JAPAN
such material would have been carried across the sea during these early centuries except, perhaps, to gratify the caprice of some amateur. To bring Chinese glazing material from China for the purpose of applying it to inferior Japanese pottery in Japan must always have appeared a less rational proceeding than to bring Chinese glazed pottery to Japan.
Summarising the above records, the conclusion is that up to the twelfth century utensils of glazed earthenware were scarcely if at all produced in Japan, and that the use of those which found their way thither from China was confined to the ruling classes. It has even been suggested by some authorities that outside the Imperial Court oak-leaf cups, such as that which the wife of the ill-fated Odate presented to the jealous Empress Iwa, sufficed for ordinary purposes, and that food was served and eaten in vessels of plain or lacquered wood. Such a theory is not tenable. Annals of the tenth century detail no less than fifteen provinces[1] where pottery was manufactured, though there is no reason to think that the ware itself exhibited any features of technical excellence. The art lacked the essential patronage of public appreciation. Except, perhaps, a few simple vessels used at religious celebrations, nothing was required of the potters beyond the production of jars for storing and steeping rice-seed or utensils for common domestic uses.
Early in the thirteenth century a new influence began to be felt. This was the introduction of tea from China, together with a minute appreciation of its qualities and uses. The tea-ceremonial, which subsequently occupied an important place in Japanese
- ↑ See Appendix, note 2.
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