Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/443

 achievement palpably below the soft-paste Kai-pien-yao of Ching-tê-chêng. It is a curious and interesting fact that this last product of Chinese skill remained unknown in Japan down to very recent days. In the eyes of a Chinese connoisseur, no blue-and-white porcelain worthy of consideration exists, or ever has existed, except the Kai-pien-yao, with its imponderable pâte, its wax-like surface, and its rich, glowing blue, entirely free from superficiality or garishness, and broken into a thousand tints by the microscopic crackle of the glaze. The Japanese, although they obtained from their neighbour almost everything of value she had to give them, did not know this wonderful ware, and their ignorance is in itself sufficient to prove their keramic inferiority. There remains, too, a wide domain in which the Chinese developed high skill, whereas the Japanese can scarcely be said to have entered it at all; namely, the domain of monochromes and polychromes, striking every note of colour from the richest to the most delicate; the domain of truité and flambé glazes, of "transmutation ware" (Yō-pien-yao), and of egg-shell with incised or translucid decoration. In all that region of achievement, the Chinese potters stood alone and seemingly unapproachable. The Japanese, on the contrary, made a specialty of faience, and in that particular line they reached a high standard of excellence. No faience produced either in China or any other Oriental country can dispute the palm with really representative specimens of Satsuma ware. Not without full reason have Western connoisseurs lavished panegyrics upon that exquisite production. The faience of the Kyōtō artists never reached quite to the level of the Satsuma in quality of pâte and glowing mellowness of decora-