# Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 8/Chapter 8

Chapter VIII
MODERN DEVELOPMENTS OF JAPANESE KERAMICS
SPEAKING broadly, the distinguished products of Japanese keramic art in pre-Meiji days may be said to have been the porcelains of Hizen and Kutani and the faiences of Satsuma and Kyōtō. Many other wares have attracted attention, but though not without merits and even beauties, they are comparatively insignificant. In the term "Hizen porcelains" are included not merely the richly decorated Imari ware—the "Old Japan" of Western collectors—but also the finely modelled and delicately coloured masterpieces of Hirado, and the jewelled specimens of Nabeshima which undoubtedly stand at the head of all Japanese porcelains ornamented with vitrifiable enamels over the glaze. Many examples of these varieties deserve the enthusiastic admiration they have received, yet they unquestionably belong to a lower rank of keramic achievements than the choice productions of Chinese kilns. The potters of the Middle Kingdom, from the early eras of the Ming dynasty down to the latest years of the eighteenth century, stood absolutely without rivals—haud æqui aut secundi—as makers of porcelain. Their technical ability was incomparable,—though in grace of decorative conception they yielded the palm to the Japanese, ​—-and the representative specimens they bequeathed to posterity remained, until quite recently, far beyond the imitative capacity of European or Asiatic experts. As for faience and pottery, however, the Chinese despised them in all forms, with one notable exception, the Yishing-yao, known in the Occident as boccaro. Even the Yishing-yao, too, owed much of its popularity to special utility. It was essentially the ware of the tea-drinker. If in the best specimens exquisite modelling, wonderful accuracy of finish, and pâtes of interesting tints are found, such pieces are, none the less, stamped prominently with the character of utensils rather than with that of works of art. In short, the artistic output of Chinese kilns in their palmiest days was, not faience or pottery, but porcelain, whether of soft or hard paste. Japan, on the contrary, owes her keramic distinction in the main to her faience. A great deal has been said by enthusiastic writers about the Famille Chrysanthemo-Peonienne of Imari, and the Genre Kakiemon of Nabeshima, but these porcelains, beautiful as they undoubtedly are, cannot be placed on the same level with the Kwanyao and Famille Rose of the Chinese experts. The Imari ware, even though its thick biscuit and generally ungraceful shapes be omitted from the account, shows no enamels that can rival the exquisitely soft, broken tints of the Famille Rose; and the Kakiemon porcelain, for all its rich though chaste contrasts, lacks the delicate transmitted tints of the shell-like Kwan-yao. So, too, the blue-and-white porcelain of Hirado, though assisted by exceptional tenderness of sous-pâte colour, by milk-white glaze, by great beauty of decorative design and often by an admirable use of the modelling or graving tool, represents a keramic ​achievement palpably below the soft-paste Kai-pien-yao of Ching-tê-chêng. It is a curious and interesting fact that this last product of Chinese skill remained unknown in Japan down to very recent days. In the eyes of a Chinese connoisseur, no blue-and-white porcelain worthy of consideration exists, or ever has existed, except the Kai-pien-yao, with its imponderable pâte, its wax-like surface, and its rich, glowing blue, entirely free from superficiality or garishness, and broken into a thousand tints by the microscopic crackle of the glaze. The Japanese, although they obtained from their neighbour almost everything of value she had to give them, did not know this wonderful ware, and their ignorance is in itself sufficient to prove their keramic inferiority. There remains, too, a wide domain in which the Chinese developed high skill, whereas the Japanese can scarcely be said to have entered it at all; namely, the domain of monochromes and polychromes, striking every note of colour from the richest to the most delicate; the domain of truité and flambé glazes, of "transmutation ware" (Yō-pien-yao), and of egg-shell with incised or translucid decoration. In all that region of achievement, the Chinese potters stood alone and seemingly unapproachable. The Japanese, on the contrary, made a specialty of faience, and in that particular line they reached a high standard of excellence. No faience produced either in China or any other Oriental country can dispute the palm with really representative specimens of Satsuma ware. Not without full reason have Western connoisseurs lavished panegyrics upon that exquisite production. The faience of the Kyōtō artists never reached quite to the level of the Satsuma in quality of pâte and glowing mellowness of decora​tion: their materials were slightly inferior. But their skill as decorators was as great as its range was wide, and they produced a multitude of masterpieces on which alone Japan's keramic fame might safely be rested.
