The Inland Sea and Nagasaki
rado of the town on the island of that name which produced the priceless pieces sent as gifts to Shogun or fellow-daimios. Modern Imari ware is much too fascinating and tempting to the slender purse, but when one acquires a fondness for the exquisite porcelains the old Nabeshima made for themselves, learns the comb-like lines and the geometrical and floral marks on the underside that characterize them, and is aroused to the perception of the incomparable “seven boy” Hirado, his peace of mind is gone. Genuine old Hirado vases or plates, with the seven boys at play, or even five boys or three boys, are hardly to be bought to-day, and the countless commercial imitations of the old designs do not deceive even the amateur connoisseur. Old Satsuma is even rarer, and a purchaser needs to be more suspicious of it in Japan than in London. It is true that the air is full of tales of impoverished noblemen finally selling their treasures; of forgotten godowns being rediscovered; and of rich uncles leaving stores of Hirado and Satsuma to poor relations, whose very rice-box is empty. But the wise heed not the voice of the charmer. The credulity of the stranger and the tourist is not greater than the ignorance of residents who have been in the country for years without learning to beware of almost everything on which the Emperor’s chrysanthemum crest, the Tokugawa trefoil, or the Satsuma square and circle stand conspicuous.
The fine modern Satsuma, all small pieces decorated in microscopically fine work, is painted chiefly by a few artists in Kioto and Osaka, and their work and signatures are easily recognized. The commoner Satsuma—large urns, koros, vases, and plates—is made in the province of Satsuma and in the Awata district of Kioto, but it is decorated anywhere—Kobé, Kioto, Yokohama, and Tokio all coating it with the blaze of cheap gilding that catches and delights the foreign eye. Once upon
365
