Edward Dillon

IN any assemblage of the ceramic products of Japan, more especially in one of native origin, it will be seen that porcelain no longer, as in China, holds the place of honour. This place would be taken, in such a collection, by a series of small bowls and jars mostly of a dark-coloured earthenware, which offer little to attract a European eye. On the other hand, a Western collector of Japanese ceramics would be likely to find more to interest him in the decorated fayence of which the kilns of Kioto and Satsuma have furnished the most exquisite examples. And yet, perhaps, in no country, not even in China, do we find porcelain, and that of a high technical quality, so largely employed for domestic use. The commonest coolie eats his rice or drinks his tea or sakÉ from a bowl or cup of porcelain, while to find specimens of the old rough stoneware or earthenware we must explore the Kura—the fireproof storehouses of the rich noble or merchant—where, wrapped in cases of old brocade, these little objects are carefully preserved and classified. It would be out of place here to enter into the causes, political, social, and, we may add, also psychological, that have influenced the Japanese mind in thus associating all that is refined and intellectual with a class of pottery in which, to say the least, the artistic possibilities are confined within very narrow limits. But, as is now well known, this tendency has been fostered by the ceremonies connected with the social gatherings known as the Cha-no-yu (literally ‘hot water for tea‘), when the powdered tea is prepared in and drunk from examples of these primitive wares. On such occasions the criticism and measured praise of the utensils employed forms an important—indeed an almost obligatory—part of the conversation among the guests.

The merits of Chinese porcelain, however, have long been acknowledged by the Japanese. Possibly as early as the ninth century specimens of celadon were imported. Direct communication with China has indeed since that time been subject to many interruptions, and it has at all times been carried on subject to galling restrictions and heavy duties levied by the governments of both countries. The Japanese have at many times made piratical descents upon the coast of China, and among the loot thus obtained many fine pieces of Chinese porcelain may have found their way to Japan. There was, however, a period in the fifteenth century during which a pretty steady trade was kept up, under the patronage of the pleasure-loving Ashikaga Shoguns, and many specimens of the earlier Ming porcelain must have reached Japan at that time. It has always been the celadon ware that has found most favour with the Japanese, and fabulous prices were, and indeed still are, given for fine pieces. We may note that such specimens are as a rule associated in the Japanese mind with the Yuan or Mongol dynasty. Speaking generally, however, it was not to this direct intercourse with China that the Japanese attribute their knowledge of ceramic processes. From an early date nearly all that they knew of the continental lands of Asia seems to have reached them from Korea, a country where they played alternately the part of ruthless invaders and devastators, and of eager and submissive students.

Let us then rapidly glance over the records preserved by the Japanese of their early lessons in the potter’s art, that we may better understand the conditions under which the manufacture of porcelain was at length established in the country at the end of the sixteenth century.

Of the early pottery of Japan—rude figures, coffins, and strange-shaped vases of coarse earthenware dating from the early centuries of our era—we know, thanks to the researches of Mr. Gowland, much more than we do of the products of a similar stage of culture in China. In the British Museum we may see a collection, unique of its kind in Europe, of prehistoric objects, found most of them in or around the dolmen tombs of the early emperors, and brought together in Japan by that energetic explorer. As, according to Japanese tradition, Korean potters were in those early days already settled in Japan, we need not be surprised to find that vessels of very similar shape, but of a rather better ware, have also been found in Korean tombs.

The earliest ware whose origin we can trace to a definite spot, is that formerly made at Karatsu, in Hizen, near to the great porcelain district of later days. Korean potters are traditionally reported to have been established here as far back as the early part of the seventh century. Of this primitive ware we will only note that the pieces were placed in the kiln in an inverted position, either without supports (the Kuchi-nashi-de, or ‘unglazed orifice ware‘), or supported by two props of rectangular section (the Geta okoshi, or ‘clog supports‘). This is a point of interest in connection with the similar devices used in firing some of the early celadon. But, as Captain Brinkley points out (The Chrysanthemum, vol. iii. p. 18), it was the introduction of tea from China[112] early in the thirteenth century that gave rise, for the first time, to a demand for a better kind of pottery.

Kato Shirozayemon, a native of Owari, made, we are told, a five years’ visit to China about this time (he returned to his native village of Seto in 1223) in order to study the potter’s craft. The ware that he succeeded in making on his return to Japan has a reddish brown paste covered with a dark glaze, streaked and patched with lighter tints. This was probably more or less an imitation of the Kien yao, the ‘hare-fur’ cups made in the province of Fukien in late Sung times.[113] These cups, so prized by the Japanese, are of interest to us, as they may, in some degree, be regarded as the ancestral type from which the long series of Japanese tea-bowls is derived. But neither the ware of Toshiro (he is generally known by this shortened form of his name), nor that of his followers, has any claim to be classed as porcelain. It is, however, from Seto, the native village of Toshiro, where he set up his kilns on his return from China, that the commonest Japanese name for all kinds of ceramic ware, but more especially for porcelain, is derived, and the district is now a great centre for the production of blue and white porcelain.

Apart from this dark ware and from the heavy celadon, it would seem that at this time, and even later, the only true porcelain known to the Japanese was the white translucent ware of Korea, itself probably an offshoot of some early form of Ting ware. That Toshiro, who must have travelled in Fukien barely two generations earlier than Marco Polo, should only have learned to make this one kind of dark ware, shows how locally circumscribed was the knowledge and use in China, in Sung times, of different kinds of porcelain.

