Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/380

 into the sea, but the best scholars and authorities now discredit this wholesale horror, of which no trustworthy record exists.

From 1641 the Dutch lived as prisoners on the little island of Deshima, where the porcelain bazaar now stands, suffering incredible restrictions and humiliations for the sake of monopolizing the trade of the country. Nagasaki’s children and beggars still follow strangers with the shout, “''Hollander san! Hollander san!''” as a remembrance of those first foreign residents, and in curio-shops queer clocks and ornaments show the adaptation and imitation of many Dutch articles by the Japanese.

The fact of Nagasaki's being only a port of call makes its curio market fluctuate in proportion to the number of merchantmen and men-of-war in port. When the harbor is full, no resident visits the curio-shops, whose prices always soar at such times. Tortoise-shell carving is a great industry of the place, but porcelain is still the specialty of this southern province, where the art was first introduced. Those wares of South Japan known anciently as Nabeshima and Hirado are the finest of Japanese porcelains, their blue and white beauty being simply perfect. The potters who brought the art from Korea and China settled in Satsuma and Hizen, and the kilns of Arita and Kagoshima are still firing. The Dutch carried the Arita ware to Europe under the name of Hizen. This porcelain is now more commonly termed Imari, while Deshima is another general name for the modern product, and Nabeshima and Hirado are the words used by connoisseurs in classifying the older wares. This confusion of names misleads the traveller, who cannot at once discern that Hizen is the name of the province, Arita of the town where the potters live and the kilns are at work, Imari of the port from which it is shipped, Nabeshima the family name of that daimio of Hizen who brought the potters from Korea, and 364