Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/353

 etc. were chiefly manufactured. By Heiemon's son, Kōemon, however, a new departure was made. This artist possessed rare skill as a modeller. His statuettes attracted so much attention at the time that he received the soubriquet of "Ningyo-ya Kōemon" (Kōemon the puppet-maker), and subsequent generations came to regard him as the real originator of this style of work in Japan. Very few genuine specimens of Kōemon's manufacture survive, but these suffice to show that he possessed rare ability as a modeller. His pieces are not glazed, nor did he use vitrifiable enamels. The decoration of his statuettes was effected by painting in distemper—green, slate blue, and red being the principal colours employed—with the addition of gold. Since his time the modelling of mythical figures—men, birds, and animals—has always been a specialty with the Fukakusa potters. After Kōemon's death, however, they abandoned his distemper colours—except in rare instances and used a thin, diaphanous glaze. Whether by design or by accident, their pieces thus assumed the appearance of wood-carvings, the brownish pâte bearing a close resemblance to wood slightly discoloured by age. During the latter half of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, two of the Sukikai-bashi artists, Rokuro and Sozaburo, established a reputation that still survives. Of their successors none were specially distinguished, though specimens of their handicraft often show great mastery of the plastic art.

Before leaving the province of Yamashiro, mention may be made of the Shikase-yama-yaki, a faience pro-