JAPAN
nobles in the capital. The choice utensils used by its devotees—the Ting-yao, Chun-yao, Ju-yao, etc., of the Sung dynasty—were all Chinese, and their immense superiority to everything produced in Japan was palpable. Masakage conceived the ambition of raising the keramic art of his country to a higher level. He resigned his official position and built a kiln at Fukakusa, a village about five miles from Kyōtō. But his wares proving little if at all superior to those of his contemporaries, he determined to visit China in the capacity of a student. By the aid of Doyen (or Dōgen), a Buddhist priest (second son of Masakage's lord, Kuga Michichika), he was enabled to accomplish his purpose. Tradition says that he travelled from one to another of the great Chinese keramic centres, and, during five years' study, acquired a full knowledge of the processes of the Middle Kingdom. If so, the only conclusion is that his ability to utilise this knowledge in Japan was limited by lack of materials. From China he brought back pottery earth which he called Sohoaki (mother's bosom), doubtless in the sense that the development of his art depended upon this material, though a local tradition says that the term was applied to clay found in Owari by the potter's mother and carried home in the bosom of her robe. His first essay after his return was made at his former kiln in Fukakusa. Three tea-jars potted there with Chinese clay were entirely successful. One of them was presented to the Regent Tokiyori; the other two to the priest Dōyen, who bequeathed them to the temple Eiheiji, where they are still preserved. But Japanese material proved as refractory as ever. Katō Shirozaemon—as Masakage now called himself—wandered from place to place in
264