We have to wait nearly three hundred years for the first attempts at the manufacture of porcelain in Japan. Gorodayu Shonsui, the second great name in the history of Japanese ceramics, made his way to Fuchow early in the sixteenth century. He probably visited King-te-chen, and returned to Japan in the year 1513, bringing with him specimens of the materials used by the Chinese, both for the paste and for the glaze of their porcelain. But although Shonsui on his return settled at Arita, in the centre of what was at a later time the principal porcelain district of Japan, he appears never to have discovered the precious deposits of kaolin in the neighbouring hills; for when the supplies brought from China came to an end, he and his successors had to fall back upon the manufacture of fayence. A few specimens of the ware he made have been preserved in Japan, and it has often been copied since Shonsui’s time—even in China, it is said. It is a fair imitation of the Ming blue and white, and we may note that the plum-blossom often occurs in the decoration. We are told that the secret of the process of enamel painting was rigorously kept from Shonsui. We have seen that it is at least doubtful whether this process was known to the Chinese at that time, but the reference may be to the ware covered with polychrome painted glazes.

There are two pieces attributed to Shonsui, on native evidence, in the historical collection of Japanese pottery at South Kensington, but it is very doubtful whether these very ordinary pieces of blue and white are even as old as the later date (1580-90) somewhat strangely attributed to them on the same authority.

And now the Korean potter is found again on the scene. It was reserved for Risampei, a native of that country, to recognise for the first time—in 1599, it is said—the value of the white crumbling rocks out-cropping on the hills that rise at the back of Arita. Here he built his kilns and succeeded in making a fairly good imitation of the Chinese blue and white which was now becoming more and more in request as an article of commerce.

At this stage we are brought into contact not only with the local history and the politics of the day, but with the great questions of world traffic that were being fought out at the time. The rich western island of Kiushiu had long been the principal seat of the efforts of the Portuguese and Spanish missionaries. They had nowhere more converts than on the coasts of Hizen and on the adjacent islands. So that to one or more of these early kilns established near Arita we may reasonably assign some at least of those strange plates, painted with Biblical subjects, that have excited so much curiosity. I will only point to the large dish with an elaborate picture of the Baptism of Christ in the centre, now at South Kensington (Pl. xiv.). The subject is painted in blue under the glaze and heightened by gilding. Around the edge we find a design of little naked boys—amorini, in fact—playing among flowers.[114]

We can find nothing in the Japanese records to throw light on the porcelain made in Hizen during the first half of the seventeenth century, but much of the somewhat roughly decorated blue and white ware (the larger dishes especially, made for India and Persia) has been classed, on the ground of the occurrence of spur-marks, and of the nature of the paste and decoration, as Japanese.[115] Some of this ware may be as old as this time, when (I mean shortly before the middle of the seventeenth century) the demand from the West was ever increasing, and the Chinese supply was so uncertain and so inferior in quality.

Meantime the Dutch and English factories on the island of Hirado, opposite to the pottery district of Imari, were finally closed (1641), and all communication with the outside world prohibited. The only exception made was in favour of the strictly limited commerce carried on through the Dutch and Chinese merchants, who were confined in their prison-like factories at Nagasaki.[116]

Now it is a remarkable fact that our first definite information concerning the introduction of Japanese porcelain into Europe dates from this very period, and it is to approximately the same date that the Japanese ascribe the introduction of coloured enamels among the Hizen potters. One Higashidori Tokuzayemon, a potter of Imari, is said to have derived some knowledge of the precious secret from the captain of a Chinese junk trading at Nagasaki in 1648. With the assistance of Kakiyemon, a skilled potter of the same district, he succeeded in imitating the five-coloured enamelled wares of the Wan-li period. Another Japanese authority[117] gives the name of his assistant as Gosu Gombei, and states that by 1645, after many fruitless experiments, they were able to produce a ware decorated with coloured enamels and with gold and silver, which was exported at first through the medium of a Chinese merchant, and shortly after sold to the Dutch.

So far from Japanese sources. On the other hand, we hear of an early Dutch ambassador sent from Batavia—‘Le Sieur Wagenaar, grand connoisseur et fort habile dans ces sortes d‘oeuvres‘—in fact himself a designer of patterns, one of which, it is said—white flowers on a blue ground—found great favour at this time. In the same work[118] we are told that this gentleman, who combined the most delicate diplomatic negotiations with practical commercial undertakings, took back with him to Batavia more than twenty thousand pieces of plain white ware (1634-35). It is, however, very probable that the Dutch may have had a great deal to do with the introduction of coloured enamels into Japan.

We must remember that during this time (say between 1630 and 1650) two important series of events were coming to pass which revolutionised the Eastern trade. These were, first, in China the troubles attending the expulsion of the Ming dynasty, including the burning of King-te-chen and the stoppage of the supply of porcelain for shipping at Canton; and secondly, the final triumph of the anti-Christian party in Japan, and the closing of the country to foreigners. It is no wonder, then, if the Dutch ambassador was empowered to offer almost any terms to the Japanese, provided that the latter would only make an exception in favour of the merchants of his country.

Turning now from the records of the Japanese and of the Dutch merchants, let us examine the specimens of Japanese porcelain that we find in our oldest European collections, and which we may reasonably assign to the seventeenth century. Apart from the blue and white, we find here two classes of enamelled ware which we now know to be of Japanese origin.

PLATE XXIII. JAPANESE, KAKIYEMON ENAMELLED WARE

It may indeed be said that it was in the separation, and in the definite attribution to Japan, of these two groups, that the first step was made towards a scientific classification of Oriental porcelain, and for this work we are chiefly indebted to the labours of the late Sir A. W. Franks. We will first deal with what may on the whole be regarded as the oldest group.