Such, briefly speaking, had been the story of the art and the distinction between the methods of its practice in China and Japan until the commencement of a new era in the latter country. When the mediatisation of the fiefs, in 1871, terminated the local patronage hitherto extended so munificently to keramic and other artists, the Japanese gradually learned that they must thenceforth depend chiefly upon the markets of Europe and America. They had to appeal, in short, to an entirely new gallery, and how to secure its approval was to them a perplexing problem. Perhaps their wisest plan would have been to adhere strictly to pure Japanese canons during that period of shifting patronage, and they have been severely censured by some critics for not exhibiting such conservatism. But when has it been the habit of sellers to impose their own standards upon buyers rather than to cater to the latter's tastes? Great painters may, in a measure, create an atmosphere for themselves; yet even the greatest painter, though he may direct and elevate, must always remain in touch with the spirit of the time in which he lives and of the public to whom he appeals. The same rule applies with much greater inflexibility to the art-artisan. It was but natural that the Japanese potter, when required to win favour in Europe and America, should endeavour to adapt his work to Western taste.
In the early years of the Meiji era, there was a ​period of complete prostitution. No new skill was developed, and what remained of the old was expended chiefly upon the manufacture of meretricious objects, disfigured by excess of decoration and not relieved by any excellence of technique. In spite of their artistic defects, these specimens were exported in considerable numbers by merchants in the foreign settlements, and, their first cost being very low, they found a not unremunerative market. But as European and American collectors became better acquainted with the capacities of the pre-Meiji potters, the great inferiority of these new specimens was recognised, and, the prices commanded by the old wares gradually appreciated. What then happened was very natural: imitations of the old wares were produced, and having been sufficiently disfigured by staining and other processes calculated to lend an air of rust and age, were sold to ignorant persons, who laboured under the singular yet common hallucination that the points to be looked for in specimens from early kilns are, not technical excellence, decorative tastefulness and richness of colour, but dinginess, imperfections, and dirt; persons who imagined, in short, that defects which they would condemn at once in new porcelains ought to be regarded as merits in old. Of course a trade of that kind, based on deception, could not have permanent success. One of the imitators of "old Satsuma" was among the first to perceive that a new line must be struck out. Yet the earliest results of his awakened perception helped to demonstrate still further the depraved spirit that had come over Japanese art. For he applied himself to manufacture wares having a close affinity with the shocking monstrosities used for sepulchral purposes in ancient Apulia, where frag​ments of dissected satyrs, busts of nymphs or halves of horses were considered graceful excrescences for the adornment of an amphora or a pithos. This Makuzu faience, produced by the now justly celebrated Miyagawa Shōzan of Ota (near Yokohama), survives in the form of vases and pots having birds, reptiles, flowers, crustacea, and so forth, plastered over the surface; specimens that disgrace the period of their manufacture and represent probably the worst aberration of Japanese keramic conception.
A production so degraded as the early Makuzu faience could not possibly have long vogue. Miyagawa soon began to cast about for a better inspiration, and found it in the monochromes and polychromes of the Chinese Kang-hsi and Yung-cheng kilns. The extraordinary value attaching to the incomparable red glazes of China, not only in the country of their provenance, but also in the United States of America, where collectors showed a fine instinct in this matter, seems to have suggested to Miyagawa the idea of imitation. He took for model the rich and delicate "liquid-dawn" monochrome, and succeeded in producing, not indeed a rival of that grand ware, but at any rate some specimens of considerable merit. Thenceforth his example was largely followed, and it may now be said that the tendency of many of the best Japanese keramists is to copy Chinese chefs d'œuvre. To find them thus renewing their keramic reputation by reverting to Chinese models, is not only another tribute to the perennial supremacy of Chinese porcelains, but also a fresh illustration of the eclectic genius of Japanese art. All the products of this new effort are porcelains proper. It is not intended to suggest that beautiful faience has ceased to be a Japa​nese specialty. The Kyōtō potters still tread successfully in the old grooves. But the question here is of a novel departure which distinguishes the present era. Seven kilns are devoted, wholly or in part, to the new wares; namely, that of Miyagawa Shōzan of Ota; that of Seifū Yōhei of Kyōtō; those of Takemoto Hayata and Kato Tomotaro of Tōkyō; that of Higuchi Haruzane of Hirado; that of Shida Yasukyo of Kaga and that of Kato Masukichi of Seto.
