Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/160

 softer and richer than the noir mat of the Chinese potters, but less brilliant than their noir éclatant. The fifth is black glaze speckled with gold dust; a beautiful and rare variety. The sixth is tea-green glaze, usually overlapping one or two coats of russet-brown or pear-skin glazes. The seventh is polychromatic glaze, the principal colours being tea-green, greyish white, and rich brown. The eighth is tortoise-shell glaze (Bekko-gusuri), of great richness and exceedingly dextrous technique. Specimens of all these are still procurable, but they are generally small pieces designed for the use of the tea-clubs. They show, however, that the skill of the Chōsa potters, so long ago as the beginning of the seventeenth century, was very remarkable. It is believed by some Japanese amateurs that among the so-called Korean potters who settled in Satsuma, and elsewhere in KiushuKiushiu [sic], after the return of the Japanese expedition from Korea, not a few Chinese keramic experts were included. If this theory be accepted, it accounts for much that would otherwise be scarcely explicable. For it is certain that among authenticated productions of Korean kilns there is nothing that compares with the wares described above, whereas precisely similar glazes were produced at the Chinese factories of Ching-tê-chên and elsewhere.

In the year 1610 Prince Yoshihiro changed his residence to Kojiki, in the neighbouring province of Osumi. Hōchiu and his comrades followed their patron, establishing themselves at Hiki-yama in the same district. A few years later Hōchiu's eldest son, Kisaburo, showed such proficiency that Prince Yoshihiro bestowed on him the name of Kawara, because of the fact that the Hiki-yama factory stood near the bank of the river Kurokawa. Kisaburo, sometimes