Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/355

 to the great capacity of the kilns and the refractory nature of the clay, a very high temperature had to be applied: the furnaces were kept alight from twenty-three to thirty days. Towards the close of the sixteenth century the manufacture underwent considerable improvement, probably owing to the encouragement of the Taikō, who visited the factories in 1583, when on a campaign in the central provinces. There were then six master-keramists at work,—Terami, Kaneshige, Tongū, Oba, and two representatives of the Mori family. Under them were employed forty-six potters. The ware was known as Imbe-yaki or Ko-Bizen (old Bizen). Previously to the time of the Taikō, large vases for religious festivals, jars for keeping and germinating agricultural seeds, and other common utensils were chiefly made. But from the end of the sixteenth century ware for the use of the tea-clubs—as tea-jars, censers, ewers, and teapots—began to be manufactured. To this term the Bizen-yaki properly applies. At first it differed from its predecessor only in more careful technique. The pâte was finer and better manipulated, and the general workmanship superior. By-and-by, however, the patches of accidental glazing that appeared occasionally on specimens of the Kō-Bizen-yaki were replaced by a regular coating of thin, diaphanous glaze. There can be little doubt that the motive of the potters was to imitate the red Boccaro pottery of China, but their success in this respect was only partial. About the middle of the seventeenth century the character of the choicest Bizen-yaki underwent another change. It became slate-coloured, or bluish brown faience, with pâte fine as pipe-clay but very hard. In this Ao-Bizen (blue Bizen), as it is called, figures of mythical