Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/409

 close-grained stone-ware to porcelain. The invention of this Sanda-Seiji gave a great impetus to keramic industry in the Arima district. The number of kilns increased considerably. Porcelains decorated with blue under the glaze and with enamels over it, applied in the archaic style of early Chinese wares, were also produced, but they present no specially noteworthy feature. On Sōbei's death, in 1828, the factories were about to be closed, when Mukai Kidayu purchased them and continued the industry on a smaller scale. He abandoned it in 1850, but four years afterwards the kilns were re-opened by Tanaka Riemon. Their outcome, however, was palpably inferior to the productions of Kanda Sōbei's time.

Though Settsu is known to foreign collectors principally through the celadon of Sanda, two other wares, esteemed by the Japanese tea-clubs, belong to the same province. They are the Kosobe-yaki and the Sakurai-yaki, both being faiences. The former was first produced, in 1799, at the village of Kosobe, by Igarashi Shimpei, a potter who had studied keramic processes at Kyōtō, and whose works were consequently little more than imitations of Ninsei and Raku. His successor, Shinzo, on the other hand, took his models from Takatori, Karatsu, and Korea; while Shingoro, the third and present representative of the family, sent to Kyōtō for workmen, and by their aid produced some very good pieces after the style of Rokubei. Among the most valued examples of Kosobe-yaki, however, are those by an amateur, Tasuke Dainen, who flourished between 1840 and 1870. Originally