Among the seven keramists here enumerated, Seifu of Kyōtō probably enjoys the highest reputation. He manufactures monochromatic and jewelled porcelain and faience, which differ essentially from the traditional Kyōtō types, their models being taken direct from China. But a sharp distinction has to be drawn between the method of Seifū and that of the other six keramists mentioned above as following Chinese fashions. It is this, that whereas the latter produce their chromatic effects by mixing the colouring matter with the glaze, Seifū paints the biscuit with a pigment over which he runs a translucid colourless glaze. The Kyōtō artist's process is much easier than that of his rivals, and although his monochromes are often of most pleasing delicacy and fine tone, they do not belong by any means to the same category of technical excellence as the wares they imitate. From this judgment must be excepted, however, his ivory-white and céladon wares, as well as his porcelains decorated with blue, or blue and red sous couverte, and with vitrifiable enamels over the glaze. In these five varieties he is emphatically great. It cannot be said, indeed, that his céladon shows the velvety richness of surface and tenderness of colour that distinguish the old Kuang-yao and Lungchuan-yao, or that he has ever essayed the ​moss-edged crackle of the beautiful Ko-yao. But his céladon certainly equals the more modern-Chinese examples from the Kang-hsi and Yung-cheng kilns. As for his ivory-white, it distinctly surpasses the Chinese Ming Chen-yao in every quality except an indescribable intimacy of glaze and pâte which probably can never be obtained by either Japanese or European methods.
Miyagawa Shōzan, or Makuzu as he is generally called, has never followed Seifū's example in descending from the difficult manipulation of coloured glazes to the comparatively simple process of painted biscuit. This comment does not refer, it need scarcely be said, to the use of blue and red sous couverte. In that class of beautiful ware the application of pigment to the unglazed pâte is inevitable, and both Seifū and Miyagawa, working on the same lines as their Chinese predecessors, produce porcelains that almost rank with choice Kang-hsi specimens, though they have not yet mastered the processes sufficiently to employ them in the manufacture of wares of moderate price. But in the matter of true monochromatic and polychromatic glazes, to Shōzan belongs the credit of having inaugurated Chinese fashions, and if he has never fully succeeded in achieving Lang-yao (sang-de-bauf), Chi-hung (liquid-dawn red), Chiang-tou-hung (bean-blossom red, the "peach-blow" of American collectors), or above all Pin-kwo-tsing (apple-green with red bloom), his efforts to imitate them have resulted in some very interesting pieces.
Takemoto and Kato of Tōkyō entered the field subsequently to Shōzan, but follow the same models approximately. Takemoto, however, has made a specialty of black glazes, his aim being to rival the ​Sung Chien-yao, with its glaze of mirror-black or raven's-wing green, and its leveret-fur streaking or russet-moss dappling, the prince of all wares in the estimation of the Japanese tea-clubs. Like Shōzan, he is still very far from his original, but, also like Shōzan, he produces highly meritorious pieces in his efforts to reach an ideal that will probably continue to elude him for ever. Of Kato there is not much to be said. He has not succeeded in winning great distinction, but he manufactures some very delicate monochromes, fully deserving to be classed among prominent evidences of the new departure, and he has also been able to produce porcelains decorated with blue under the glaze that are almost equal to fine specimens of the best-period Chinese ware. Indeed it must be admitted that Japan's modern potters have solved the problem long supposed to be insolvable, the problem of blue under the glaze. Seifū, Miyagawa, Kato Tomotaro, and others are turning out admirable specimens of that class, though there is no evidence that they will ever achieve the soft-paste blue-and-white of the Chinese masters.
Higuchi of Hirado is to be classed with keramists of the new school on account of one ware only, namely, porcelain having translucid decoration, the so-called "grains-of-rice" of American collectors, designated "fire-fly style" (hotaru-de) in Japan. That, however, is an achievement of no small consequence, especially since it had never previously been essayed outside China. The Hirado expert has not yet attained technical skill equal to that of the Chinese. He cannot, like them, cover the greater part of a specimen's surface with a lace-work of transparent decoration, exciting wonder that pâte deprived so ​greatly of continuity could have been manipulated without accident. But his artistic instincts are higher than those of the Chinese, and there is reasonable hope that in time he may excel their best works. In other respects the Hirado factories do not produce wares so beautiful as those manufactured there between 1759 and 1840, when the Hirado-yaki stood at the head of all Japanese porcelain on account of its pure, close-grained pâte, its lustrous milk-white glaze, and the soft clear blue of its carefully executed decoration.
When the Owari potters entered the new school, which was not until 1894, they took flambé glazes for their first models, and their pieces presented an air of novelty that attracted attention. But the style was not calculated to win general popularity, and they soon entered a much better route, namely, the manufacture of egg-shell porcelain. Chinese potters of the Yung-lo era (1403-1424) enriched their country with ware to which the name of totai-ki (bodiless utensil) was given on account of its wonderfully attenuated pâte. The finest specimens of this porcelain had incised decoration, sparingly employed but adding much to the beauty of the piece. In subsequent eras the potters of Ching-tê-chên did not fail to continue this remarkable manufacture, but its only Japanese representative was a porcelain distinctly inferior in more than one respect, namely, the egg-shell utensils of Hizen and Hirado, some of which had finely woven basket-cases to protect their extreme fragility. The Seto experts, however, are now making bowls, cups, and vases that rank nearly as high as the celebrated Yung-lo totai-ki. In purity of tone and velvet-like gloss of surface there is distinct inferiority on the ​side of the Japanese ware, but in thinness of pâte it supports comparison with, and in profusion and beauty of incised decoration it excels, its Chinese original.
