Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/288

 pieces which, having been rejected from time to time on account of technical defects until their inconvenient accumulation suggested the expedient of burying them in the ground, were dug out two or three centuries later and placed among the treasures of the tea-clubs, the faults that originally rendered them worthless several hundred years being subsequently condoned for the sake of their associations. Before his visit to China, Tōshiro's wares, or, to speak more correctly, the wares of his time, were stoved in an inverted position, so that the orifices were unglazed. For this reason they were subsequently called Kuchi-hagi-de, or bared (hagi) orifice (kuchi) variety (te). Another distinguishing appellation was Atsu-de, or thick variety,—a term that explains itself. It is unnecessary to describe these productions at length. They were nothing more than coarse pottery, made of iron-red clay, covered with clumsily applied glaze, sometimes black, sometimes brown, sometimes a reddish grey, and occasionally having a tinge of yellow.

The idea that pottery was manufactured in Owari by Katō Shirozaemon before his visit to China, to supposed specimens of which pottery the term Koseto (old Seto) is now erroneously applied, is one of those curious myths to which dilettanti cling in the face of the clearest evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately, every Japanese tradition about the keramic industry is prefaced by legends that carry the student back to the prehistoric days of this ancient Empire. Conservative Japanese confidently regard Jimmu Tennō, who is supposed to have reigned more than twenty-five hundred years ago, as the first purely human sovereign of their country, and since history, so called, says that this ruler ordered one Shii-netsu-hiko to