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. Yatsushiro. Its diaphanous, pearl-grey glaze, uniform, lustrous and finely 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 Change of Style after the Restoration. markets of Europe and America. They had to 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 Adoption of Chinese Models. Kang-hsi and Yung-cheng kilns. The extraordinary 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 their reputation by reverting to Chinese models, is not only another tribute to the perennial supremacy of Chinese porcelains, but also a fresh illustration of the eclectic genius of Japanese art. All the products of this new effort are porcelains proper. Seven kilns are devoted, wholly or in part, to the new wares: belonging to Miyagawa Shōzan of Ota, Seifū Yōhei of Kiōto, Takemoto Hayata and Katō Tomojiro of Tōkyō, Higuchi Haruzane of Hirado, Shida Yasukyo of Kaga and Kato Masukichi of Seto.
Among the seven ceramists here enumerated, Seifū of Kiōto probably enjoys the highest reputation. If we except the ware of Satsuma, it may be said that nearly all the fine faience of Japan was manufactured formerly in Kiōto. Nomura Seifū of Kiōto. Ninsei, in the middle of the 17th century, inaugurated a long era of beautiful productions with his cream-like “fish-roe” craquelé glazes, carrying rich decoration of clear and brilliant vitrifiable enamels. It was he who gave their first really artistic impulse to the kilns of Awata, Mizoro and Iwakura, whence so many delightful specimens of faience issued almost without interruption until the middle of the 19th century and continue to issue to-day. The three Kenzan, of whom the third died in 1820; Ebisei; the four Dōhachi, of whom the fourth was still alive in 1909; the Kagiya family, manufacturers of the celebrated Kinkōzan ware; Hōzan, whose imitations of Delft faience and his pâte-sur-pâte pieces with fern-scroll decoration remain incomparable; Taizan Yōhei, whose ninth descendant of the same name now produces fine specimens of Awata ware for foreign markets; Tanzan Yōshitaro and his son Rokuro, to whose credit stands a new departure in the form of faience having pâte-sur-pâte decoration of lace patterns, diapers and archaic designs executed in low relief with admirable skill and minuteness; the two Bizan, renowned for their representations of richly apparelled figures as decorative motives; Rokubei, who studied painting under Maruyama Ōkyō and followed the naturalistic style of that great artist; Mokubei, the first really expert manufacturer of translucid porcelain in Kiōto; Shūhei, Kintei, and above all, Zengoro Hōzen, the celebrated potter of Eiraku wares—these names and many others give to Kiōto ceramics an eminence as well as an individuality which few other wares of Japan can boast. Nor is it to be supposed that the ancient capital now lacks great potters. Okamura Yasutaro, commonly called Shōzan, produces specimens which only a very acute connoisseur can distinguish from the work of Nomura Ninsei; Tanzan Rokuro’s half-tint enamels and soft creamy glazes would have stood high in any epoch; Taizan Yōhei produces Awata faience not inferior to that of former days; Kagiya Sōbei worthily supports the reputation of the Kinkōzan ware; Kawamoto Eijiro has made to the order of a well-known Kiōto firm many specimens now figuring in foreign collections as old masterpieces; and Itō Tōzan succeeds in decorating faience with seven colours sous couverte (black, green, blue, russet-red, tea-brown, purple and peach), a feat never before accomplished. It is therefore an error to assert that Kiōto has no longer a title to be called a great ceramic centre. Seifū Yōhei, however, has the special faculty of manufacturing monochromatic and jewelled porcelain and faience, which differ essentially from the traditional Kiōto types, their models being taken directly from China. But a sharp distinction has to be drawn between the method of Seifū and that of the other six ceramists mentioned above as following Chinese fashions. It is this, that whereas the latter produce their chromatic effects by mixing the colouring matter with the glaze, Seifū paints the biscuit with a pigment over which he runs a translucid colourless glaze. The Kiōto artist’s process is much easier than that of his rivals, and although his monochromes are often of most pleasing delicacy and fine tone, they do not belong to the same category of technical excellence as the wares they imitate. From this judgment must be excepted, however, his ivory-white and céladon wares, as well as his porcelains decorated with blue, or blue and red sous couverte, and with vitrifiable enamels over the glaze. In these five varieties he is emphatically great. It cannot be said, indeed, that his céladon shows the velvety richness of surface and tenderness of colour that distinguished the old Kuang-yao and Lungchuan-yao of China, or that he has ever essayed the moss-edged crackle of the beautiful Ko-yao. But his céladon certainly equals the more modern Chinese examples from the Kang-hsi and Yung-cheng kilns. As for his ivory-white, it distinctly surpasses the Chinese Ming Chen-yao in every quality except an indescribable intimacy of glaze and pâte which probably can never be obtained by either Japanese or European methods.
