Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/281

 written sometimes in gold, sometimes in red or black, and occasionally green enamel is run over the writing. They are the names of decorators, not of potters.

In addition to the wares mentioned above there was produced in the province of Kaga a faience called Ohi-yaki. It was of the Raku type. The factory stood in Ohi-machi, Kanazawa (the capital of Kaga), and its founder was Haji Chōzaemon. This man came of a very ancient family of potters. He was twenty-eighth in descent from Naga-mitsu Michiyasu, a retainer of the Emperor Kammu (782–805 ), and twentieth in descent from Nagamitsu Yasutoshi, who, following the celebrated statesman Michizane into exile (905 ), settled in the province of Kawachi, at the village of Haji, so called because it was inhabited chiefly by potters. Nagamitsu, being without resources, adopted the potter's trade and changed his family name to Haji (abbreviation of hani-shi, an ancient term for "potter"). His descendants continued to earn a livelihood by the manufacture of unglazed pottery, until the time of Haji Chōzaemon, who in the year 1657 visited Kyōtō, and learned the art of making Raku faience. Nine years later (1666) he was summoned to Kaga by Prince Maeda Saishō, and there, building a kiln in Ohi-machi, manufactured tea-utensils after designs furnished by the Chajin Senno Soshitsu. The Ohi ware, as it was then, and as it remained with very little change until recent times, need not occupy much attention. A faience with reddish brown, somewhat coarse pâte, considerably heavier than the Raku-yaki of Kyōtō, it only became interesting from an artistic point of view when used in the manufacture of figures,—deities, Rishi,