Latest of all to acknowledge the impulse of the new departure have been the potters of Kaga. For many years their ware enjoyed the credit, or discredit, of being the most lavishly decorated porcelain in Japan. It is known to Western collectors as a product blazing with red and gold, a very degenerate offspring of the Chinese Ming type which Hozen of Kyōto reproduced so beautifully at the beginning of the nineteenth century under the name of Eiraku-yaki. Within the past six years, however, a totally new departure has been made by Morishita Hachizaemon, a keramic expert, in conjunction with Shida Yasukyo, president of the Kaga Products Joint Stock Company (Kaga Bussan Kabushiki Kaisha) and teacher in the Kaga Industrial School. The line chosen by these keramists is purely Chinese. Their great aim seems to be the production of the exquisite Chinese monochromes known as u-kwo-tien-tsing (blue of the sky after rain) and yueh-peh (clair-de-lune), into the composition of both of which glazes gold enters. But they also devote much attention to porcelains decorated with blue or red sous couverte. Their work shows much promise, but like all fine specimens of the Sinico-Japanese school, the prices are too high to attract wide custom.
The Satsuma potters also have made a new departure, but in their case originality may be claimed, since no prototype is to be found among Chinese wares. They now produce faience with designs pierced à jour in a manner that is at once very beau​tiful and extraordinarily delicate. Satsuma keramists were never remarkable for such work in former times. It belonged almost solely to the province of the Hirado potters, and they used it solely in a subsidiary rôle, as for the tops of censers or for some trivial part of an alcove statuette. But what the Satsuma artists have now conceived is pierced decoration constituting the sole ornamentation of a specimen. It appears at first sight that translucid porcelain should be a better and more natural medium for work of this kind, since faience does not lend itself so readily to the production of sharp edges and clearly chiselled contours. But no one who has seen the Satsuma work can hesitate in choosing between the results of the process in the two materials, faience and porcelain. The former shows softness and grace which cannot possibly be obtained with the latter. Chinese keramists understood this well. All their exquisite modelling in relief was done with soft-paste porcelain, and everybody who has had an opportunity of examining their masterpieces in that line cannot have failed to appreciate the charm of such work. Chiselling in relief and chiselling à jour are different operations, of course, but the decorative features of both are similar, and the quality of ware that lends itself to an admirable result in the case of the one is equally essential for the other. The new Satsuma method is not described exhaustively as decoration à jour. Much of it is chiselling in the round, a wholly new departure. It is difficult to speak too highly of the delightful effect produced. Such a feat of technical skill is possible only in a country where expert labour is satisfied with a very small reward. An interesting fact connected with this new departure is that it was inaugurated by Chin ​Jukan, a descendant of one of the Korean potters who were brought from the peninsula by Hideyoshi's general in the sixteenth century.
Ito Tozan of Kyōtō is a keramist of the highest rank, though his new specialty belongs to a different class of work from that of the seven experts mentioned above. He manufactures faience decorated with a number of sous-couverte colours—blue, green, ed, yellow, black, and purple—and the technical features of his ware are irreproachable. Doubtless he derived inspiration from the Asahi-yaki of Tōkyō, but his faience takes artistic rank incomparably higher than that held by the now little admired product of the capital.
The sum of the matter is that the modern Japanese keramist, after many efforts to cater to the taste of the Occident, evidently concludes that his best hope consists in devoting all his technical and artistic resources to reproducing the celebrated wares of China. In explanation of the fact that he did not essay that route in former times, it may be noted, first, that he had only a limited acquaintance with the wares in question; secondly, that Japanese connoisseurs never attached any value to their countrymen's imitations of Chinese porcelains so long as the originals were obtainable; thirdly, that, the keramic art of China not having fallen into its present state of decadence, the idea of competing with it did not occur to outsiders; and fourthly, that Europe and America had not developed their present keen appreciation of Chinese masterpieces. Yet it is remarkable that China, at the close of the nineteenth century, should have again furnished models to Japanese eclecticism. There are reasons which render it doubtful whether the Jap​anese potter, without a radical change of technical methods, will ever reach the level upon which the Chinese masters stood, but it is very probable that he may produce en route many beautiful and excellent varieties of porcelain.
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