapable of resisting any of the cleansing processes to which vessels in every-day use must of necessity be subjected. In the scramble for food that, thirty years ago, replaced the quiet, comfortable life of patronised competence hitherto led by Japanese artist artisans, a tendency to resort to whatever devices gave cheap, speedy, and temporarily striking results was developed with unfortunate facility. Against this the genius of the country soon revolted, though the conditions that led to such a departure from true canons remained almost unaltered. About the year 1880 a renaissance slowly set in, and judging by the ground which the Japanese keramist has already recovered, it is evident that he needs only an intelligent and liberal public to climb once more to the heights of excellence on which he once stood. In no respect is this return to wholesome fashions more marked than in the use of vitrifiable enamels. These have not only replaced pigments in great part, but begin also to show much of their ancient brilliancy and purity. Some of the Arita potters devote themselves to tours de force sufficiently remarkable. They manufacture enormous plaques, huge vases, and pedestal lamps, nine or ten feet high, for placing in Japanese gardens. These are, perhaps, legitimate exercises of skill where the materials employed are not sufficiently fine for the production of small choice specimens.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 3.
Note 3.—One of the chief imperfections of modern Arita porcelain is due to the faulty manipulation of its glaze.