Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/453

 Jukan, a descendant of one of the Korean potters who were brought from the peninsula by Hideyoshi's general in the sixteenth century.

Ito Tozan of Kyōtō is a keramist of the highest rank, though his new specialty belongs to a different class of work from that of the seven experts mentioned above. He manufactures faience decorated with a number of sous-couverte colours—blue, green, ed, yellow, black, and purple—and the technical features of his ware are irreproachable. Doubtless he derived inspiration from the Asahi-yaki of Tōkyō, but his faience takes artistic rank incomparably higher than that held by the now little admired product of the capital.

The sum of the matter is that the modern Japanese keramist, after many efforts to cater to the taste of the Occident, evidently concludes that his best hope consists in devoting all his technical and artistic resources to reproducing the celebrated wares of China. In explanation of the fact that he did not essay that route in former times, it may be noted, first, that he had only a limited acquaintance with the wares in question; secondly, that Japanese connoisseurs never attached any value to their countrymen's imitations of Chinese porcelains so long as the originals were obtainable; thirdly, that, the keramic art of China not having fallen into its present state of decadence, the idea of competing with it did not occur to outsiders; and fourthly, that Europe and America had not developed their present keen appreciation of Chinese masterpieces. Yet it is remarkable that China, at the close of the nineteenth century, should have again furnished models to Japanese eclecticism. There are reasons which render it doubtful whether the Jap-