Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/66

 where of equal excellence. The potter's trade rapidly fell into neglect; the knowledge of the art disappeared in great part, and nothing continued to be produced except coarser classes of utensils. This misfortune has been sometimes associated with the miserable condition into which the country was thrown by the Japanese invasion of 1592, but the truth is that fully two centuries earlier (1390) the closing of the best factories at Song-do had brought the period of good keramic work to an end. Roughly speaking, therefore, an age of five centuries at least may be ascribed to any choice Korean specimens, and of these few found their way to Japan. These were three principal varieties, but in speaking of them it must be premised that the subject of Korean keramics still awaits accurate investigation, and that the information now possessed may have to be modified hereafter. The three varieties are briefly but confusedly alluded to in the Tao-lu (History of King-tê-chên), where they are classed as Kao-li-yao, or ware of Kao-li (Japanese Korai), which was the name given to the peninsula under the previous dynasty. When the present dynasty came to the throne at the end of the fourteenth century, the name was changed to Chaosen or Chōsen. Thus, in the appellation of the ware, we have an indirect indication of the era of its manufacture; a point upon which Japanese connoisseurs insist, invariably applying the term Korai-yaki (ware of Korai or Kaoli) to specimens dating farther back than the transfer of the capital from Song-do to Han-chung, and the term Chosen-yaki (ware of Chosen or Chaosen) to ware manufactured under the present dynasty. The three varieties in question are white stone-ware, or semi-porcelain, céladon, and faience with inlaid decoration. The first is compared by the Tao-lu to the white Ting-yao of the Sung dynasty (vide History of Chinese Keramics). The only authentic specimens of it known to foreign collectors are cups and bowls exhumed, chiefly, from tombs of men of rank. They show a high standard of technical skill. Like the Sung Ting-yao to which they have been compared, the quality of their pâte almost entitles them to be classed with translucid hard porcelain. Some of them, indeed, are translucid, but the