Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/295

 of decorative beauties, of technical excellences, or of wonderful effects of colour, such as those shown by many Chinese masterpieces, there would be something to lay hold of. But the cha-tsubo and cha-wan of Seto, and their Chinese or Korean companions, depend, so far as Western appreciation is concerned, entirely on the peculiar character of their glaze and the accuracy of their finish. The glaze, indeed, is often very beautiful,—rich, lustrous and showing a curious blending or contrast of fanciful and æsthetic tints. The workmanship, too, is sometimes highly skilled. But it by no means follows that specimens possessing these charms are most treasured by the orthodox Chajin. His ideal is frequently a rustic, homely object, incomprehensible, if not actually shocking, to the uninitiated. His inherited perception detects features of refinement (gami), and of elegance (johin) that have no significance for outsiders, and his imagination is moved by associations that cluster round an ideograph. To ridicule such fancies would be presumptuous. They are the finer breath of a civilisation the most ancient, and in many respects the most picturesque, the world has known. Westerners do not fully comprehend them: that is all. If, then, but brief space is here devoted to the old pottery of Seto, of Korea, and of other factories revered by the disciples of the Cha-no-Yu cult, it is not because the right is denied to Japanese virtuosi to credit such wares with charms invisible to duller eyes. Above all, the sincerity of their æstheticism is beyond question. It is recorded in their annals that a Korean, by name Yugeki, on the eve of starting for Japan, received from his Sovereign a cup of Komagai faience to serve as a pen-washer should occasion arise to dis-