JAPAN
of Mino, and there set up a kiln. Some forty years later (1610,) when Tokugawa Yoshinao, Prince of Owari, established himself at Nagoya, he instituted enquiries with the object of reviving the keramic industry of the province. Katō Kagemasa's title to be regarded as the direct descendant of the celebrated Tōshiro having been thus verified, he was recalled from Mino and granted a yearly pension as well as a plot of land in the village of Akazu, where he opened a factory. His kiln was called O-kama-ya (honourable kiln), in recognition of the fact that it enjoyed official patronage. The ware produced was of the usual Seto type, but of such good quality that when, in 1630, Tokugawa Mitsutomo, the then Prince of Owari, desired to establish a special factory to manufacture faience for his own use and for purposes of presentation, he entrusted the work to the potters of Akazu. The result was the Mifukai kiln, within the outer enclosure of the Nagoya castle. It was under the superintendence of Katō Tōzaburo, and its productions were called Mifukai-yaki, or sometimes Oniwa-yaki (honourable garden ware) but the latter term is seldom used, being easily confounded with the name of a wholly different faience manufactured in Kishiu (vide Kishiu-yaki). The Mifukai-yaki includes most of the ordinary Seto glazes, and in these varieties presents no special features, except that the pâte is closer and of lighter colour than the usual Seto-yaki. There is, however, one kind to which the name Mifukai-yaki is principally applied by connoisseurs. Its body glaze is the vitreous, semi-translucid, craquelé glaze of Owari; over this run broad bands of brown ochre, splashed with a glaze like avanturine lacquer, and between the bands are streaks of green and violet.
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