Imari or Old Japan.—The many kilns that sprung up in the province of Hizen during the course of the seventeenth century, along the slope of the hills that produced both the china-stone and the china-clay, were chiefly occupied in making blue and white porcelain, the sometsuke or ‘dyed’ ware of the Japanese, and this, we may add, is still the case.
PLATE XXIV. 1. CHINESE. 2. JAPANESE.
The underglaze blue indeed has always remained the dominant element in the Imari porcelain, and to judge by the older pieces the employment of other colours crept in gradually. This blue is generally of a peculiar dark lavender or slaty tint, and with the addition to it of a little gilding we obtain already the general effect of the ‘old Japan’ decoration. When to the blue and gold was added an opaque iron-red (from this pigment the Japanese succeeded in obtaining a great variety of fine tints), we attain to a scheme of decoration which, at first sight, gives the impression of being built up with a full palette of colours; this is the typical nishiki-de or ‘brocaded’ ware of the Japanese (Pl. i.). Indeed in many of the finest specimens we find nothing beyond these three colours—blue, red, and gold. But the blue, derived from the native ore, the concretionary ‘wad,’ containing generally more manganese than cobalt, is often wholly or in part replaced as the dominant colour by a glossy black painted over the glaze, and this, too, in specimens with some claims to antiquity. The other colours of the Chinese ‘pentad,’ the green, the yellow, and the purple, generally occupy quite subordinate positions. It is to be noted that in this ware we never find the blue applied as an enamel over the glaze.
It would be a mistake to regard the whole series of Imari enamelled porcelain as made only for exportation. It is true that the large vases and plates with the well-known effective but somewhat overloaded decoration are not found in Japan, although such pieces have been made at Arita for the last two hundred years for exportation from Nagasaki; but the more quietly decorated ware of Imari, in endless forms and with decoration of the most varied kind, has long been in general domestic use, and many smaller pieces of great artistic beauty have been lately obtained from Japanese collections.120
In fact, the early enamelled wares of Imari are recognised by the Japanese as the fons et origo of most of the decorated porcelain, to say nothing of the later pottery, of their country. We have seen how our ‘old Japan’ group started from a slight modification of the blue and white, but we must find place also for an early ware decorated in five colours, somewhat in the Wan-li style. Of this ware but few pieces survive. The tradition, however, was carried on at Kutani and at many of the Kioto kilns in the eighteenth century.
Late in the seventeenth century the Kizayemon family obtained the privilege of supplying the porcelain, decorated with cranes and chrysanthemums, for the personal use of the Mikado, and at the present day a member of this family is said to still claim the right of purveying to the imperial court. It is to one of these Kizayemons, but not until the year 1770, that the merit of the invention of seggars for holding the porcelain in the kiln is given by the Japanese. It would seem that before that date no such protection was given. That such a claim should be made shows how completely Japan at this time was shut out from the rest of the world.
And here we may point out how self-contained was the development of Japanese porcelain during the palmy days of the Tokugawa régime (say from 1650 to 1850). As in the case of the kindred arts of metalware and lacquer, any European influence was quite of a casual and what we may call fanciful nature; while the new methods of decoration that came into use in China in the eighteenth century were never recognised or copied, even if they were known. What imitation there was of China was confined to the copying of Ming types; the Manchus, in fact, were never acknowledged by the Japanese, and their arts were under a taboo almost as strict as that applied to the civilisation of the West. No better instance of this conservatism could be given than the fact that the use of gold as a source of a red pigment, the basis of the famille rose in China, appears to have been unknown until the beginning of the nineteenth century, and even then the rouge-d’or was but sparingly applied. On the other hand, the Chinese were always eager, in the interest of trade, to copy the wares exported from Nagasaki, and we shall see later on what an influence the various products of the Hizen kilns had upon the porcelain of Europe.
Plate XXV.
Japanese. Imari ware.
These, then, were practically the only kinds of Japanese ceramic ware known in Europe until the opening of the country in our days—the blue and white or sometsuke, the ‘old Japan’ or nishiki-de, and the peculiar type which we have classed as Kakiyemon. To this list we should perhaps add the plain white ware, much of which was subsequently decorated in Europe.
