Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/300

 produced in which the brownish or grey body glaze is relieved by streaks and splashes of colour. These, however, do not date farther back than the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century. Among them may also be placed the yellow Seto faience (Ki-Seto) mentioned above as distinct from the Ki-Seto of the second Tōshiro. The origin of this later-period yellow faience is often attributed to one Hakuan, who is supposed to have flourished about 1470. But in truth Hakuan is a person of whom very little is known. Some authorities assert that he was a physician of the thirteenth century; that he never manufactured any faience himself, and that his name is associated with Seto ware by the accident that, having attended the first Tōshiro in an illness, the latter presented him with six tea-bowls. However this may be, the point to be noted is that craquelé Ki-Seto faience does not appear to have been produced before the end of the sixteenth century. It can hardly be termed a yellow ware, as in the majority of specimens one is perplexed to determine whether the impure yellow of the transparent glaze itself, or the brownish colour of the pâte beneath it, predominates. Occasionally ornamentation is added, generally taking the form of floral scrolls in relief. The collector finds, also, figures of mythical personages and animals in crackled Ki-Seto-yaki.

Until the present century it was not the habit of the Seto potters to mark their pieces. Neither did any of them, after the fourth Tōshiro, attain sufficient distinction to be remembered. It is known only that between 1600 and 1800 the following families, all of which are now represented, were among the principal artists:—