Kakiyemon Ware.—Under this name it will be convenient to describe the compact group of decorated porcelain that we find taking so prominent a place in our old collections. Of this ware there is a most representative series of specimens in the British Museum. There are also many interesting pieces scattered through the rooms of Hampton Court. The chief characteristics of this Kakiyemon ware are the creamy-white paste, without the bluish tinge so common in other Japanese porcelain, the moulded forms (in the case of the small vases and of the dishes with scalloped edges), and above all the peculiar nature of the decoration that is somewhat sparely scattered over the ground. Here we find the well-known combination of the pine, the bamboo, and the plum (Japanese Sho-chiku-bai) associated with quaintly executed figures in old Chinese costume. In the foreground is often found a curious hedge or trellis-fence of straw or rushes, and at times, at the side, a grotesque tiger is seen disporting in strange attitudes (Pl. xxiii.). Exotic birds, singularly ill-drawn, are sometimes seen, but individual flowers are introduced with great decorative feeling—witness the sprig of poppy, a rare flower in Japanese art, on a plate in the British Museum. There is a non-Japanese element in the design which seems to hamper the native artist, but whether this element is to be sought in Holland or in Korea—or perhaps in a degree in both—is quite uncertain.[119] As for the enamel colours employed, the most important point is the use of a blue enamel over the glaze. This colour is freely employed in combination with the usual opaque red. The other colours, more sparingly used, are a green of emerald tint, a pale yellow, and a poorish purple. The full command of a fine-coloured blue enamel at so early a date is interesting. In the earlier Chinese examples this colour is poor, and the enamel is apt to chip off. On a few rare pieces of this Kakiyemon porcelain we see the blue applied under the glaze, and there is one specimen in the British Museum on which the two methods are combined. We rarely come upon specimens of this ware in Japan. In China, at one time, it was copied for exportation, and Dr. Bushell thinks that the porcelain classed as Tung-yang-tsai or ‘Japanese colours,’ in the time of Kang-he, is of this class. A large octagonal jar at South Kensington, somewhat crudely decorated in the Kakiyemon style, which came from Persia, may possibly be of Chinese origin. There is, at any rate, no doubt that this is the ware known, perhaps two hundred years ago, in France as the premiÈre qualitÉ colorÉe, and in England and Germany as ‘old East Indian,’ It was reserved for Jacquemart to class it as Korean. It is, however, remarkable that in neither the Japanese nor the Dutch records of the time do we find any notice of a decoration at all resembling that found on this ware. Any hint that is given from these sources would apply much better to the class of porcelain that we have next to describe. In later chapters we shall see that the important position given to this Kakiyemon porcelain by our ancestors is reflected in the decoration applied to more than one of the early wares of Europe.

Imari or Old Japan.—The many kilns that sprung up in the province of Hizen during the

course of the seventeenth century, along the slope of the hills that produced both the china-stone and the china-clay, were chiefly occupied in making blue and white porcelain, the sometsuke or ‘dyed’ ware of the Japanese, and this, we may add, is still the case.

The underglaze blue indeed has always remained the dominant element in the Imari porcelain, and to judge by the older pieces the employment of other colours crept in gradually. This blue is generally of a peculiar dark lavender or slaty tint, and with the addition to it of a little gilding we obtain already the general effect of the ‘old Japan’ decoration. When to the blue and gold was added an opaque iron-red (from this pigment the Japanese succeeded in obtaining a great variety of fine tints), we attain to a scheme of decoration which, at first sight, gives the impression of being built up with a full palette of colours; this is the typical nishiki-de or ‘brocaded’ ware of the Japanese (Pl. i.). Indeed in many of the finest specimens we find nothing beyond these three colours—blue, red, and gold. But the blue, derived from the native ore, the concretionary ‘wad,’ containing generally more manganese than cobalt, is often wholly or in part replaced as the dominant colour by a glossy black painted over the glaze, and this, too, in specimens with some claims to antiquity. The other colours of the Chinese ‘pentad,’ the green, the yellow, and the purple, generally occupy quite subordinate positions. It is to be noted that in this ware we never find the blue applied as an enamel over the glaze.

It would be a mistake to regard the whole series of Imari enamelled porcelain as made only for exportation. It is true that the large vases and plates with the well-known effective but somewhat overloaded decoration are not found in Japan, although such pieces have been made at Arita for the last two hundred years for exportation from Nagasaki; but the more quietly decorated ware of Imari, in endless forms and with decoration of the most varied kind, has long been in general domestic use, and many smaller pieces of great artistic beauty have been lately obtained from Japanese collections.[120]

In fact, the early enamelled wares of Imari are recognised by the Japanese as the fons et origo of most of the decorated porcelain, to say nothing of the later pottery, of their country. We have seen how our ‘old Japan’ group started from a slight modification of the blue and white, but we must find place also for an early ware decorated in five colours, somewhat in the Wan-li style. Of this ware but few pieces survive. The tradition, however, was carried on at Kutani and at many of the Kioto kilns in the eighteenth century.

Late in the seventeenth century the Kizayemon family obtained the privilege of supplying the porcelain, decorated with cranes and chrysanthemums, for the personal use of the Mikado, and at the present day a member of this family is said to still claim the right of purveying to the imperial court. It is to one of these Kizayemons, but not until the year 1770, that the merit of the invention of seggars for holding the porcelain in the kiln is given by the Japanese. It would seem that before that date no such protection was given. That such a claim should be made shows how completely Japan at this time was shut out from the rest of the world.

