Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/256

 for foreign use. He adopts the Awata style, using for the most part floral decoration. His productions, shown at competitive exhibitions in Japan, have obtained various certificates and awards of merit, and will be referred to again in connection with modern keramic developments.

Morimoto Sukezaemon, a native of Kaseyama, in the province of Yamashiro, discovered porcelain stone in the vicinity of his house in 1827, and engaged an expert of Gojō-zaka, Kyōtō, to assist in opening a factory. The ware produced was porcelain decorated with blue under the glaze after Chinese models. Small pieces only, chiefly teapots, obtained any measure of public favour. This Kaseyama-yaki, as it is called, does not strictly belong to the present section, but is generally classed with Kyōtō wares. As late as 1847 factory flourished under the patronage of Prince Ichijo, but with the fall of feudalism (1868) its activity ceased.

Among the potters of Kyōtō a woman, originally called Nobu, but known in art as Otagaki Rengetsu, has left a well-remembered name. Her father was a nobleman of Ise, but on her mother's second marriage with a vassal of the Kameoka chief, in Tamba, she was adopted into the family of Otagaki Banzaemon, a gentleman in the service of the great temple Chion-in, in Kyōtō. As was often the case in those times with girls of gentle birth, she served until her eighteenth year as a lady-in-waiting in the household of the Kameoka chief. She then returned to Kyōtō and married, but after the deaths of her husband and her only child, she shaved her head and retired from secular life, assuming the name of Rengetsu. This happened in 1823. Rengetsu was then