Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/447

 nese specialty. The Kyōtō potters still tread successfully in the old grooves. But the question here is of a novel departure which distinguishes the present era. Seven kilns are devoted, wholly or in part, to the new wares; namely, that of Miyagawa Shōzan of Ota; that of Seifū Yōhei of Kyōtō; those of Takemoto Hayata and Kato Tomotaro of Tōkyō; that of Higuchi Haruzane of Hirado; that of Shida Yasukyo of Kaga and that of Kato Masukichi of Seto.

Among the seven keramists here enumerated, Seifu of Kyōtō probably enjoys the highest reputation. He manufactures monochromatic and jewelled porcelain and faience, which differ essentially from the traditional Kyōtō types, their models being taken direct from China. But a sharp distinction has to be drawn between the method of Seifū and that of the other six keramists mentioned above as following Chinese fashions. It is this, that whereas the latter produce their chromatic effects by mixing the colouring matter with the glaze, Seifū paints the biscuit with a pigment over which he runs a translucid colourless glaze. The Kyōtō artist's process is much easier than that of his rivals, and although his monochromes are often of most pleasing delicacy and fine tone, they do not belong by any means to the same category of technical excellence as the wares they imitate. From this judgment must be excepted, however, his ivory-white and céladon wares, as well as his porcelains decorated with blue, or blue and red sous couverte, and with vitrifiable enamels over the glaze. In these five varieties he is emphatically great. It cannot be said, indeed, that his céladon shows the velvety richness of surface and tenderness of colour that distinguish the old Kuang-yao and Lungchuan-yao, or that he has ever essayed the