Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/418

 ("later Raku-en"). The nature of the ware has already been described in the chapter upon Owari keramic products.

Porcelain was first produced in Tōkyō by Fukushima Masabei, who erected a kiln within the enclosure of the Prince of Kameyama's mansion in the Minowa suburb, 1863. The industry was abandoned the following year, and Tōkyō remained without a porcelain factory until 1875, when Inouye Ryōsai, a potter of Seto (Owari), went into partnership with a pottery-dealer called Shimada Sōbei, and set up a kiln at Hashiba, in the Asakusa district. Materials were procured from Owari, and the manufacture was vigorously pushed. The porcelain is identical with that of Seto (Owari), but the decoration is after the fashion of the Tōkyō school—to be presently spoken of—that is to say, elaborate painting over the glaze, with scarcely any use of vitrifiable enamels.

Although not remarkable as a centre of keramic production, Tōkyō possesses a school of artist-artisans second to none in Japan. Every year large quantities of porcelain and faience are sent from the provinces to the capital to receive surface decoration, and in wealth of design as well as excellence of execution the results are everything that can be desired. But of the pigments and enamels employed nothing very laudatory could be said until very recent times. They were generally crude, of impure tone, and without depth or brilliancy. Now, however, they have lost