Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/299

 turned his arms against the celebrated warrior Shibata Katsuiye, the issue of the combat depended largely upon the attitude of Mayeda Toshiiye, then a feudatory of only the second rank. Mayeda espoused the Taikō's cause, and as recompense for his fidelity received in fief the whole province of Kaga, thus becoming at once one of the wealthiest and most puissant feudatories in the Empire, while, at the same time, the remote and comparatively inaccessible position of his fief rendered him virtually independent of the government in Kyōtō or Yedo. Not unnaturally, therefore, when the tide of political fortune began to set against the Taikō's son, and when Fushimi ceased to be a centre of prosperity, a number of the artists who had settled there turned their faces to Kaga. They were received most hospitably and liberally by Mayeda Toshiiye. Kanazawa, the chief town of Kaga, became thenceforth one of the principal centres of art production in Japan, and has retained that distinction down to the present day. The most renowned of the families established there by artists emigrating from Fushimi or Kyōtō were the Kuwamura, the Goto, the Mizuno, the Koichi, the Nagayoshi, the Kuninaga, the Yoshishige, the Katsugi, the Tsuji, the Muneyoshi, and the Tadahira. To every one of these houses the Kaga chief granted liberal pensions, varying in amount from the equivalent of 3,500 yen to 250 yen annually. All the early representatives of the Kuwamura family were pupils of the Goto masters and worked in the Goto style, namely, relief chiselling in various metals with addition of gold inlaying. Moriyoshi, a pupil of Gotō Kenzō, was the first recorded member of the house, but it attained the summit of its reputation in the time (1630) of Hiroyoshi,