JAPANESE CERAMICS. The ancient Kameoka ware of Japan Brinkley considers as pottery of the aborigines who were displaced by the early invaders who conquered and set tled in Japan. The ware is too crude to de scribe; the same may be said of ware (found in graves) made by the early Mongol invaders. Gyogi-yaki (yaki is the Japanese equivalent to our word ware) pieces are found in Japanese temples and are highly reverenced as the pro duction in the 8th century of potters working under the tuition of the Korean Buddhist priest Gyogi; they are glazeless pieces in dark clay lacking any art merit. Kato Shirozaemon, a Japanese called generally Toshiro, gained years of experience in Chinese potteries and estab lished in Seto (about 1230) his kiln, called Heishi-Gama, where he made dainty little tea jars of fine close paste and lustrous glaze, the body being purple, light red, dark red, gray, etc. The Japanese prize these pieces above every thing and pay unlimited prices for them, pre serving them in costly lacquer boxes, etc., and term them Ko-Seto (old Seto). Pottery pro duction was continued by four generations descendant from Toshiro, their wares being respectively known as Ki-Seto-yaki, Chu-Ko butsu or Kinka-zan and Hafu-gama. These pieces (many extant) are all tea-ceremony (Cha-no-yu) articles. Gorodayu Goshonzui, a Japanese potter, went to the great Ching-te chen Chinese potteries and brought back (1510 or 1513) much knowledge of producing under glaze porcelain decoration, and settled in Hizen (probably Arita) where he made porcelain wares after Chinese models and in Chinese clay imported by him. The work stopped when the supply ran out ; he used the famous °Moham medan° blue (see CHINESE CERAMICS) on tea jars, water vessels, censers, cups (for the mat dm ceremony) in °hawthorn)) and other floral decoration, also °conventional children)) in ara besques. Ware shows beautiful glaze. Soshiro, at Fushimi, made rich white or buff-colored in cense burners and tea jars late in the 16th cen tury. They are of polished biscuit (unglazed) with designs in red, gold or black lacquers. Korean potters settled in the port of Karatsu (or Negoya) on the Hizen coast in the 11th century, but the Okit-gorai pieces claimed as theirs by native connoisseurs, though crude, are later Karatsu-yaki, or perhaps Korean. They are of coarsely crackled patchy brown body.
Korean style stone-ware (E-Gorai) was made here in the 12th century in gray or brown ware. The 12th century Karatsu rice measuring bowls (Yoni-hakari) still exist. All pieces up to the 13th century were fired inverted, and show the °spur° marks from the oven supports, and have no glaze on rims, but thin glaze on bottom; which condition is reversed in the following centuries and the spur marks disappear. Korean potters in the 16th century settled in Karatsu and produced Chosen Karatsu-yaki in hard, coarse p4ste with dark red and cream colored glazes. Flambe (mottled) glazes ap
pear middle of the 17th century. In the 18th century a special ware for the Shogun's court, termed Kanjo-garatsu, was made. It consisted of cups, tea jars, etc., with simple incised dec oration filled in with white clay and having a darkish green glaze. But another ware under this name is stone-ware with white or gray glaze. In 1525 the Korean potter Ameya came to Kioto; he called his archaic ware So-kei yaki. His widow's ware (Ama yaki) was an improvement, but his son, Chojiro, became famous through his tea-ceremony pieces. The Teiko (ruler) presented him with a seal having the ideograph Raku on it, and the ware became the greatly prized Raku-yaki of the tea-cere monies. His descendants run kilns to this day. The term raku has ever since stood to represent a thick ware of coarse clay and thick lustrous glaze such as those of Tatsumon, Tokio, Banko, Bizen, Kioto (Awata), Shigaraki, Osaka, Ohi, etc.
Satsuma-Yaki is a faience of several varie ties and localities as well as periods; the °Go honde° Yoshiro-stamped product alone is of eight styles (according to color and appear ance of glaze), and the Kumagawa finely crackled brown paste, buff-glazed ware is an other held in great esteem by Japanese con noisseurs; it originated the ware that later be came world famous. The Hibiki-de (white crackled) faience was first made (1650) at Tatsumonji, and the Japanese treasure pieces in Tangen's (court painter) decoration. Some old crackle Satsuma faience is in apple-green or yellow monochrome. Old Satsuma aimed at producing a surface exactly like ivory, and suc ceeded; 18th century enamel-decorated pieces have very hard, close-grained paste and lustrous glaze. Enamel colors were rich and mellow, very pure and brilliant: green, Prussian blue, red, purple, black, yellow and gold. We are told by experts that few Western collections contain representative pieces of this greatly prized variety; instead, they are the later ware of °crude, chalky pate° and glaze °fissured° not finely crackled, pigments less brilliant, and the motifs of saints, Bodhisatvas, Arhats, human figures, etc., though executed very skilfully, produced for export and not purchased by Jap anese connoisseurs. The highly valued early ware motifs were diapers, landscapes, flowers, phcenix, lion, dragon, kirin. Such pieces rarely reached higher than seven inches and consisted of censers (koro), cups, slender-necked wine bottles (saki-dokuri), incense boxes (kogo), ewers (suiteki), vases (shoku-sh'ta), etc. Large pieces in Western collections are said to he modern. Most specimens sold as Satsuma are modern and were made at Ota and Awata.