Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/339

 is distinguished for his skill in modelling figures of men and animals. He ceased to work, some five or six years ago, owing to partial loss of sight.

The reader will not have failed to perceive how largely the keramic industry of Japan was influenced by the advent of the Korean potters who came over in the train of the Taikō's generals. Of these imported experts not the least successful, from a technical point of view, were those who settled at Takatori, in Chikuzen, a province lying on the north of Hizen, and forming, in the early days of the seventeenth century, the fief of a nobleman, Kuroda Nagamasa, whose relations with the Court at Kyōtō, and subsequently with that at Yedo, were particularly close. Of the exact number of Koreans who were located at Takatori there is no record, but the names of two, Shinkuro and Hachizo, have been preserved as masters of the art. The latter is said to have been among the prisoners taken by the chief of Chikuzen, and the former to have been specially selected by Kato Kiyomasa, general-in-chief of the expedition, as a potter already renowned in Korea. The names Shinkuro and Hachizo were, of course, given to them in Japan. What they were originally called tradition does not say, but it is on record that both were natives of a Korean village known by the Japanese as Ido. There is no question that the potter's industry had been practised in Chikuzen long before the coming of these men. Ancient annals mention ware produced