Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/376

 ety of the modern Kochi-yaki of Tosa is faience covered with bright metallic green glaze, slightly crackled.

A ware of which considerable quantities have found their way westward of late years is Awaji-yaki, so called from an island of the same name, where it is manufactured at the village of Iga. It was first produced between the years 1830 and 1840 by one Kajū Mimpei, called also Toyonosuke, who had acquired his technical knowledge in Kyōtō. Mimpei was a man of extraordinary enterprise and resolution. When he succeeded to the family estate he found himself the possessor of about forty-five acres of rice land and a prosperous manufactory of shōyu (fish sauce). His tastes were at once literary and artistic. He was a writer of some talent, and a Chajin of acknowledged authority. Moved, however, by the very straitened circumstances of the numerous population of Awaji, he cast about for some means of supplementing their resources. To develop the fishing industry seemed most feasible. He applied himself to the task with energy, engaging some three hundred fishermen and employing an immense seine made at Sakai, in Izumi. To procure this seine he travelled to Sakai, and en route made the acquaintance of the distinguished Kyōto keramist, Ogata Shūhei. His homeward journey led him by Ikenouchi-mura—now called Shiroto-mura—and finding there a clay that appeared suitable for pottery manufacture, he carried some of it to his native place, Inada-mura, and succeeded in producing good faience of the Raku type. It is said that even at this early stage his ambition was to imitate the beautiful Impe-