Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/49

 fury, were augmented by natural calamities,—famines, earthquakes, and virulent epidemics. All industries were virtually paralysed, except those that were essential to the conduct of campaigns. Even the great Buddhistic monasteries, divested of their sacred character, were converted into fortresses where bonzes and abbots devoted themselves to political intriguing and left religion to take care of itself. It was impossible that any art, other than that of the swordsmith or the armourer, could flourish amid such surroundings. But from the moment that Hideyoshi, the Taikō, succeeded in crushing or conciliating the principal disturbers of the peace, the nation's innate love of æthetics reasserted itself. From his campaigns in Mino and Echizen, Hideyoshi returned to Kyōtō in 1583. He set himself at once to promote the occupations of peace. His energy was alike untiring and well directed. At one time he rewarded excellence with money, at another with titles of honour, and he even renewed the expedient of substituting presents of pottery and porcelain for revenues or land as a recompense of military merit. The consequence was an unquestionable revival of keramic industry, but a revival the immediate fruits of which were of necessity small. The art of decoration with vitrifiable enamels and the processes of manufacturing true porcelain were unknown. A few amateurs, whose methods there will be occasion to allude to in more detail hereafter, amused themselves by producing at private kilns in Kyōtō insignificant specimens, of more or less archaic character, for the use of the tea-clubs. Perhaps the only ware worthy of mention for the sake of its decorative qualities was a pottery manufactured by Sōshiro at Fushimi, a town in the environs