JAPAN
"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
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