These wares were all of them made in the kilns near Arita, nor do they exhaust the products of even that district. But during the eighteenth century the manufacture of porcelain spread to other parts of Japan where porcelain was made exclusively for home consumption. Many of these kilns were established under princely patronage, some in the very gardens of the feudal lord, while a special interest is given to others by their association with certain skilled potters and their descendants, whose names, in opposition to what we found was the practice in China, we can thus connect with the wares.
But we will first say something about the composition and the processes of manufacture of the porcelain of Japan, dwelling, however, only on those few points where we find divergences from the practices obtaining in China.
In the first place, then, as to the composition of the paste. To judge from the few trustworthy analyses of Imari ware that have been made, the paste would seem to be of a very abnormal type; the amount of silica—70 to 74 per cent.—is quite unusual; there is an almost total absence of lime, so important a constituent of Chinese porcelain; while we find from 4 to 5 per cent. of the alkalis. But, in place of the potash found in the wares of China, in the Japanese paste the prevailing alkali is invariably soda.
The materials of the porcelain made in Hizen were obtained originally from the famous ‘Hill of Springs‘—Idzumi Yama—which rises behind the town of Arita. Of late years, however, large quantities of clay and stone have been brought from the island of Amakusa, which lies to the south. It is from the products of decomposition of a volcanic rock, a kind of quartz-trachyte, that these materials are obtained, not from a true granitic rock as in Owari121 and in most other seats of porcelain manufacture all over the world.122
In the neighbourhood of Arita the raw materials lie conveniently at hand; and in the Japanese accounts there is no definite reference to two distinct elements in the constitution of the paste. However, that something corresponding to our china-stone is made use of, is shown by the importance attached to the methods by which the stone is reduced to powder. The primitive stamping-mill, worked by a long lever of wood, moved either by the foot of a coolie or by a simple hydraulic arrangement, has long been employed for pounding the stone, and the hills around Arita re-echo with the thuds of these mills.
The potter’s wheel plays here a larger part than in China, and the Japanese are exceptionally skilful throwers. Still, notwithstanding some native statements to the contrary, the use of moulds either of wood or of terra-cotta has long been known—witness the old Kakiyemon porcelain.
We now come to the most important departure from the Chinese procedure. In Japan, the ware (as is, indeed, universally the case in Europe) receives a preliminary baking in a specially constructed biscuit kiln before the application of the glaze. The adoption of this practice would seem to point to a greater tenderness in the raw clay.
The glaze (Japanese kusuri—‘medicine‘) is prepared by mixing the finely powdered china-stone with the ashes of certain kinds of wood. The ashes from the bark of the usu-tree (Distylium racemosum) are especially in request for this purpose, and it is certainly remarkable that these ashes contain nearly 40 per cent. of lime, the element that is conspicuous by its absence from the paste.
The furnaces in which the principal firing takes place are of a bee-hive shape: they are arranged in rows of from five to ten hearths placed by preference on the slope of a hill, so that each succeeding hearth rises two or three feet above its neighbour. This plan is probably a modification of the old Ming type of furnace, and the system, it is said, was introduced from Korea.
The use of seggars appears never to have become general, and this is probably the reason why the marks of ‘crow’s-feet’ and other kinds of struts, used to support the vessel in the kiln, are often conspicuous on the base of the larger pieces.
Neither in their glazes nor for their enamels have the Japanese ever made use of any colours unknown to the Chinese, nor until quite recent times have they paid much attention to single glazes. There is, however, one important exception to this last statement, in the Sei-ji or celadon ware, which with them has always been the ideal of classical perfection, and which they have imitated with varied success. For their reds they have always been confined to pigments derived from iron, but with these opaque intractable materials they have obtained a great variety of effects, especially by means of delicate gradations of strength. In the case of the blue under the glaze, the Japanese have never attained to the mastery of their teachers: there is very commonly a tendency of the colour to run, and a bluish tint is thereby given to the white ground; the blue, moreover, on the older specimens, is generally dull, and in modern times often crude and unpleasant.