And here we may point out how self-contained was the development of Japanese porcelain during the palmy days of the Tokugawa rÉgime (say from 1650 to 1850). As in the case of the kindred arts of metalware and lacquer, any European influence was quite of a casual and what we may call fanciful nature; while the new methods of decoration that came into use in

China in the eighteenth century were never recognised or copied, even if they were known. What imitation there was of China was confined to the copying of Ming types; the Manchus, in fact, were never acknowledged by the Japanese, and their arts were under a taboo almost as strict as that applied to the civilisation of the West. No better instance of this conservatism could be given than the fact that the use of gold as a source of a red pigment, the basis of the famille rose in China, appears to have been unknown until the beginning of the nineteenth century, and even then the rouge-d’or was but sparingly applied. On the other hand, the Chinese were always eager, in the interest of trade, to copy the wares exported from Nagasaki, and we shall see later on what an influence the various products of the Hizen kilns had upon the porcelain of Europe.

These, then, were practically the only kinds of Japanese ceramic ware known in Europe until the opening of the country in our days—the blue and white or sometsuke, the ‘old Japan’ or nishiki-de, and the peculiar type which we have classed as Kakiyemon. To this list we should perhaps add the plain white ware, much of which was subsequently decorated in Europe.

These wares were all of them made in the kilns near Arita, nor do they exhaust the products of even that district. But during the eighteenth century the manufacture of porcelain spread to other parts of Japan where porcelain was made exclusively for home consumption. Many of these kilns were established under princely patronage, some in the very gardens of the feudal lord, while a special interest is given to others by their association with certain skilled potters and their descendants, whose names, in opposition to what we found was the practice in China, we can thus connect with the wares.

But we will first say something about the composition and the processes of manufacture of the porcelain of Japan, dwelling, however, only on those few points where we find divergences from the practices obtaining in China.

In the first place, then, as to the composition of the paste. To judge from the few trustworthy analyses of Imari ware that have been made, the paste would seem to be of a very abnormal type; the amount of silica—70 to 74 per cent.—is quite unusual; there is an almost total absence of lime, so important a constituent of Chinese porcelain; while we find from 4 to 5 per cent. of the alkalis. But, in place of the potash found in the wares of China, in the Japanese paste the prevailing alkali is invariably soda.

The materials of the porcelain made in Hizen were obtained originally from the famous ‘Hill of Springs‘—Idzumi Yama—which rises behind the town of Arita. Of late years, however, large quantities of clay and stone have been brought from the island of Amakusa, which lies to the south. It is from the products of decomposition of a volcanic rock, a kind of quartz-trachyte, that these materials are obtained, not from a true granitic rock as in Owari[121] and in most other seats of porcelain manufacture all over the world.[122]

In the neighbourhood of Arita the raw materials lie conveniently at hand; and in the Japanese accounts there is no definite reference to two distinct elements in the constitution of the paste. However, that something corresponding to our china-stone is made use of, is shown by the importance attached to the methods by which the stone is reduced to powder. The primitive stamping-mill, worked by a long lever of wood, moved either by the foot of a coolie or by a simple hydraulic arrangement, has long been employed for pounding the stone, and the hills around Arita re-echo with the thuds of these mills.

The potter’s wheel plays here a larger part than in China, and the Japanese are exceptionally skilful throwers. Still, notwithstanding some native statements to the contrary, the use of moulds either of wood or of terra-cotta has long been known—witness the old Kakiyemon porcelain.

We now come to the most important departure from the Chinese procedure. In Japan, the ware (as is, indeed, universally the case in Europe) receives a preliminary baking in a specially constructed biscuit kiln before the application of the glaze. The adoption of this practice would seem to point to a greater tenderness in the raw clay.

The glaze (Japanese kusuri—‘medicine‘) is prepared by mixing the finely powdered china-stone with the ashes of certain kinds of wood. The ashes from the bark of the usu-tree (Distylium racemosum) are especially in request for this purpose, and it is certainly remarkable that these ashes contain nearly 40 per cent. of lime, the element that is conspicuous by its absence from the paste.

The furnaces in which the principal firing takes place are of a bee-hive shape: they are arranged in rows of from five to ten hearths placed by preference on the slope of a hill, so that each succeeding hearth rises two or three feet above its neighbour. This plan is probably a modification of the old Ming type of furnace, and the system, it is said, was introduced from Korea.

The use of seggars appears never to have become general, and this is probably the reason why the marks of ‘crow’s-feet’ and other kinds of struts, used to support the vessel in the kiln, are often conspicuous on the base of the larger pieces.

Neither in their glazes nor for their enamels have the Japanese ever made use of any colours unknown to the Chinese, nor until quite recent times have they paid much attention to single glazes. There is, however, one important exception to this last statement, in the Sei-ji or celadon ware, which with them has always been the ideal of classical perfection, and which they have imitated with varied success. For their reds they have always been confined to pigments derived from iron, but with these opaque intractable materials they have obtained a great variety of effects, especially by means of delicate gradations of strength. In the case of the blue under the glaze, the Japanese have never attained to the mastery of their teachers: there is very commonly a tendency of the colour to run, and a bluish tint is thereby given to the white ground; the blue, moreover, on the older specimens, is generally dull, and in modern times often crude and unpleasant.

