Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/289

 manufacture earthen jars for sacrificial purposes, the fact is indisputably established, for those having sufficient faith, that the keramic industry existed in Japan at the end of the age of the god-kings. Turning to a venerable record (the Kyuji Honki,) there is found a confident statement that pottery was first manufactured by one Osugi, in the province of Kawachi, whence the industry spread to Izumo, Owari, and elsewhere; and that the earliest Superintendent of Keramics was Izumo no Otodo, whose title in connection with this office was Haji-no-mura-ji, and whose descent could be traced to one of the divine rulers. These circumstances, and others scarcely less apocryphal, are always quoted in the context of Owari pottery, after which comes information that an official of high rank (Saben-kan), by name Chōya Gunsai, visited Owari during the reign of the Emperor Horikawa (1087–1109), and brought back with him to Kyōtō a quantity of earthenware vessels. Specimens said to be as old as that event have been exhumed in the province. They are hard, well-fired pottery, showing marks of the wheel, and having no glaze except where a natural coating of vitreous matter has been produced in the furnace. Such ware could not have attracted much attention, and it is not surprising to learn incidentally that Owari's reputation was quite unestablished when Katō Shirozaemon returned from China.

Katō, whose real name was Fujiwara Masakage, is said to have come in his youth to Kyōtō from his native place (Michikage-mura, in Yamato). There he became a retainer of Kuga Michichika—one of the three principal Ministers of State—and was raised to the fifth order of official rank. Tea-drinking was then becoming a fashionable pastime among the