cloisonné enamelling was practised in the manner now understood by the term; when foreign merchants began to settle in Yokohama, several experts were working skilfully in Owari after the methods of Kaji Tsunekichi. Up to that time there had been little demand for enamels of large dimensions, but when the foreign market called for vases, censers, plaques and such things, no difficulty was found in supplying them. Thus, about the year 1865, there commenced an export of enamels which had no prototypes in Japan, being destined frankly for European and American collectors. From a technical point of view these specimens had much to recommend them. The base, usually of copper, was as thin as cardboard; the cloisons, exceedingly fine and delicate, were laid on with care and accuracy; the colours were even, and the designs showed artistic judgment. Two faults, however, marred the work—first, the shapes were clumsy and unpleasing, being copied from bronzes whose solidity justified forms unsuited to thin enamelled vessels; secondly, the colours, sombre and somewhat impure, lacked the glow and mellowness that give decorative superiority to the technically inferior Chinese enamels of the later Ming and early Tsing eras. Very soon, however, the artisans of Nagoya (Owari), Yokohama and Tōkyō—where the art had been taken up—found that faithful and fine workmanship did not pay. The foreign merchant desired many and cheap specimens for export, rather than few and costly. There followed then a period of gradual decline, and the enamels exported to Europe showed so much inferiority that they were supposed to be the products of a widely different era and of different makers. The industry was threatened with extinction, and would certainly have dwindled to insignificant dimensions had not a few earnest artists, working in the face of many difficulties and discouragements, succeeded in striking out new lines and establishing new standards for excellence.
Three clearly differentiated schools now (1875) came into existence. One, headed by Namikawa Yasuyuki of Kiōto, took for its objects the utmost delicacy and perfection of technique, richness of decoration, purity of design and harmony of colour. The thin clumsily-shaped vases of the Kaji New Schools. school, with their uniformly distributed decoration of diapers, scrolls and arabesques in comparatively dull colours, ceased altogether to be produced, their place being taken by graceful specimens, technically flawless, and carrying designs not only free from stiffness, but also executed in colours at once rich and soft. This school may be subdivided, Kiōto representing one branch, Nagoya, Tōkyō and Yokohama the other. In the products of the Kiōto branch the decoration generally covered the whole surface of the piece; in the products of the other branch the artist aimed rather at pictorial effect, placing the design in a monochromatic field of low tone. It is plain that such a method as the latter implies great command of coloured pastes, and, indeed, no feature of the manufacture is more conspicuous than the progress made during the period 1880–1900 in compounding and firing vitrifiable enamels. Many excellent examples of cloisonné enamel have been produced by each branch of this school. There has been nothing like them in any other country, and they stand at an immeasurable distance above the works of the early Owari school represented by Kaji Tsunekichi and his pupils and colleagues.
The second of the modern schools is headed by Namikawa Sosuke of Tōkyō. It is an easily traced outgrowth of the second branch of the first school just described, for one can readily understand that from placing the decorative design in a monochromatic field of low tone, which is essentially Cloisonless Enamels. a pictorial method, development would proceed in the direction of concealing the mechanics of the art in order to enhance the pictorial effect. Thus arose the so-called “cloisonless enamels” (musenjippō). They are not always without cloisons. The design is generally framed at the outset with a ribbon of thin metal, precisely after the manner of ordinary cloisonné ware. But as the work proceeds the cloisons are hidden—unless their presence is necessary to give emphasis to the design—and the final result is a picture in vitrified enamels.