The shapes and uses of Japanese porcelain start, for the most part, from Chinese models of Ming times, but there are a few forms that are not found in China. The hi-bachi or fire-bowl, though more commonly of bronze, we sometimes find made of celadon or of blue and white porcelain; the kÔrÔ or incense-burner, with a cover of pierced metal, is a form characteristic of Japan; and the more elaborate choshi-buro or ‘clove-bath’ is, I think, peculiar to the country; so, too, are both the sakÉ-bottle of cylindrical or square section, with a curved lip for pouring, and the little cups, in sets of three, often of egg-shell ware, from which the sakÉ is drunk. The use of the miniature teapot, in which the better sort of tea is infused, is again confined to Japan; but these little kibisho, unlike the vessels for powdered tea used in the Cha-no-yu, have not, I think, been long in fashion.

We have described the three kinds of porcelain made in Hizen for exportation to Europe, and we have seen that by the middle of the seventeenth century this commerce, in the hands of the Dutch, and to some extent of the Chinese, had already attained large proportions. Before turning to the kilns that sprung up in other parts of Japan during the eighteenth century—of these the origin in every case can be traced back directly or indirectly to the early Hizen factories—we must say a word about some other varieties of porcelain made in the same neighbourhood, but not destined for foreign use.

The village or town of Arita, of which the better-known Imari is the port, lies about fifty miles to the north-east of Nagasaki, and it may almost be regarded as the King-te-chen of Japan. The clay and china-stone used there is now brought, for the most part, from the adjacent islands, from Hirado, from Amakusa, and even from the more remote Goto islands. By a combination of some of the most important potters of the district, and with the assistance of some wealthy merchants, a company, the Koransha, was formed some twenty-five years ago,[123] and an attempt was made to keep up the quality of the porcelain produced, at least from a technical point of view. It was certainly time for some such effort to be made, for about that period, just after the Philadelphia Exhibition, the arts of Japan reached perhaps their nadir.

MikÔchi or Hirado Ware.—It was with a somewhat similar object that, long before this—about the middle of the eighteenth century—the feudal lord of Hirado had taken some of the kilns near Arita under his patronage, and had also attempted to regulate the wasteful and careless way in which the materials were quarried on the slopes of Idzumi Yama. This was the origin of the beautiful MikÔchi (Mi-ka-uchi) ware, which was at first produced only for the use of the prince and of his friends, or for presentation to the Shogun.

To understand the important influence of this aristocratic patronage upon the scattered kilns of Japan (only a few of these, indeed, produced porcelain), I cannot do better than quote the words of Captain Brinkley, perhaps our first authority on Japanese ceramics: ‘During the two centuries that represent the golden age of Japanese ceramic art, that is to say, from 1645 to 1845, every factory of any importance was under the direct patronage either of the nobleman in whose fief it lay, or of some wealthy amateur whose whole business in life was comprised in the cultivation of the Cha-no-yu. The wares produced, if they did not represent the independent efforts of artists seeking to achieve or maintain celebrity, were undertaken in compliance with the orders of the workman’s liege lord, or of some other exalted personage. Considerations of cost were entirely set aside, no expenditure of time and toil were deemed excessive, and the slightest blemish sufficed to secure the condemnation of the piece.’ All these conditions were swept away by the revolution of 1868 and by the opening of the country to foreigners. ‘Codes of subtle Æsthetics and criticisms of exacting amateurs had no longer to be considered, but in their stead the artist found himself confronted by the Western market with all its elements of sordid haste and superficial judgment.’

To return to the MikÔchi porcelain, this Hirado ware, for it was known also by that name, produced at the prince’s kilns, six miles to the south of Arita, was for more than a hundred years regarded as the ne plus ultra among Japanese porcelain, and its value was enhanced by the fact that the ware never found its way into commerce. In the sous couverte blue it was sought to imitate the paler type of the old Ming ware. The best-known examples of this blue decoration are seen on the little cups delicately painted with Chinese boys at play under pine-trees—the more the boys the better the ware, it is said. Careful manipulation of the clay and finish of surface has never been carried to a higher point than in the varieties of this porcelain worked with pierced patterns and ornaments in relief, so prized by Japanese collectors. On these we find, in addition to the blue, a peculiar tint of pale brown. Of this coloured ware there are some good specimens at South Kensington.

ÔkÔchi or Nabeshima Ware.—The same high technical finish has been attained in the ÔkÔchi porcelain made at the village of that name (Ô-kawa-uchi) three miles to the north of Arita. The kilns here were patronised by the Nabeshima princes, who belonged to one of the greatest feudal families of old Japan. In this case also, the small highly finished pieces were destined for presents only and were never sold. This ware is generally to be identified by the comb-like pattern (Japanese Kushi-ki), painted in blue round the base of the cups and bowls.[124] Like the little Chinese boys of the MikÔchi ware, this pattern is often seen on very inferior ware of quite modern manufacture. A peculiar kind of finely crackled celadon was also made at ÔkÔchi.

In the Arita district are many other factories, some of which, as those at Matsugawa, have at times produced excellent ware. Of most of these private kilns, however, the chief outturn has always been confined to the blue and white sometsuke for domestic use.

We have now to follow the steps by which the knowledge of porcelain was carried from the western island to other parts of Japan. We had better pass at once to the Kioto kilns, for although the manufacture of porcelain was not introduced at the old capital so early as at some other places in the main island, yet the skill of its artist potters and their connection with the imperial court led, in the course of the eighteenth century, to the spread of their influence in every direction.

