Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/156

 erably fine, the soft, ivory tint of the old faience is replaced by artificial discoloration intended to simulate what it never can really resemble, the effects of age. Yet on the decoration of this indifferent manufacture are lavished all the resources of ingenuity and patience. Elaborate combinations of diapers, bouquets of brilliant flowers, armies of gorgeously apparelled saints, peacocks with spreading tails, and dragons environed by golden clouds—all subjects, in fact, that can help to achieve gaud and glitter—are employed by painters who have prostituted their inherited instincts to the supposed tastes of their foreign customers. That the results achieved are not without merit, and that in many cases they attain a very high standard of decorative craft, are facts needing no demonstration. What they represent, however, is neither the spirit nor the fashion of true Japanese art, but simply the adaptive genius of Japanese artists. Just as, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the potters of Arita obeyed the demand of the Dutch factory at Deshima, and not only modified their decorative motives, but even manufactured pieces en suite that could never have been used in Japan; so, from 1870 onwards, Satsuma faience-painters thought chiefly of producing something that would either deceive by its resemblance to the ware of old times, or attract vulgar admiration by its gorgeousness and brilliancy. It does not follow that these artists had ceased to respect the principles which their florid style violates. They merely suited their fashions to foreign customers. The best possible comment on the estimate which Japanese connoisseurs form of such styles is supplied by the fact that pieces decorated after the fashion of the "commercial school," as it