Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/59



F the four principal islands forming the Japanese Empire, the most southerly is called Kiushiu, or the "Nine Provinces." It was here that the first European adventurers landed in Japan, and inaugurated a trade which flourished, in varying degree, until the final opening of the country four hundred years later.

Many erroneous inferences bearing upon the subject of keramics have been drawn from the circumstances under which this trade was conducted by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English. Connoisseurs have even ventured to fix the age of the first Japanese porcelain carried to Europe by reference to the date of the earliest commercial intercourse with the Portuguese. The existence of porcelain in Japan being assumed, there is little difficulty in the further assumption that such a novel and beautiful object must have attracted the attention of the shrewd foreign merchants. When hypothesis is substituted for history, the limits of a writer's statements depend mainly on his personal equation. Messrs. Audsley and Bowes, while admitting that no particulars are given by Kaempfer, the most trustworthy annalist of those early days, with regard to the nature of the commodities exported from the Portuguese factories in Hirado and Nagasaki, nevertheless assert that from what Kaempfer