Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/65

 to the notice and favour of the Japanese tea-clubs. They were not manufactured in Korea at all, being in fact a Chinese ware made at Tsu-chou in the province of Honan, where large quantities of similar though greatly inferior ware are still manufactured. Of course it cannot be absolutely denied that imitations were produced in Korea, but there is no evidence of such imitation, and under any circumstances the ware should not find a place in the list of purely Korean efforts. Whether the misconception as to the origin was caused by its coming to Japan in junks that touched at a Korean port, or whether it had actually been used by the people of the little kingdom before it came into Japanese hands, there is not much occasion, even if there were any means, to determine. Eliminating these two wares, then, there still remain in Japanese collections numerous specimens indisputably of Korean origin which are supposed to represent the best efforts of that country's experts. Recent researches in Korea itself have shown, however, that the supposition is erroneous. The wares familiar to Japanese connoisseurs and highly valued by them as Korea's choicest manufactures must be generally classed in quite an inferior category. The great majority of them probably came to Japan at the time of the invasion of the peninsula by the Taikō's army (1592) or subsequently; but even if their import be antedated by a century, and even if it be assumed that they belong to the period of the inauguration of the tea-clubs by the ex-Regent Yoshimasa, they would still be nearly a hundred years subsequent to the commencement of the final decadence of keramic art in the peninsula. That art practically came to an end at the close of the fourteenth century. It had flourished at one place only, Song-do (or Kai-söng), the capital of the kingdom under the dynasty that preceded the present, and when, on the fall of the dynasty, the capital was moved to Han-chung (commonly called Söul), the potters gradually abandoned the industry. Nothing is known exactly of the reasons that led to this abandonment, but it may perhaps be referred to loss of royal patronage and court custom. At all events, as the potteries at Song-do were closed, no others sprang up else-