Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/160

 form, but also converted the once simple tea-ceremony into a vehicle for promoting the collection of costly objects of virtu. It was undoubtedly in this respect that he produced the greatest and most permanent effect on his country; for whereas the unvarying habit of the nation, even in the days of Fujiwara magnificence, had been to cultivate beauty without display, Hideyoshi introduced the custom of associating beauty with display. He may be said to have extended the range of decorative art from accessories to principals, and to have made splendour the perpetual accompaniment of life, not merely a feature of its occasional incidents. It thus becomes necessary to speak henceforth of applied art according to the fields of its employment, not, as hitherto, in connection with religion alone.

Up to the thirteenth century the Japanese did not use iron caldrons for boiling rice. They employed a vessel of baked clay, sinking it in a hole in the ground and applying heat from above. The manufacture of iron vessels for such purposes commenced under circumstances of which no record exists, but it is known to have been inaugurated by Shichirozayemon, a descendant of the second son of the Hōjō Regent Yoshitoki. Had it not been for the skill of this man and his descendants as iron-casters, the tea-clubs established under the auspices of Yoshimasa, at the close of the fifteenth century, might have found difficulty in obtaining urns adapted to their taste. But Nagoshi Yashichiro, great-grandson of Shichirozayemon, was able to meet the novel demand. The term "urn" is somewhat misleading in this context, for the cha-gama of Japan partakes rather of the nature of a caldron. Roughly described, it is a spherical vessel