Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/442

 and the representative specimens they bequeathed to posterity remained, until quite recently, far beyond the imitative capacity of European or Asiatic experts. As for faience and pottery, however, the Chinese despised them in all forms, with one notable exception, the Yishing-yao, known in the Occident as boccaro. Even the Yishing-yao, too, owed much of its popularity to special utility. It was essentially the ware of the tea-drinker. If in the best specimens exquisite modelling, wonderful accuracy of finish, and pâtes of interesting tints are found, such pieces are, none the less, stamped prominently with the character of utensils rather than with that of works of art. In short, the artistic output of Chinese kilns in their palmiest days was, not faience or pottery, but porcelain, whether of soft or hard paste. Japan, on the contrary, owes her keramic distinction in the main to her faience. A great deal has been said by enthusiastic writers about the Famille Chrysanthemo-Peonienne of Imari, and the Genre Kakiemon of Nabeshima, but these porcelains, beautiful as they undoubtedly are, cannot be placed on the same level with the Kwanyao and Famille Rose of the Chinese experts. The Imari ware, even though its thick biscuit and generally ungraceful shapes be omitted from the account, shows no enamels that can rival the exquisitely soft, broken tints of the Famille Rose; and the Kakiemon porcelain, for all its rich though chaste contrasts, lacks the delicate transmitted tints of the shell-like Kwan-yao. So, too, the blue-and-white porcelain of Hirado, though assisted by exceptional tenderness of sous-pâte colour, by milk-white glaze, by great beauty of decorative design and often by an admirable use of the modelling or graving tool, represents a keramic