Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/182

 fact just like any other village. The principal potteries belonging to the Koreans are situated on the side of a hill to the south of the high road, together with the kilns belonging to the Tamanoyama Kaisha, a company recently started by some Kagoshima Samurai. The Tsuboya crackle is produced at this establishment and at another on the opposite side of the road owned by a Korean named Chin Jūkan, but most of the villagers devoted themselves to the manufacture of common brown earthenware. The principle of the division of labour seems to be thoroughly well understood and applied by these workmen. One will confine himself, for instance, to the bodies of teapots, of which he can produce about a hundred and fifty in a day; another makes the lids, a third the spouts, a fourth the "ears" or projecting pieces into which the handle is inserted, and to a fifth is assigned the joining of these parts together. Generally the members of a family work in concert, and form a sort of co-operative society, which is joint owner of a kiln with other such societies. The clay used for the coarse ware is found at Isakuda and Kannogawa, near Ichiku, and at Terawaki, Kukino, and Noda, near Iju-in, all in the neighbourhood of Tsuboya. Chocolate-coloured, red, and green glazes are obtained from Tomura, Kammuri-take, and Sasa-no-dan, while Ishiki furnishes the glaze for water-jars and other large articles of the coarse kind of ware. Three sizes of wheels are in use, the smallest of which is formed of two wooden disks about three inches thick, the upper one being fifteen inches, the lower eighteen inches in diameter, connected by four perpendicular bars somewhat over seven inches long. It is poised on the top of a spindle planted in a hole of sufficient depth, which passes through a hole in the lower disk and enters a socket in the under side of the upper disk, and the potter, sitting on the edge of the hole, turns the wheel round with his left foot. The largest wheel is about twice the size every way of the smallest.

The kilns are built up the face of a hill in parallel rows. Each is divided into a number of chambers with openings in the intervening partitions to allow of the passage of flame and hot air from the lower end of the kiln right up to the