Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/108

 haps some very rare exceptions, to blue, red, green, and gold, the blue being applied chiefly under the glaze. By and by, however, he added to his enamels lilac-blue (over the glaze), russet-brown, purple, black, and lemon-yellow, the last three being reserved for his choicest pieces. The eighteenth century may, indeed, be regarded as the most flourishing period of the Hizen factories. The country had then enjoyed a long spell of peace. The castles built by Hideyoshi in Fushimi and Ōsaka and by Iyeyasu in Yedo (Tōkyō), with their huge moats and towering parapets, were the forerunners of a number of similar edifices, in which elaborate gate-defences, mighty keeps, turret-crowned curtain walls, moats of extraordinary size, and drawbridges were substituted for the low wooden buildings, enclosed by small trenches and wattled fences, which had served as fortresses before the advent of the Portuguese and the Dutch. In these huge structures, upon which gold and labour were lavished without stint, it was natural that the character of the apartments reserved for the noble owner should partake of the general magnificence of the whole. The artist found an extended field of employment in the painting of panels, screens, and sliding doors; the lacquerer, in the decoration of framework and ceilings. Never before had art patronage been so universal or so munificent. Not only to each other, but also to the Court of the Tokugawa Shōguns in Yedo, the feudal chiefs sent frequent presents of the art manufactures of their fiefs, and so far was the enthusiasm carried that it became the fashion for every young lady of rank or wealth to have among her trousseau a painting by one of the old Chinese masters. The keramic industry bene-