Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/426

 early as the eleventh century, but nothing is known of the ware until 1648, when Tōshiro, a retainer of Sōma, feudal chief of the province, is said to have visited Kyōtō in his master's train and studied the keramic art under Nomura Ninsei for a period of seven years. Returning to Iwaki in 1655, he established a factory at Nakamura, in the Udo district. There is no resemblance between the Sōma-yaki of that time and the faience of Kyōtō, though some similarity is suggested by the story of Tōshiro's education. The Sōma-yaki was rather coarse, grey stoneware, having thin translucent glaze with brown speckles. In some specimens glaze was not used at all. It is said that the artist Kano Naonobu visited the province of Iwaki, and being desired by the Sōma chief to furnish a design for keramic decoration, limned a horse galloping. This event must have occurred before the visit of Tōshiro to Kyōtō, for Naonobu died in 1650. At all events, a galloping horse, which is the signification of the word Sōma, became, from the middle of the seventeenth century, the only decorative subject employed by the potters of Nakamura. It was traced occasionally in gold, but generally in black; and sometimes it is found engraved or in relief. To this design the ware owes its name, Sōma-yaki. By a strange anomaly the same term is applied to the earlier undecorated pieces: they are called Muji-sōma (plain Sōma). An interesting variety of Sōma-yaki, dating from the close of the last century, has its glaze granulated in distinct globules after the fashion of a species of Karatsu pottery already described. In almost every case a horse, whether painted, incised, or in relief, appears upon the piece.

Specimens of old Sōma-yaki are difficult to find, and