Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/31

 temple there, Tōdai-ji, became the repository of various articles used at the Court under the sway of three Emperors and as many Empresses. Among these articles are several keramic specimens. They are all of foreign manufacture, and they do not include any translucid porcelain, the best of them being grass-green faience. There is no difficulty in identifying these as products of Chinese kilns. Japanese connoisseurs attribute some of them to Cochin China, but that appears to be a misconception, due to the fact that the ware came to Japan viâ Cochin China. The Nara collection thus indicates not only that Japan herself had not yet learned, in the eighth century, how to manufacture glazed pottery, still less translucid porcelain, but also that in no part of the Far East had the potter's art reached a high stage of development; for, since history shows that between China and Japan there existed in these early centuries intercourses fitful indeed, but never wholly interrupted, and since the refinements of life in Japan would certainly have led her to appreciate and acquire the best products of her neighbours' skill, the absence of fine specimens of Chinese ware from her Imperial collection suggests that they had as yet no existence in the Middle Kingdom.

In his valuable work, Kwanko Zatetsu, the late Mr. Ninagawa hazards the opinion that materials for glazing pottery ceased to be imported from China after the year 959. This conjecture is not only unsupported by evidence but also based upon the false assumption that relations with China were broken off at that period, whereas, in point of fact, official intercourse, previously interrupted, was then renewed. In any case it is difficult to believe that