The characteristic productions of the third among the modern schools are monochromatic and translucid enamels. All students of the ceramic art know that the monochrome porcelains of China owe their beauty to the fact that the colour is in the glaze, not under it. The ceramist Monochromatic Enamels. finds no difficulty in applying a uniform coat of pigment to porcelain biscuit, and covering the whole with a diaphanous glaze. The colour is fixed and the glaze set by secondary firing at a lower temperature than that necessary for hardening the pâte. Such porcelains, however, lack the velvet-like softness and depth of tone so justly prized in the genuine monochrome, where the glaze itself contains the colouring matter, pâte and glaze being fired simultaneously at the same high temperature. It is apparent that a vitrified enamel may be made to perform, in part at any rate, the function of a porcelain glaze. Acting upon that theory, the experts of Tōkyō and Nagoya have produced many very beautiful specimens of monochrome enamel—yellow (canary or straw), rose du Barry, liquid-dawn, red, aubergine purple, green (grass or leaf), dove-grey and lapis lazuli blue. The pieces do not quite reach the level of Chinese monochrome porcelains, but their inferiority is not marked. The artist’s great difficulty is to hide the metal base completely. A monochrome loses much of its attractiveness when the colour merges into a metal rim, or when the interior of a vase is covered with crude unpolished paste. But to spread and fix the enamel so that neither at the rim nor in the interior shall there be any break of continuity, or any indication that the base is copper, not porcelain, demands quite exceptional skill.
The translucid enamels of the modern school are generally associated with decorative bases. In other words, a suitable design is chiselled in the metal base so as to be visible through the diaphanous enamel. Very beautiful effects of broken and softened lights, combined with depth and delicacy of Translucid Enamel. colour, are thus obtained. But the decorative designs which lend themselves to such a purpose are not numerous. A gold base deeply chiselled in wave-diaper and overrun with a paste of aubergine purple is the most pleasing. A still higher achievement is to apply to the chiselled base designs executed in coloured enamels, finally covering the whole with translucid paste. Admirable results are thus produced; as when, through a medium of cerulean blue, bright goldfish and blue-backed carp appear swimming in silvery waves, or brilliantly plumaged birds seem to soar among fleecy clouds. The artists of this school show also much skill in using enamels for the purposes of subordinate decoration—suspending enamelled butterflies, birds or floral sprays, among the reticulations of a silver vase chiselled à jour; or filling with translucid enamels parts of a decorative scheme sculptured in iron, silver, gold or shakudo.
V.—Economic Conditions
Communications.—From the conditions actually existing in
the 8th century after the Christian era the first compilers of
Japanese history inferred the conditions which might
have existed in the 7th century before that era. One
of their inferences was that, in the early days, communication
Roads and Posts
in Early Times.
was by water only, and that not until
549 B.C. did the most populous region of the empire—the
west coast—come into possession of public roads. Six hundred
years later, the local satraps are represented as having received
instructions to build regular highways, and in the 3rd century
the massing of troops for an over-sea expedition invested
roads with new value. Nothing is yet heard, however, about
posts. These evidences of civilization did not make their
appearance until the first great era of Japanese reform, the
Taika period (645-650), when stations were established along
the principal highways, provision was made of post-horses,
and a system of bells and checks was devised for distinguishing
official carriers. In those days ordinary travellers were required
to carry passports, nor had they any share in the benefits of
the official organization, which was entirely under the control of
the minister of war. Great difficulties attended the movements
of private persons. Even the task of transmitting to the
central government provincial taxes paid in kind had to be discharged
by specially organized parties, and this journey from the
north-eastern districts to the capital generally occupied three
months. At the close of the 7th century the emperor Mommu is
said to have enacted a law that wealthy persons living near the
highways must supply rice to travellers, and in 745 an empress
(Koken) directed that a stock of medical necessaries must be
kept at the postal stations. Among the benevolent acts attributed
to renowned Buddhist priests posterity specially remembers
their efforts to encourage the building of roads and bridges. The
great emperor Kwammu (782-806) was constrained to devote
a space of five years to the reorganization of the whole system of
post-stations. Owing to the anarchy which prevailed during
the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries, facilities of communication
disappeared almost entirely, even for men of rank a long journey
involved danger of starvation or fatal exposure, and the pains
and perils of travel became a household word among the people.
Yoritomo, the founder of feudalism at the close of the 12th century, was too great a statesman to underestimate the value of roads and