Kioto was already in the sixteenth century the seat of more than one ceramic industry, but it was not so much the problem of the materials for a true porcelain, as the questions connected with the coloured enamels lately brought over from the West, that excited the curiosity of the Kioto potter at this time. The story goes that one Aoyama Koyemon (I quote again from The Chrysanthemum, April 1883), who came to Kioto from the porcelain district of Hizen, to obtain orders for the new enamelled ware, allowed the secret of its manufacture to be wormed out of him by a crafty Kioto dealer, and that for this breach of trust the wretched ‘traveller’ was crucified by his liege lord on his return to Arita. This occurred just before the death of the great ceramic artist Ninsei (about 1660), and the old potter at once obtained the knowledge of the new enamelling process from the above-mentioned crockery merchant. This man, we should add—the dealer—is said to have gone mad when he heard the dreadful fate of his friend Koyemon—a fate for which he was in so large a measure responsible. Such stories as this, and there are other similar ones in the annals of Japanese ceramics, call to mind the adventures of the experts of the eighteenth century, who trafficked with the German princes in the arcana of the newly introduced porcelain, but for these German experts the penalties for breach of confidence were not of so severe a nature.

Nomomura Ninsei is generally held to be the greatest ceramic artist that Japan has produced. The decorated stoneware and pottery that he turned out late in life may be regarded as the common source from which the wares produced in the two main groups of kilns in the neighbourhood of Kioto took their origin. With one of these groups, with the wares produced in the factories around Awata, we are not concerned here, for no porcelain was ever produced in that suburb of Kioto. But to the other group of kilns, called after the beautiful temple of Kiyomidzu, to the north of Kioto, belong some of the most artistic specimens of porcelain in our collections. It was here that this somewhat uncongenial material was forced for the first time to adapt itself to the fanciful genius of the people. It was to this district that the great original artist Kenzan, the brother of the still more famous Ogata Korin, came towards the end of the seventeenth century. It is true that little of this artist’s work is executed in a true porcelain, but his picturesque signature, scrawled in black, is sometimes found on the so-called more noble ware (Pl. B. 21). Like his brother Korin, Kenzan obtained his effects by the simplest means, sometimes by mere patches of colour cunningly distributed over the surface. The work of both these men has of late found many admirers and imitators in France.

It was not till the beginning of the eighteenth century that we have any definite record of the manufacture of porcelain in Kioto. About that time Yeisen devoted himself to the imitation of Chinese celadon. If we are to find any common note in the wares produced in the various Kioto potteries, it would be in a certain studied rudeness both in shape and decoration, the very opposite of the delicately finished products of the Hizen kilns. The rare pieces of Ming porcelain with coloured decoration were eagerly sought for and copied, not in a slavish way, but rather so as to catch the spirit of their design. In fact these Japanese copies might be made to throw some light on that rather obscure subject, the origin of enamel decoration in China in the days of the later Ming emperors.

An apparently early class of Chinese enamelled ware, somewhat rudely painted with a predominant iron red combined with a subordinate green, was a great favourite with the Kioto potters, but we find also copies of the Wan-li ‘pentad,’ the designs in this case sparely scattered over the ground, generally in formal patterns of a textile type. The blue and purple ware with ribbed cloisons which the Japanese associate with their mysterious land of Kochi was also in favour, but at Kioto, I think, this ware was not copied in porcelain. So of the blue and white made at this time at Kiyomidzu, it is distinguished from both the Hizen and the Seto wares by a certain rudeness in the shape and decoration, a character preserved by a great deal of the sometsuke still made in this district.

Quite a different spirit was, however, brought in by Zengoro Riyozen, the tenth descendant of a famous family of potters. This Zengoro was a potter of universal genius, the foremost ceramic artist indeed of the peaceful and luxurious period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Tokugawa Shogun at Tokiyo set an example of an extravagant expenditure and brilliant display which was only too readily followed at the courts of the great feudal nobles. In the art work of that time, in spite of the unsurpassed perfection of execution and love of gorgeous decoration, we can already trace the signs of a coming decay. Zengoro, besides reviving with some success the deep sapphire blue, sous couverte, of Ming times, succeeded in producing from an iron-oxide a red ground which vied with the famous coral reds of the previous century in China. But it was rather the Ming red, sous couverte, that made from ‘powdered rubies of the West,’ that he professed to copy. Over the red ground of his plates and little bowls he painted his design in gold of the finest quality, and on the white ground of the inside placed a scant decoration of his under-glaze sapphire blue. Some of these dainty little cups are shown in a table-case in the British Museum, but if we compare them with the exquisite Ming bowls of a deep red derived from copper in the same collection, the difference of the quality of the two tints is at once apparent. As, however, it was a matter of convenance to go back to a Ming model, it was with the latter ware that Zengoro’s work was compared. It was for his success in this kind of decoration (produced about the years 1806-1817) that the great Kioto potter received from his patron, the prince of Kishiu, a seal with the character yeiraku, or reading in modern Chinese Yung-lo, the name of the Ming emperor (1402-24) with whom the red copper glaze is traditionally associated (Pl. B. 22).[125] This, then, is the origin of the name Yeiraku kinrande for the ‘gold brocade’ ware of Zengoro. At a later time this form of decoration was carried by Zengoro’s son to Kaga, where in a debased form it became characteristic of a ware with which our markets were at one time flooded.

