Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/30

 Gyōgi's celebrity is the more inexplicable inasmuch as some years before his advent the keramic art had been taken under the patronage of the Emperor Mommu. This monarch appointed officials to supervise the kilns ( 701), and altogether gave the industry a status which it had not enjoyed before. It is also recorded that he invited workmen from China and Korea, and there is an unsupported belief among Japanese antiquarians that, under the instruction of these experts, glazed pottery was produced at the factories of Yamato. Ancient annals speak of céladon vessels, which were used in the service of the gods, but that these utensils were really of Japanese manufacture seems most unlikely. It is true that they are ascribed by the annals to workshops in Owari, a statement which the late Mr. Ninagawa accepts as evidence that the keramic industry had extended to that province. But, as shown above, neither in the most ancient collections, not yet among the products of excavations, has there ever been found any specimen of artificially glazed Japanese pottery which could reasonably be referred to so remote a date as the eighth century. If pieces were produced with imported materials, they must have been too few to leave any permanent trace, and it is certain that their manufacture was limited to a brief period.

The dolmens furnish conclusive evidence as to the nature of the pottery produced by one section, at any rate, of the Japanese immigrants. Equally trustworthy testimony with reference to the state of the keramic industry in the eighth century is obtained from a collection of relics preserved at Nara, in Yamato province. Between 709 and 784 Nara was the Imperial capital, and during that era the chief