Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/95

WARES OF HIZEN

The pieces were piled up in the ordinary manner within the kiln, being thus exposed to the direct action of the fire. The advisability of enclosing choice ware in a sheath of some sort is said to have been discovered by accident. Some small vessels having fallen, after the kiln was closed, into a pot near which they had been placed, were inadvertently stoved in that position. On emerging from the oven these pieces were found to have profited so much by the protection they had obtained that the idea of using seggars was at once conceived. This event is referred to the closing years of the eighteenth century. The seggars served only once; they were broken to remove the pieces they contained. Only the choicest wares were protected by seggars, and consequently received the distinguishing title of Goku-hin-yaki (superlative ware).

Sakaida Kakiemon's success gained for him no little reputation. It is said that he had the rare honour of a personal interview with one of the great feudal chiefs of the time, Maeda Toshiharu, Lord of Kaga. This would apparently indicate that Kakiemon visited Kaga,—a circumstance of obvious interest in connection with the development of the Kutani (or Kaga) potteries.

In the annals of Nagasaki it is recorded that a bazaar for the sale of Hizen porcelain was opened in that town in 1662. This may probably be taken as the date of the first export of Japanese porcelain, though local tradition refers the event to the time of Sakaida Kakiemon's son and successor, a few years later. Both the Chinese and the Dutch traders are said to have been ready purchasers of the new ware. There is no record of the prices paid, but they were probably very small. A story told at Arita to-day illustrates the simple manners of the potters of the seventeenth century. A hawker of quack medicines,

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