Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/439

 becoming clearer when the varying quantities of water contained in the unstoved masses are eliminated:—

Readers who have travelled through this long and often tedious story of Japanese porcelain and pottery, will probably have observed that the products of the keramic art of Japan group themselves into two divisions, the one conventional and archaic, the other original and natural. Throughout the whole of Japanese Art this line of demarcation is plainly visible. It is probably due, in great part, to the religious cult which prescribed ancestral worship. People who, year after year, pray and burn incense before the mortuary tablets of their forefathers, cannot choose but become imbued with reverence for the works of