Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/412

 bamboos, and so forth, were produced. The ware is little known, and never occupied a place of any importance in Japan's keramic productions.

Strange to say, Yedo (now Tōkyō), the eastern capital, and during three centuries the seat of the chief executive power of Japan, did not possess any potteries worthy of note in former times. The first factory established there (1630), under the auspices of Iyemitsu, third Shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty, proved a complete failure. It was in the quarter of the city called Asakusa, near the gate of the now celebrated temple of Monzeki, and the workmen employed were specially summoned from Settsu, where, as has been already mentioned, the manufacture of faience in Korean style had been carried on since the beginning of the seventeenth century. The ware potted at Asakusa was of a similar nature, but the materials, being those found in the neighbourhood, were of most inferior quality. The result was so discouraging that the undertaking was very soon. abandoned.

In the same district, at a place called Imado, is another factory which, whatever the merit of its productions, struggled on through ill report and good report until a road to comparative prosperity was at last opened to it. To what period the establishment of the kiln may be attributed is not very accurately known, but its founder is said to have been a vassal of the noble house of Chiba, who, after the confiscation of his lord's estates in 1600, resorted to the