Kishiu Ware.—This kinrande, however, is not the only kind of porcelain with which the name of this protean artist is associated. Although the name Yeiraku given him by the Prince Nariyuki is generally connected with his brilliant red and gold ware, it was a porcelain of quite another kind that our Zengoro the tenth, or perhaps his son Hozen, the eleventh of the family, turned out from the kilns that had been erected by that prince in the garden (the Ô-niwa) of his palace near Wakayama. The Japanese tell us that this well-known Ô-niwa or Kishiu ware was made in imitation of a kind of porcelain or fayence brought long ago from Kochi, a name generally rendered as Cochin-China, in any case a country to the south of China. We have seen grounds for associating this Ô-niwa yaki rather with an early type of Chinese polychrome ware, painted on the biscuit with glazes of three or perhaps four colours. In any case, in the Japanese ware the turquoise, the purple, and the straw-coloured yellow (this last quite subordinate) are applied in a similar fashion, and this is indeed practically the only Japanese ware on which we find the turquoise colour that has played so important a part in other countries. It is here the most important colour of the triad, but occasionally we find it replaced by a deep, rich green. On this Kishiu or Ô-niwa ware, known also to the Japanese as Kairaku from another seal used by Zengoro (Pl. B. 20), the decoration is formed by ribs or lines which separate the surface into shallow cloisons. In other cases the turquoise or the aubergine purple is found alone as a monochrome glaze.

Very few, however, of the large vases of this ware that have been exported of late years to Europe, and especially to America (where the turquoise blue has always been a favourite, as in the case of Chinese porcelain), can have come from the kilns in the ‘prince’s garden.’ This ware has, indeed, for some time since, been imitated at many other places—at Tokiyo, and since 1870 especially at Kobe, where vast quantities have been manufactured for exportation. These copies have gone through the stages of degradation in design and colour that usually accompany a large commercial production.

Another famous potter, Mokubei, who worked at Kioto about the same time, is said to have made great improvements in the moulds employed by him, especially in those used for copying old Chinese pieces. But we certainly cannot accept the statement that he was the first potter in Japan to use moulds. This same Mokubei is said to have copied the richly glazed stoneware of Kochi, a ware that had long been prized by the Japanese, and to which, or rather to the kindred porcelain, we have already referred. It is described as a hard pottery, with archaic moulded decorations, coated with lustrous glazes of green, purple, yellow, and golden-bronze. Mokubei also worked for the prince of Kishiu, and it would be interesting to know what relation, if any, he had with Zengoro and his Ô-niwa yaki.[126]

Sanda Celadon.—The kilns set up at Sanda, a small town to the north-west of Osaka, by the feudal lord of the district, have acquired in Japan a great name on account of the celadon ware there made. This Sanda-seiji was first produced at the end of the seventeenth century, and followed more closely the famous old heavy wares of Lung-chuan than did the more delicately finished celadon porcelain made about the same time at ÔkÔchi in Hizen. In addition to these wares, the Japanese lay claim to an ancient celadon of native manufacture, and much ink has been spilt in Japan upon the question of the origin of certain archaic pieces preserved in temples and private collections. The bulk of the Sanda celadon, we should say, is a solid useful ware with small artistic pretensions.

The Wares of Owari and Mino.—If, leaving Kioto, we take the old high-road to Yedo—the Tokaido—we pass through a succession of villages where the local wares are displayed in the stalls lining the route. Some of this pottery is not without merit, and historical associations give interest to more than one variety. But it is not till we have passed Nagoya, a large industrial town at the head of the Gulf of Owari, that we enter a true porcelain district—the only district in Japan that has vied with Hizen in the production of porcelain for domestic use and for exportation. Not far off is the village of Seto, the home of Toshiro; it was here that on his return from China, early in the thirteenth century, he set up the first kiln that produced in Japan a ware with any claims to artistic merit. But, as we have said at the beginning of this chapter, the ware made by Toshiro was no true porcelain, although the expression Seto-mono, derived from his native village, is used rather for porcelain than for other kinds of pottery. The term is, in fact, about equivalent to our word ‘china.’

It was not till nearly six hundred years after Toshiro’s day that the village of Seto again became prominent, when in the year 1807 the art of making porcelain was, after many difficulties, successfully introduced from Hizen. This was thanks to the energy of the potter Tamakichi, who ventured a journey to Hizen to find out the secrets of the manufacture. As a reward for his services the privilege of wearing two swords and the rights of a samurai were granted to Tamakichi by the lord of Owari. Here again we find the new industry established under the fostering care of the local prince.

Over a wide district, more especially to the east on the borders of the province of Mikawa, the decomposing granite furnishes an excellent raw material, and centres for the manufacture of porcelain have sprung up sporadically over a tract stretching away to the north, as far as the province of Mino. But most of these kilns have never produced anything better than a common blue and white ware.

In composition the paste of the Owari porcelain is much closer to the normal type than that of the Hizen wares (see note, p. 190). Of late years the Owari potters have succeeded in turning out pieces of unprecedented size, in the shape especially of dishes and of slabs for the tops of tables. From the artistic side, however, little can be said in favour of this ware: the blue is generally crude in quality, often resembling that found on the commoner European porcelain of later days.

Another art was revived some years ago in the neighbourhood of Nagoya, the chief town of this district—I mean that of enamelling in metallic cloisons (the ShipÔ, or ‘seven treasures’ of the Japanese), and of late years the two industries have been combined by applying the metallic cloisons and the enamel to the surface of porcelain. A similar ware has also been made at Kioto, but in this case the soft fayence of Awata has been used as a base. Enormous quantities of both these varieties of cloisonnÉ have been brought to Europe, and when we consider the amount of skilled labour required in the manufacture, we can only marvel at the prices for which this ware is retailed in London.

Much of the cheap Japanese blue and white sold in Europe comes from this Owari district, but of late years more ambitious things have been attempted there—monochrome glazes of the grand feu, including a curious variety of flambÉ ware with a chocolate-coloured ground.