The shapes and uses of Japanese porcelain start, for the most part, from Chinese models of Ming times, but there are a few forms that are not found in China. The hi-bachi or fire-bowl, though more commonly of bronze, we sometimes find made of celadon or of blue and white porcelain; the kôrô or incense-burner, with a cover of pierced metal, is a form characteristic of Japan; and the more elaborate choshi-buro or ‘clove-bath’ is, I think, peculiar to the country; so, too, are both the saké-bottle of cylindrical or square section, with a curved lip for pouring, and the little cups, in sets of three, often of egg-shell ware, from which the saké is drunk. The use of the miniature teapot, in which the better sort of tea is infused, is again confined to Japan; but these little kibisho, unlike the vessels for powdered tea used in the Cha-no-yu, have not, I think, been long in fashion.
We have described the three kinds of porcelain made in Hizen for exportation to Europe, and we have seen that by the middle of the seventeenth century this commerce, in the hands of the Dutch, and to some extent of the Chinese, had already attained large proportions. Before turning to the kilns that sprung up in other parts of Japan during the eighteenth century—of these the origin in every case can be traced back directly or indirectly to the early Hizen factories—we must say a word about some other varieties of porcelain made in the same neighbourhood, but not destined for foreign use.
The village or town of Arita, of which the better-known Imari is the port, lies about fifty miles to the north-east of Nagasaki, and it may almost be regarded as the King-te-chen of Japan. The clay and china-stone used there is now brought, for the most part, from the adjacent islands, from Hirado, from Amakusa, and even from the more remote Goto islands. By a combination of some of the most important potters of the district, and with the assistance of some wealthy merchants, a company, the Koransha, was formed some twenty-five years ago,123 and an attempt was made to keep up the quality of the porcelain produced, at least from a technical point of view. It was certainly time for some such effort to be made, for about that period, just after the Philadelphia Exhibition, the arts of Japan reached perhaps their nadir.
Mikôchi or Hirado Ware.—It was with a somewhat similar object that, long before this—about the middle of the eighteenth century—the feudal lord of Hirado had taken some of the kilns near Arita under his patronage, and had also attempted to regulate the wasteful and careless way in which the materials were quarried on the slopes of Idzumi Yama. This was the origin of the beautiful Mikôchi (Mi-ka-uchi) ware, which was at first produced only for the use of the prince and of his friends, or for presentation to the Shogun.
To understand the important influence of this aristocratic patronage upon the scattered kilns of Japan (only a few of these, indeed, produced porcelain), I cannot do better than quote the words of Captain Brinkley, perhaps our first authority on Japanese ceramics: ‘During the two centuries that represent the golden age of Japanese ceramic art, that is to say, from 1645 to 1845, every factory of any importance was under the direct patronage either of the nobleman in whose fief it lay, or of some wealthy amateur whose whole business in life was comprised in the cultivation of the Cha-no-yu. The wares produced, if they did not represent the independent efforts of artists seeking to achieve or maintain celebrity, were undertaken in compliance with the orders of the workman’s liege lord, or of some other exalted personage. Considerations of cost were entirely set aside, no expenditure of time and toil were deemed excessive, and the slightest blemish sufficed to secure the condemnation of the piece.’ All these conditions were swept away by the revolution of 1868 and by the opening of the country to foreigners. ‘Codes of subtle æsthetics and criticisms of exacting amateurs had no longer to be considered, but in their stead the artist found himself confronted by the Western market with all its elements of sordid haste and superficial judgment.’
To return to the Mikôchi porcelain, this Hirado ware, for it was known also by that name, produced at the prince’s kilns, six miles to the south of Arita, was for more than a hundred years regarded as the ne plus ultra among Japanese porcelain, and its value was enhanced by the fact that the ware never found its way into commerce. In the sous couverte blue it was sought to imitate the paler type of the old Ming ware. The best-known examples of this blue decoration are seen on the little cups delicately painted with Chinese boys at play under pine-trees—the more the boys the better the ware, it is said. Careful manipulation of the clay and finish of surface has never been carried to a higher point than in the varieties of this porcelain worked with pierced patterns and ornaments in relief, so prized by Japanese collectors. On these we find, in addition to the blue, a peculiar tint of pale brown. Of this coloured ware there are some good specimens at South Kensington.
