Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/37

 vessels still continued to constitute a chief part of the household equipage among the better classes, while farmers and artisans were constrained to be content with the comparatively clumsy achievements of Settsu, Karatsu, and a few even more insignificant potteries.

This state of things continued with little improvement until the era of Yoshimasa (1436–1480), eighth Regent of the Ashikaga dynasty, whose luxurious proclivities made him a keen patron of art industry. The lacquers produced in his time are among the very finest specimens ever executed in Japan, and such objects as received the approval of himself and his contemporary connoisseurs occupy the first places in the collections of his countrymen to-day. Under his patronage the "Tea Ceremonial" became a philosophic as well as an æsthetic cult, and its disciples, among whom were soon numbered many of the leading men of the time, conceived a new standard of excellence in the dominion of applied art. The influence of this cult was not completely wholesome. It educated an almost grotesque affectation of simplicity and an unreasoning reverence for the antique. But it certainly invested art with wide-spread interest which prepared the way for future progress. Thus, just as the introduction of tea in the thirteenth century had led Japanese keramists to turn to China for technical instructions and for models, so the establishment of the tea-clubs in the closing years of the fifteenth century induced her again to seek aid from the same source. The result of her second recourse to the great centre of keramics was that she acquired the art of manufacturing porcelain proper.

A word may be said here about the claim of