Miyagawa Shōzan, or Makuzu, as he is generally called, has never followed Seifū’s example in descending from the difficult manipulation of coloured glazes to the comparatively simple process of painted biscuit. This comment does not Miyagawa Shōzan. refer to the use of blue and red sous couverte. In that class of beautiful ware the application of pigment to the unglazed pâte is inevitable, and both Seifū and Miyagawa, working on the same lines as their Chinese predecessors, produce porcelains that almost rank with choice Kang-hsi specimens, though they have not yet mastered the processes sufficiently to employ them in the manufacture of large imposing pieces or wares of moderate price. But in the matter of true monochromatic and polychromatic glazes, to Shōzan belongs the credit of having inaugurated Chinese fashions, and if he has never fully succeeded in achieving lang-yao (sang-de-bœuf), chi-hung (liquid-dawn red), chiang-tou-hung (bean-blossom red, the “peach-blow” of American collectors), or above all pin-kwo-tsing (apple-green with red bloom), his efforts to imitate them have resulted in some very interesting pieces.
Takemoto and Katō of Tōkyō entered the field subsequently to Shōzan, but followed the same models approximately. Takemoto, however, has made a speciality of black glazes, his aim being to rival the Sung Chien-yao, with its glaze Tōkyō Ceramists. of mirror-black or raven’s-wing green, and its leveret fur streaking or russet-moss dappling, the prince of all wares in the estimation of the Japanese tea-clubs. Like Shōzan, he is still very far from his original, but, also like Shōzan, he produces highly meritorious pieces in his efforts to reach an ideal that will probably continue to elude him for ever. Of Katō there is not much to be said. He has not succeeded in winning great distinction, but he manufactures some very delicate monochromes, fully deserving to be classed among prominent evidences of the new departure. Tōkyō was never a centre of ceramic production. Even during the 300 years of its conspicuous prosperity as the administrative capital of the Tokugawa shōguns, it had no noted factories, doubtless owing to the absence of any suitable potter’s clay in the immediate vicinity. Its only notable production of a ceramic character was the work of Miura Kenya (1830-1843), who followed the methods of the celebrated Haritsu (1688-1704) of Kiōto in decorating plain or lacquered wood with mosaics of raku faience having coloured glazes. Kenya was also a skilled modeller of figures, and his factory in the Imado suburb obtained a considerable reputation for work of that nature. He was succeeded by Tozawa Benshi, an old man of over seventy in 1909, who, using clay from Owari or Hizen, has turned out many porcelain statuettes of great beauty. But although the capital of Japan formerly played only an insignificant part in Japanese ceramics, modern Tōkyō has an important school of artist-artisans. Every year large quantities of porcelain and faience are sent from the provinces to the capital to receive surface decoration, and in wealth of design as well as carefulness of execution the results are praiseworthy. But of the pigments employed nothing very laudatory could be said until very recent times. They were generally crude, of impure tone, and without depth or brilliancy. Now, however, they have lost these defects and entered a period of considerable excellence. Figure-subjects constitute the chief feature of the designs. A majority of the artists are content to copy old pictures of Buddha’s sixteen disciples, the seven gods of happiness, and other similar assemblages of mythical or historical personages, not only because such work offers large opportunity for the use of striking colours and the production of meretricious effects, dear to the eye of the average Western householder and tourist, but also because a complicated design, as compared with a simple one, has the advantage of hiding the technical imperfections of the ware. Of late there have happily appeared some decorators who prefer to choose their subjects from the natural field in which their great predecessors excelled, and there is reason to hope that this more congenial and more pleasing style will supplant its modern usurper. The best known factory in Tōkyō for decorative purposes is the Hyōchi-en. It was established in the Fukagawa suburb in 1875, with the immediate object of preparing specimens for the first Tōkyō exhibition held at that time. Its founders obtained a measure of official aid, and were able to secure the services of some good artists, among whom may be mentioned Obanawa and Shimauchi. The porcelains of Owari and Arita naturally received most attention at the hands of the Hyōchi-en decorators, but there was scarcely one of the principal wares of Japan upon which they did not try their skill, and if a piece of monochromatic Minton or Sèvres came in their way, they undertook to improve it by the addition of designs copied from old masters or suggested by modern taste. The cachet of the Fukagawa atelier was indiscriminately applied to all such pieces, and has probably proved a source of confusion to collectors. Many other factories for decoration were established from time to time in Tōkyō. Of these some still exist; others, ceasing to be profitable, have been abandoned. On the whole, the industry may now be said to have assumed a domestic character. In a house, presenting no distinctive features whatsoever, one finds the decorator with a cupboard full of bowls and vases of glazed biscuit, which he adorns, piece by piece, using the simplest conceivable apparatus and a meagre supply of pigments. Sometimes he fixes the decoration himself, employing for that purpose a small kiln which stands in his back garden; sometimes he entrusts this part of the work to a factory. As in the case of everything Japanese, there is no pretence, no useless expenditure about the process. Yet it is plain that this school of Tōkyō decorators, though often choosing their subjects badly, have contributed much to the progress of the ceramic art during the past few years. Little by little there has been developed a degree of skill which compares not unfavourably with the work of the old masters. Table services of Owari porcelain—the ware itself excellently manipulated and of almost egg-shell fineness—are now decorated with floral scrolls, landscapes, insects, birds, figure-subjects and all sorts of designs, chaste, elaborate or quaint; and these services, representing so much artistic labour and originality, are sold for prices that bear no due ratio to the skill required in their manufacture.
