Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/424

 company by which everything she can turn out is bespoken. In her own country, therefore, her name is not yet widely known.

Within the past four years there has been established at Koishikawa, in the northwesterly suburb of Tōkyō, a factory where considerable quantities of good porcelain are produced. The proprietor is Kato Tomataro. He employs materials brought from Arita, Seto, and Amakusa. The staple product of the kiln is blue-and-white ware, of which the best examples are delicate and well finished. Kato has shown some capacity for manufacturing glazes of the beautiful red known in China as Fén-hung, but his work of this nature is still tentative and uncertain.

One of the most important keramic centres in the north of Japan is at Hongo, in the province of Iwashiro (Fukushima Prefecture). The industry was started by an expert of Mino, called Mizuna Genzaemon, who came to Wakamatsu (the chief town of the province) in 1845, and was engaged as a potter by Matsudaira Masayuki, lord of Aizu. His family carried on the industry for ten generations, producing coarse faience of the Seto type for local use. The tenth representative, Mizuno Tamon, visited Owari, in 1865, and having acquired the processes of porcelain manufacture, introduced them at Hongo. At first the ware was somewhat coarse. The composition of two specimens, examined six years ago, was found to be as follows:—