Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/157

 may justly be termed, find absolutely no purchasers in the country of their origin: not alone does their garish ornamentation exceed the extreme limits prescribed by the æsthetic chastity of the tea-clubs, but their generally faulty workmanship lends an unpleasant air of sham to the pains taken in pranking them out.

The earliest manufacture of pottery in Sasshiu, the most southerly among the nine provinces of Kiushiu, is referred to the latter half of the fifteenth century, but, like the other productions of that period, it was represented by tea utensils of the scantiest merit. A hundred years later (1596), the celebrated Shimazu Yoshihiro, Chief of Satsuma, returning from the invasion of Korea, brought with him a large number of workmen—some fivescore, it is said—of whom seventeen were skilled potters. The names of these seventeen are still retained by their descendants. According to Japanese pronunciation, the Korean names are as follows: Shin, Ri, Boku, Hen, Kyō, Tei, Jin, Rin, Haku, Sai, Chin, Ro, Kin, Ga, Tei, Sha, and Sai. They were settled at first in three villages, Kushikino, Ichiku, and Sanno-gawa. It does not appear that they immediately received orders to open keramic factories. The tradition is that one of their number, whose Japanese name was Hōchiu, urged his comrades to repay the benefits which they had received at the hands of their conquerors by introducing the keramic methods of their native country. A year previously (1595) Prince Yoshihiro had constructed a castle at Chōsa, in the neighbouring province of Hiuga. Thither he directed Hōchiu and some others of the Korean experts to move, for the purpose of carrying on their industry. The Koreans