Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/298

 the sheen of a cuttlefish (namako) supposed to live in a lake at the foot of Mount Kinka in Oshū. Tōshiro the third died about the year 1330.

Tōshiro the third was succeeded by his son Tōzaburo, who flourished during the middle of the fourteenth century. The works of this the last of the four great Seto masters, are called Hafu-gama, because the lower edge of the glaze, which is unusually thick, often assumes a contour like the curve of the Hafu, an opening of pointed-arch shape above the entrance in Japanese houses. Inferior to the productions of his predecessor, Tōzaburo's ware is nevertheless immensely esteemed. In truth, if a list were compiled setting forth all the special names that have been given to particularly prized specimens of old Seto pottery, and all the couplets that have been composed in praise of pet pieces, the result would be a tolerably bulky volume. It is somewhat strange that the history of men whose productions were so highly prized should not have been more carefully recorded. Scarcely anything is known about the lives of the four renowned Seto experts, and of the wares of their successors people speak collectively, calling them all Kodai-Shunkei (Shunkei of later generations), or at best distinguishing among them Sakai-Shunkei and Yoshino-Shunkei; concerning which terms there is nothing to be said except that Sakai-Shunkei refers to faience potted on the borders (Sakaime) of Owari and Mino. Tōzaburo died about the year 1380.

It is an article of faith with Japanese connoisseurs that after the death of the fourth Tōshiro the pottery manufacture of Seto entered a steadily declining phase, and was only rescued from worthlessness by the occa-