Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/81

 Risampei's native place. But this appellation very soon ceased to be employed.

Thus far the chief species of decoration employed was blue under the glaze, and the art of applying vitrifiable enamels had not advanced beyond a rudimentary stage. The credit of carrying it to a point of real excellence belongs to Sakaida Kakiemon and his fellow-worker Higashijima Tokuemon. These two men went to Nagasaki in 1646—the date has been preserved with exceptional accuracy—for the purpose of procuring information from a Chinese official who happened to be there at the time. Nagasaki was then a flourishing town of some 27,000 inhabitants. The Portuguese had been expelled thence nine years previously, but the Dutch had been settled in Deshima since 1641, and from seven to ten of their ships entered the harbour of Nagasaki annually. One account says that the original intention of Kakiemon and Tokuemon was to visit China and study there, as Shonzui and Kato had done in former years; but that, falling in with the master of a Chinese junk, they acquired from him information sufficient for their immediate purpose. The latter story is evidently less credible than the former. Both, however, agree in stating that the knowledge obtained on this visit to Nagasaki was only partial. The Chinese official explained the method of preparing and applying red and green enamels,—a method already familiar to Kakiemon,—but was either unable or unwilling to tell anything about the employment of gold, silver, or other colours. The Arita artists, though greatly chagrined, were not disheartened by this reticence. They worked with redoubled zest, and soon succeeded, by their own genius, in compensating for their want of instruction.