There is only one reservation to be made in speaking of the modern decorative industry of Japan under its better aspects. In Tōkyō, Kiōto, Yokohama and Kobe—in all of which places decorating ateliers (etsuke-dokoro), similar to those of Tōkyō, have been established in modern times—the artists use chiefly pigments, seldom venturing to employ vitrifiable enamels. That the results achieved with these different materials are not comparable is a fact which every connoisseur must admit. The glossy surface of a porcelain glaze is ill fitted for rendering artistic effects with ordinary colours. The proper field for the application of these is the biscuit, in which position the covering glaze serves at once to soften and to preserve the pigment. It can scarcely be doubted that the true instincts of the ceramist will ultimately counsel him to confine his decoration over the glaze to vitrifiable enamels, with which the Chinese and Japanese potters of former times obtained such brilliant results. But to employ enamels successfully is an achievement demanding special training and materials not easy to procure or to prepare. The Tōkyō decorators are not likely, therefore, to change their present methods immediately.
An impetus was given to ceramic decoration by the efforts of a new school, which owed its origin to Dr G. Wagener, an eminent German expert formerly in the service of the Japanese government. Dr Wagener conceived the idea of developing the art of decoration under the glaze, as applied to faience. Faience thus decorated has always been exceptional in Japan. Rare specimens were produced in Satsuma and Kiōto, the colour employed being chiefly blue, though brown and black were used in very exceptional instances. The difficulty of obtaining clear, rich tints was nearly prohibitive, and though success, when achieved, seemed to justify the effort, this class of ware never received much attention in Japan. By careful selection and preparation of pâte, glaze and pigments, Dr Wagener proved not only that the manufacture was reasonably feasible, but also that decoration thus applied to pottery possesses unique delicacy and softness. Ware manufactured by his direction at the Tōkyō school of technique (shokkô gakkô), under the name of asahi-yaki, ranks among the interesting productions of modern Japan. The decorative colour chiefly employed is chocolate brown, which harmonizes excellently with the glaze. But the ware has never found favour in Japanese eyes, an element of unpleasant garishness being imparted to it by the vitreous appearance of the glaze, which is manufactured according to European methods. The modern faience of Ito Tōzan of Kiōto, decorated with colour under the glaze, is incomparably more artistic than the Tōkyō asahi-yaki, from which, nevertheless, the Kiōto master doubtless borrowed some ideas. The decorative industry in Tōkyō owed much also to the kōshō-kaisha, an institution started by Wakai and Matsuo in 1873, with official assistance. Owing to the intelligent patronage of this company, and the impetus given to the ceramic trade by its enterprise, the style of the Tōkyō etsuke was much improved and the field of their industry extended. It must be acknowledged, however, that the Tōkyō artists often devote their skill to purposes of forgery, and that their imitations, especially of old Satsuma-yaki, are sometimes franked by dealers whose standing should forbid such frauds. In this context it may be mentioned that, of late years, decoration of a remarkably microscopic character has been successfully practised in Kiōto, Osaka and Kobe, its originator being Meisan of Osaka. Before dismissing the subject of modern Tōkyō ceramics, it may be added that Katō Tomatarō, mentioned above in connexion with the manufacture of special glazes, has also been very successful in producing porcelains decorated with blue sous couverte at his factory in the Koishikawa suburb.
Higuchi of Hirado is to be classed with ceramists of the new school on account of one ware only, namely, porcelain having translucid decoration, the so-called “grains of rice” of American collectors, designated hotaru-de (firefly style) in Japan. Modern Wares of Hirado. That, however, is an achievement of no small consequence, especially since it had never previously been essayed outside China. The Hirado expert has not yet attained technical skill equal to that of the Chinese. He cannot, like them, cover the greater part of a specimen’s surface with a lacework of transparent decoration, exciting wonder that pâte deprived so greatly of continuity could have been manipulated without accident. But his artistic instincts are higher than those of the Chinese, and there is reasonable hope that in time he may excel their best works. In other respects the Hirado factories do not produce wares nearly so beautiful as those manufactured there between 1759 and 1840, when the Hirado-yaki stood at the head of all Japanese porcelain on account of its pure, close-grained pâte, its lustrous milk-white glaze, and the soft clear blue of its carefully executed decoration.