JAPAN
each globule appears to be, and in some cases actually is, distinct from its neighbour. This result was produced by using for the pâte and the glaze clays with different indices of expansion. Careful manipulation of materials and management of temperature were necessary to achieve success, but the difficulties were not very great. The commonest species of Karatsu-yaki may be described as faience made of dark, tolerably fine clay, over which is run thick buff-coloured glaze, coarsely crackled, and generally showing irregular patches of white towards the edges. It may be worth mentioning that the only authenticated specimens of Karatsu ware dating farther back than the seventeenth century are bowls and cups. The first tea-jars were made by a potter called Gombei, who lived about the year 1630. With the exception of this man, the only experts of Karatsu whose names have descended to posterity are Yojibei, Taroemon, and the latter's son, Kiheiji. These flourished during the first half of the eighteenth century.
Among the miscellaneous, or minor, wares of Japan, the first place is here given to the Karatsu-yaki, not on account of its excellence, but because the factories at that place rank first in point of antiquity. So long, indeed, had Karatsu been associated with the keramic industry that in old times the inhabitants of Hizen were wont to speak of pottery generically as Karatsu-mono, just as the people of Japan apply to it to-day the name Seto-mono. At present the term Hizen-yaki conveys, to ninety-nine persons out of every hundred, a signification entirely unconnected with the productions of any factory in the province other than those in Arita and its environs.
A modern Karatsu expert called Nakazato Keizo
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