Ôkôchi or Nabeshima Ware.—The same high technical finish has been attained in the Ôkôchi porcelain made at the village of that name (Ô-kawa-uchi) three miles to the north of Arita. The kilns here were patronised by the Nabeshima princes, who belonged to one of the greatest feudal families of old Japan. In this case also, the small highly finished pieces were destined for presents only and were never sold. This ware is generally to be identified by the comb-like pattern (Japanese Kushi-ki), painted in blue round the base of the cups and bowls.124 Like the little Chinese boys of the Mikôchi ware, this pattern is often seen on very inferior ware of quite modern manufacture. A peculiar kind of finely crackled celadon was also made at Ôkôchi.
In the Arita district are many other factories, some of which, as those at Matsugawa, have at times produced excellent ware. Of most of these private kilns, however, the chief outturn has always been confined to the blue and white sometsuke for domestic use.
We have now to follow the steps by which the knowledge of porcelain was carried from the western island to other parts of Japan. We had better pass at once to the Kioto kilns, for although the manufacture of porcelain was not introduced at the old capital so early as at some other places in the main island, yet the skill of its artist potters and their connection with the imperial court led, in the course of the eighteenth century, to the spread of their influence in every direction.
Kioto was already in the sixteenth century the seat of more than one ceramic industry, but it was not so much the problem of the materials for a true porcelain, as the questions connected with the coloured enamels lately brought over from the West, that excited the curiosity of the Kioto potter at this time. The story goes that one Aoyama Koyemon (I quote again from The Chrysanthemum, April 1883), who came to Kioto from the porcelain district of Hizen, to obtain orders for the new enamelled ware, allowed the secret of its manufacture to be wormed out of him by a crafty Kioto dealer, and that for this breach of trust the wretched ‘traveller’ was crucified by his liege lord on his return to Arita. This occurred just before the death of the great ceramic artist Ninsei (about 1660), and the old potter at once obtained the knowledge of the new enamelling process from the above-mentioned crockery merchant. This man, we should add—the dealer—is said to have gone mad when he heard the dreadful fate of his friend Koyemon—a fate for which he was in so large a measure responsible. Such stories as this, and there are other similar ones in the annals of Japanese ceramics, call to mind the adventures of the experts of the eighteenth century, who trafficked with the German princes in the arcana of the newly introduced porcelain, but for these German experts the penalties for breach of confidence were not of so severe a nature.
Nomomura Ninsei is generally held to be the greatest ceramic artist that Japan has produced. The decorated stoneware and pottery that he turned out late in life may be regarded as the common source from which the wares produced in the two main groups of kilns in the neighbourhood of Kioto took their origin. With one of these groups, with the wares produced in the factories around Awata, we are not concerned here, for no porcelain was ever produced in that suburb of Kioto. But to the other group of kilns, called after the beautiful temple of Kiyomidzu, to the north of Kioto, belong some of the most artistic specimens of porcelain in our collections. It was here that this somewhat uncongenial material was forced for the first time to adapt itself to the fanciful genius of the people. It was to this district that the great original artist Kenzan, the brother of the still more famous Ogata Korin, came towards the end of the seventeenth century. It is true that little of this artist’s work is executed in a true porcelain, but his picturesque signature, scrawled in black, is sometimes found on the so-called more noble ware (Pl. B. 21). Like his brother Korin, Kenzan obtained his effects by the simplest means, sometimes by mere patches of colour cunningly distributed over the surface. The work of both these men has of late found many admirers and imitators in France.
It was not till the beginning of the eighteenth century that we have any definite record of the manufacture of porcelain in Kioto. About that time Yeisen devoted himself to the imitation of Chinese celadon. If we are to find any common note in the wares produced in the various Kioto potteries, it would be in a certain studied rudeness both in shape and decoration, the very opposite of the delicately finished products of the Hizen kilns. The rare pieces of Ming porcelain with coloured decoration were eagerly sought for and copied, not in a slavish way, but rather so as to catch the spirit of their design. In fact these Japanese copies might be made to throw some light on that rather obscure subject, the origin of enamel decoration in China in the days of the later Ming emperors.
