Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/70

 white incised patterns looking out from beneath vitreous brown or grey glaze, represent a style at once effective and delicate. It will be seen, by and by, that this ware furnished the model for a beautiful Japanese faience known as Yatsu-shiro-yaki. Being not only the most characteristic but almost the commonest ware of the peninsula, it came to Japan in considerable quantities, whereas of the fine célodon and white semi-porcelain of Song-do very few good specimens seem to have crossed the sea. Even of the variety now under discussion it is doubtful whether really first-class examples came into the possession of Japanese collectors. Comparatively crude, homely features appealed to the severe taste of the tea-clubs, by whom the Kōrai-yaki was from the first taken into favour, and under their inspiration rustic and rough elements came to be regarded as preferable to the technical excellence of which Korean keramists were certainly capable five hundred years ago. Reverentially preserved in Japanese collections are cups, bowls, censers, bottles, and vases that fall ludicrously below any common-sense standard. They received from their sentimental possessors titles often, though unintentionally, suggestive of their inartistic character. Examples are the Mishima-gorai, so called because its incised decoration of white zigzags, arranged in regular lines, resembled the ideographic text of almanacks compiled at Mishima; and the Haké-me-mishima, or "brush-mark Mishima," a name suggested by the fact that the white glazing material employed to fill up the incised design is smeared over parts of the surface as though rudely daubed on with a brush. The Hana-mishima, or "Flower Mishima," is another type, distinguished only by the presence of petals or detached blossoms among the incised decoration. It should be noted that the white glaze with which the incised decoration is filled in all these varieties, has a creamy, lustrous appearance, and a fine network of crackle, and that sometimes it covers the interior of bowls and cups having their outer surfaces decorated as described above,—namely, with white incised designs in a brown or grey field. A fourth variety was called Go-hon-de, or "model" ware, because it was supposed to have originally served as a model for Japanese keramists in Kyōtō. Be-