Kutani Ware.—There only remains one important centre of porcelain manufacture for us to describe. This lies far away among the mountains that skirt the western coast of Japan. The feudal lords of that country, however, the princes of Kaga, were reputed to be the most wealthy of all the daimios of Japan. A junior branch of this family, the lords of Daichoji, as early as the first half of the seventeenth century established a kiln at the mountain village of Kutani. In the year 1660 an emissary was despatched to Hizen to spy out the land and learn what he could of the new processes lately introduced there. The story of his difficulties is only another version of that told of Tamakichi, the Seto potter. After many adventures, abandoning the wife that he had been forced to marry at Arita and the child he had had by her, he returned to Kaga, equipped with the desired information and experience. He succeeded in making a true porcelain with a white ground, decorated in a style founded, it is said, both on the contemporary Hizen ware and on the enamelled stoneware of Kochi. Morikaga, a famous artist of Kioto, was retained to furnish designs for the decoration. We have in the British Museum a spherical vase, painted in the five colours with a series of spirited figures, which may well date from that time (Pl. xxvi.). Examples of this period are rare, but some of the old drug-pots, jealously guarded by their owners, that were still, a few years ago, to be seen in the druggists’ and herbalists’ shops of Osaka and Sakai, may perhaps be traced back to the potters of the seventeenth century, either those of Kaga or those of Hizen. At this time, in fact, the Kaga ware had hardly differentiated itself from that of the parent province. It was not till the beginning of the eighteenth century that the typical Kutani ware, one of the most original and decorative ever turned out from Japanese kilns, was produced.

On a greyish paste, hardly to be reckoned as porcelain, the lustrous, full-bodied enamels, almost unctuous in quality, are laid with a full brush. The whole surface is generally covered, and a dark, juicy green is the prevailing colour, over which a design of black lines is drawn. Next in importance among the enamels there comes first purple, then a heavy blue enamel which somewhat clashes with the other colours, and finally a full-toned yellow. It would seem from Japanese accounts that this kind of ware was not made after 1730, when there ensued a period of decay, but it is difficult to believe the statement that the manufacture was not revived till 1810. The picturesquely decorated bowls

and plates showing the greyish ground are probably later than those wholly covered with the green enamel, and it might be possible to trace the date of introduction of fresh means of decoration—gilding skilfully and boldly applied or the use of white enamel in relief, especially for the petals of flowers. Later, but still on ware of fine decorative effect, we find these white petals tinged with pink, and this apparently is the earliest appearance of the rouge d’or among Japanese enamels.

When did this new colour come in, and from what source? We may perhaps associate its first use with the wonderful period, early in the nineteenth century, of which we have already spoken, when all the restraints to which the Japanese artist had been so long subjected were removed, the crabbed critic with his tradition of Ming times was silenced, and a free rein at length given to native exuberance in the use of gay colours and naturalistic designs. But this was the end; as in the other arts, a period of decline set in before the middle of the century, a decline that was accelerated, but not first originated, by the throwing open of the country to European influences a few years later.

With the Kutani potter, the beginning of the end seems to have coincided with the introduction of the iron-red and gold decoration. This was brought about when the assistance of one of the Zengoro family, Zengoro the eleventh or Hozen, probably, was obtained from Kioto. At the same time the brilliant decoration in enamel colours was still carried on, often enough with happy effect, and this was kept up to quite a late period. In these latter days the use of a true white porcelain again became prevalent—indeed the materials are at the present day brought from Amakusa and other islands off the coast of Hizen.

There are two marks that have always been associated with the Kaga ware—first, the character for Kutani, the ‘Nine Valleys,’ the name of the little mountain village where the ware was first made; second, the Chinese word Fu (Japanese Fuku), meaning ‘prosperity’ or ‘wealth,’ written in the seal character. We find this last mark painted in black on the back of the old pieces covered with a green glaze (Pl. B. 23).

In our account of Japanese porcelain we have been hampered by the restrictions imposed by our subject. Among Japanese ceramic products there is a big middle class, what we have called kaolinic stoneware. Wares of this kind, when made in neighbouring kilns and differing in their decoration in no way from what may be classed as true porcelain—and this is the case in the pottery districts of Kaga and around Kioto—have naturally found their way within our limits. Other kinds quite as near to true porcelain, such as the picturesque fayence of Inuyama or many of the old Raku wares, have remained unmentioned. The temptation to overstep the line has been great, inasmuch as so many of the wares showing originality and real artistic merit lie distinctly on the further side.

We may say finally that a closer acquaintance with Japanese ceramics will confirm what may be observed in the case of other branches of Japanese art—in their painting, for example, and in their lacquer-ware. I mean the important part played by the critic, using that term in a wide sense, in restraining the native exuberance of the artist. The first tendency of the European connoisseur is to regret the hampering influence of Chinese tradition and the restrictions imposed upon all new developments. But when these influences have for a time been removed, the facile productiveness of the Japanese artist has always tended to land him in that pretty and over-decorated style that has found its way into middle-class drawing-rooms at home. We find a tendency to this unrestrained decoration and reckless association of colours creeping into favour long

before the opening of the country. Indeed, centuries ago at Kioto, and even perhaps in the old Nara days, a somewhat similar love of the trifling and effeminate may be recognised now and again. The services rendered by the severe traditions of the old Chinese schools of the Tang and Sung dynasties, and by the ascetic spirit of the Cha-no-yu in keeping within bounds the native tendency to luxuriant overgrowth, must not be overlooked. When these influences were removed, the arts soon ran to seed.