An apparently early class of Chinese enamelled ware, somewhat rudely painted with a predominant iron red combined with a subordinate green, was a great favourite with the Kioto potters, but we find also copies of the Wan-li ‘pentad,’ the designs in this case sparely scattered over the ground, generally in formal patterns of a textile type. The blue and purple ware with ribbed cloisons which the Japanese associate with their mysterious land of Kochi was also in favour, but at Kioto, I think, this ware was not copied in porcelain. So of the blue and white made at this time at Kiyomidzu, it is distinguished from both the Hizen and the Seto wares by a certain rudeness in the shape and decoration, a character preserved by a great deal of the sometsuke still made in this district.
Quite a different spirit was, however, brought in by Zengoro Riyozen, the tenth descendant of a famous family of potters. This Zengoro was a potter of universal genius, the foremost ceramic artist indeed of the peaceful and luxurious period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Tokugawa Shogun at Tokiyo set an example of an extravagant expenditure and brilliant display which was only too readily followed at the courts of the great feudal nobles. In the art work of that time, in spite of the unsurpassed perfection of execution and love of gorgeous decoration, we can already trace the signs of a coming decay. Zengoro, besides reviving with some success the deep sapphire blue, sous couverte, of Ming times, succeeded in producing from an iron-oxide a red ground which vied with the famous coral reds of the previous century in China. But it was rather the Ming red, sous couverte, that made from ‘powdered rubies of the West,’ that he professed to copy. Over the red ground of his plates and little bowls he painted his design in gold of the finest quality, and on the white ground of the inside placed a scant decoration of his under-glaze sapphire blue. Some of these dainty little cups are shown in a table-case in the British Museum, but if we compare them with the exquisite Ming bowls of a deep red derived from copper in the same collection, the difference of the quality of the two tints is at once apparent. As, however, it was a matter of convenance to go back to a Ming model, it was with the latter ware that Zengoro’s work was compared. It was for his success in this kind of decoration (produced about the years 1806-1817) that the great Kioto potter received from his patron, the prince of Kishiu, a seal with the character yeiraku, or reading in modern Chinese Yung-lo, the name of the Ming emperor (1402-24) with whom the red copper glaze is traditionally associated (Pl. B. 22).125 This, then, is the origin of the name Yeiraku kinrande for the ‘gold brocade’ ware of Zengoro. At a later time this form of decoration was carried by Zengoro’s son to Kaga, where in a debased form it became characteristic of a ware with which our markets were at one time flooded.
Kishiu Ware.—This kinrande, however, is not the only kind of porcelain with which the name of this protean artist is associated. Although the name Yeiraku given him by the Prince Nariyuki is generally connected with his brilliant red and gold ware, it was a porcelain of quite another kind that our Zengoro the tenth, or perhaps his son Hozen, the eleventh of the family, turned out from the kilns that had been erected by that prince in the garden (the Ô-niwa) of his palace near Wakayama. The Japanese tell us that this well-known Ô-niwa or Kishiu ware was made in imitation of a kind of porcelain or fayence brought long ago from Kochi, a name generally rendered as Cochin-China, in any case a country to the south of China. We have seen grounds for associating this Ô-niwa yaki rather with an early type of Chinese polychrome ware, painted on the biscuit with glazes of three or perhaps four colours. In any case, in the Japanese ware the turquoise, the purple, and the straw-coloured yellow (this last quite subordinate) are applied in a similar fashion, and this is indeed practically the only Japanese ware on which we find the turquoise colour that has played so important a part in other countries. It is here the most important colour of the triad, but occasionally we find it replaced by a deep, rich green. On this Kishiu or Ô-niwa ware, known also to the Japanese as Kairaku from another seal used by Zengoro (Pl. B. 20), the decoration is formed by ribs or lines which separate the surface into shallow cloisons. In other cases the turquoise or the aubergine purple is found alone as a monochrome glaze.
Very few, however, of the large vases of this ware that have been exported of late years to Europe, and especially to America (where the turquoise blue has always been a favourite, as in the case of Chinese porcelain), can have come from the kilns in the ‘prince’s garden.’ This ware has, indeed, for some time since, been imitated at many other places—at Tokiyo, and since 1870 especially at Kobe, where vast quantities have been manufactured for exportation. These copies have gone through the stages of degradation in design and colour that usually accompany a large commercial production.
