to which is applied decoration in gold and green enamel. Another
variety has chocolate glaze, clouded with amber and flecked with
gold dust. The former faience had its origin at the close of the
17th century, the latter at the close of the 18th; but the Izumo-yaki
now procurable is a modern production.
The Yatsushiro faience is a production of the province of Higo, where a number of Korean potters settled at the close of the 17th century. It is the only Japanese ware in which the characteristics of a Korean original are unmistakably preserved. Its diaphanous, pearl-grey glaze, uniform, lustrous and finely Yatsushiro. crackled, overlying encaustic decoration in white slip, the fineness of its warm reddish pâte, and the general excellence of its technique, have always commanded admiration. It is produced now in considerable quantities, but the modern ware falls far short of its predecessor.
Many examples of the above varieties deserve the enthusiastic admiration they have received, yet they unquestionably belong to a lower rank of ceramic achievements than the choice productions of Chinese kilns. The potters of the Middle Kingdom, from the early eras of the Ming dynasty down to the latest years of the 18th century, stood absolutely without rivals as makers of porcelain. Their technical ability was incomparable—though in grace of decorative conception they yielded the palm to the Japanese—and the representative specimens they bequeathed to posterity remained, until quite recently, far beyond the imitative capacity of European or Asiatic experts. As for faience and pottery, however, the Chinese despised them in all forms, with one notable exception, the yi-hsing-yao, known in the Occident as boccaro. Even the yi-hsing-yao, too, owed much of its popularity to special utility. It was essentially the ware of the tea-drinker. If in the best specimens exquisite modelling, wonderful accuracy of finish and pâtes of interesting tints are found, such pieces are, none the less, stamped prominently with the character of utensils rather than with that of works of art. In short, the artistic output of Chinese kilns in their palmiest days was, not faience or pottery, but porcelain, whether of soft or hard paste. Japan, on the contrary, owes her ceramic distinction in the main to her faience. A great deal has been said by enthusiastic writers about the famille chrysanthemo-péonienne of Imari and the genre Kakiemon of Nabeshima, but these porcelains, beautiful as they undoubtedly are, cannot be placed on the same level with the kwan-yao and famille rose of the Chinese experts. The Imari ware, even though its thick biscuit and generally ungraceful shapes be omitted from the account, shows no enamels that can rival the exquisitely soft, broken tints of the famille rose; and the Kakiemon porcelain, for all its rich though chaste contrasts, lacks the delicate transmitted tints of the shell-like kwan-yao. So, too, the blue-and-white porcelain of Hirado, though assisted by exceptional tenderness of sous-pâte colour, by milk-white glaze, by great beauty of decorative design, and often by an admirable use of the modelling or graving tool, represents a ceramic achievement palpably below the soft paste kai-pien-yao of King-te-chen. It is a curious and interesting fact that this last product of Chinese skill remained unknown in Japan down to very recent days. In the eyes of a Chinese connoisseur, no blue-and-white porcelain worthy of consideration exists, or ever has existed, except the kai-pien-yao, with its imponderable pâte, its wax-like surface, and its rich, glowing blue, entirely free from superficiality or garishness and broken into a thousand tints by the microscopic crackle of the glaze. The Japanese, although they obtained from their neighbour almost everything of value she had to give them, did not know this wonderful ware, and their ignorance is in itself sufficient to prove their ceramic inferiority. There remains, too, a wide domain in which the Chinese developed high skill, whereas the Japanese can scarcely be said to have entered it at all; namely, the domain of monochromes and polychromes, striking every note of colour from the richest to the most delicate; the domain of truité and flambé glazes, of yō-pien-yao (transmutation ware), and of egg-shell with incised or translucid decoration. In all that region of achievement the Chinese potters stood alone and seemingly unapproachable. The Japanese, on the contrary, made a specialty of faience, and in that particular line they reached a high standard of excellence. No faience produced either in China or any other Oriental country can dispute the palm with really representative specimens of Satsuma ware. Not without full reason have Western connoisseurs lavished panegyrics upon that exquisite production. The faience of the Kiōto artists never reached quite to the level of the Satsuma in quality of pâte and glowing mellowness of decoration; their materials were slightly inferior. But their skill as decorators was as great as its range was wide, and they produced a multitude of masterpieces on which alone Japan’s ceramic fame might safely be rested.
When the mediatization of the fiefs, in 1871, terminated
the local patronage hitherto extended so munificently to
artists, the Japanese ceramists gradually learned
that they must thenceforth depend chiefly upon the
markets of Europe and America. They had to
Change of Style
after the Restoration.
appeal, in short, to an entirely new public, and
how to secure its approval was to them a perplexing problem.
Having little to guide them, they often interpreted Western
taste incorrectly, and impaired their own reputation in a
corresponding degree. Thus, in the early years of the Meiji
era, there was a period of complete prostitution. No new
skill was developed, and what remained of the old was
expended chiefly upon the manufacture of meretricious
objects, disfigured by excess of decoration and not relieved
by any excellence of technique. In spite of their artistic
defects, these specimens were exported in considerable
numbers by merchants in the foreign settlements, and their first
cost being very low, they found a not unremunerative market.
But as European and American collectors became better acquainted
with the capacities of the pre-Meiji potters, the great
inferiority of these new specimens was recognized, and the prices
commanded by the old wares gradually appreciated. What then
happened was very natural: imitations of the old wares were
produced, and having been sufficiently disfigured by staining and
other processes calculated to lend an air of rust and age, they
were sold to ignorant persons, who laboured under the singular
yet common hallucination that the points to be looked for in
specimens from early kilns were, not technical excellence, decorative
tastefulness and richness of colour, but dinginess, imperfections
and dirt; persons who imagined, in short, that defects
which they would condemn at once in new porcelains ought to be
regarded as merits in old. Of course a trade of that kind, based
on deception, could not have permanent success. One of the
imitators of “old Satsuma” was among the first to perceive
that a new line must be struck out. Yet the earliest results of
his awakened perception helped to demonstrate still further the
depraved spirit that had come over Japanese art. For he applied
himself to manufacture wares having a close affinity with the
shocking monstrosities used for sepulchral purposes in ancient
Apulia, where fragments of dissected satyrs, busts of nymphs or
halves of horses were considered graceful excrescences for the
adornment of an amphora or a pithos. This Makuzu faience,
produced by the now justly celebrated Miyagawa Shōzan of Ota
(near Yokohama), survives in the form of vases and pots having
birds, reptiles, flowers, crustacea and so forth plastered over
the surface—specimens that disgrace the period of their manufacture,
and represent probably the worst aberration of Japanese
ceramic conception.
A production so degraded as the early Makuzu faience could
not possibly have a lengthy vogue. Miyagawa soon began to
cast about for a better inspiration, and found it in
the monochromes and polychromes of the Chinese
Kang-hsi and Yung-cheng kilns. The extraordinary
Adoption of
Chinese Models.
value attaching to the incomparable red glazes of China, not
only in the country of their origin but also in the United States,
where collectors showed a fine instinct in this matter, seems to
have suggested to Miyagawa the idea of imitation. He took for
model the rich and delicate “liquid-dawn” monochrome, and
succeeded in producing some specimens of considerable merit.
Thenceforth his example was largely followed, and it may now be
said that the tendency of many of the best Japanese ceramists
is to copy Chinese chefs-d’œuvre. To find them thus renewing
