Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/48

 well as by fierce contests of ambition among the great feudal chieftains. These troubles lasted throughout the century. That Shonzui's enterprise should have been undertaken in such times must be attributed to the impulse given to art industry by the patronage of Yoshimasa, and to the relations established with China under the circumstances mentioned above. Certainly it was an inopportune enterprise. Had Shonzui discovered the porcelain earth that existed in practically inexhaustible quantities within easy reach of his factory, his efforts might have been attended with better results. But he died without even suspecting its presence. A few hundred pieces of porcelain, made with materials brought over sea, and scarcely differing from ware produced in China, were the only outcome of his journey; and his contemporaries not unnaturally failed to regard these as any earnest of a new keramic era. So little impression did his enterprise make on the men of his time that even the locality of his kiln is not accurately known. The general supposition is that he settled at Arita, in the province of Hizen. But it is only a supposition. He was buried in Ise, and there is nothing definite to prove that he did not pursue his industry in that neighbourhood also. At first sight, one is disposed to wonder that his example did not find imitators immediately, that is to say, during the sixteenth century, Japan being on such friendly terms with China, and receiving, from time to time, specimens of the admirable wares manufactured at Ching-tê-chên by the Ming potters, then at the zenith of their fame. The explanation is simple. The sixteenth century was, perhaps, the blackest period of Japanese history. The suffering and devastation entailed by civil wars, raging with ever-renewed