Another famous potter, Mokubei, who worked at Kioto about the same time, is said to have made great improvements in the moulds employed by him, especially in those used for copying old Chinese pieces. But we certainly cannot accept the statement that he was the first potter in Japan to use moulds. This same Mokubei is said to have copied the richly glazed stoneware of Kochi, a ware that had long been prized by the Japanese, and to which, or rather to the kindred porcelain, we have already referred. It is described as a hard pottery, with archaic moulded decorations, coated with lustrous glazes of green, purple, yellow, and golden-bronze. Mokubei also worked for the prince of Kishiu, and it would be interesting to know what relation, if any, he had with Zengoro and his Ô-niwa yaki.126
Sanda Celadon.—The kilns set up at Sanda, a small town to the north-west of Osaka, by the feudal lord of the district, have acquired in Japan a great name on account of the celadon ware there made. This Sanda-seiji was first produced at the end of the seventeenth century, and followed more closely the famous old heavy wares of Lung-chuan than did the more delicately finished celadon porcelain made about the same time at Ôkôchi in Hizen. In addition to these wares, the Japanese lay claim to an ancient celadon of native manufacture, and much ink has been spilt in Japan upon the question of the origin of certain archaic pieces preserved in temples and private collections. The bulk of the Sanda celadon, we should say, is a solid useful ware with small artistic pretensions.
The Wares of Owari and Mino.—If, leaving Kioto, we take the old high-road to Yedo—the Tokaido—we pass through a succession of villages where the local wares are displayed in the stalls lining the route. Some of this pottery is not without merit, and historical associations give interest to more than one variety. But it is not till we have passed Nagoya, a large industrial town at the head of the Gulf of Owari, that we enter a true porcelain district—the only district in Japan that has vied with Hizen in the production of porcelain for domestic use and for exportation. Not far off is the village of Seto, the home of Toshiro; it was here that on his return from China, early in the thirteenth century, he set up the first kiln that produced in Japan a ware with any claims to artistic merit. But, as we have said at the beginning of this chapter, the ware made by Toshiro was no true porcelain, although the expression Seto-mono, derived from his native village, is used rather for porcelain than for other kinds of pottery. The term is, in fact, about equivalent to our word ‘china.’
It was not till nearly six hundred years after Toshiro’s day that the village of Seto again became prominent, when in the year 1807 the art of making porcelain was, after many difficulties, successfully introduced from Hizen. This was thanks to the energy of the potter Tamakichi, who ventured a journey to Hizen to find out the secrets of the manufacture. As a reward for his services the privilege of wearing two swords and the rights of a samurai were granted to Tamakichi by the lord of Owari. Here again we find the new industry established under the fostering care of the local prince.
Over a wide district, more especially to the east on the borders of the province of Mikawa, the decomposing granite furnishes an excellent raw material, and centres for the manufacture of porcelain have sprung up sporadically over a tract stretching away to the north, as far as the province of Mino. But most of these kilns have never produced anything better than a common blue and white ware.
In composition the paste of the Owari porcelain is much closer to the normal type than that of the Hizen wares (see note, p. 190). Of late years the Owari potters have succeeded in turning out pieces of unprecedented size, in the shape especially of dishes and of slabs for the tops of tables. From the artistic side, however, little can be said in favour of this ware: the blue is generally crude in quality, often resembling that found on the commoner European porcelain of later days.
Another art was revived some years ago in the neighbourhood of Nagoya, the chief town of this district—I mean that of enamelling in metallic cloisons (the Shipô, or ‘seven treasures’ of the Japanese), and of late years the two industries have been combined by applying the metallic cloisons and the enamel to the surface of porcelain. A similar ware has also been made at Kioto, but in this case the soft fayence of Awata has been used as a base. Enormous quantities of both these varieties of cloisonné have been brought to Europe, and when we consider the amount of skilled labour required in the manufacture, we can only marvel at the prices for which this ware is retailed in London.