July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 33 



to a fire, and the glaze assumed a golden hue. The clay was a mixture 

 of yellow and red earths and changed into a brown. It proved to be a 

 Namban production. 



Further among Yashiro Karatsu-hakeme 1 wares, there was a 

 specimen of black-purplish clay emitting, when struck, a metallic 

 sound. I had a piece broken out, and clay and glaze on examination 

 under a lense attested to its being Namban. Among old Hakeme, 

 that kind known as kodai 2 with black-purplish clay and dark-brown 3 

 and silvery lustre is Namban Hakeme. When investigating some pieces 

 without marks among Bizen, 4 Imbe, 5 Karatsu, 6 and Tamba, 7 they 

 proved to be Namban. 



Mishima ("Three Islands") pottery is that made on the three 

 islands of Amakawa, Luzon, and Formosa. Among this so-called class 

 of Mishima, the large pieces with purple-black clay and green glaze 

 (sei-yaku) are Luzon pottery; 8 those of white clay and grayish 9 glaze 

 are Amakawa. As to Formosa, I have as yet no proofs, but pieces 

 popularly called Hagi Mishima 10 with a light lustre and decorated with 



1 Karatsu or Nagoya on the north-west coast of Hizen has been the harbour of 

 entry and exit for the greater part of the traffic between Japan, China and Korea; 

 the name Karatsu means "port for China." Brinkley (/. c, pp. 307 et seq.) and 

 Edward S. Morse (Catalogue of the Morse Collection of Japanese Pottery, pp. 37 

 et seq.) have devoted full discussions to the pottery productions of Karatsu. Those 

 with a broad brush-mark of white are termed hakeme, i. e. brush-marked. Brinkley 

 maintains that the potters of Karatsu were chiefly imitators, and that, their best 

 efforts being intended for the tea-clubs, they took as models the rusty wares of 

 Korea, Annam, Luzon, etc., or the choicer but still sombre products of the Seto kilns. 

 If this statement be correct, the specimen alluded to above might be also a Karatsu 

 imitation of a Namban pottery. 



2 Lit. high terrace. 



3 Jap. shibu, the juice expressed from unripe persimmons (kaki), from which a 

 dark-Drown pigment for underglaze decoration was obtained in Korea (Brinkley, 

 p. 49). 



* The province of Bizen is celebrated for its hard reddish-brown stoneware 

 described by Brinkley (pp. 328 et seq.) and Morse (pp. 49 et seq.). 



5 Imbe is a district in the province of Bizen. Under the name Imbe-yaki, ' ' pot- 

 tery of Imbe," or Ko-Bizen, "Old Bizen," the ware made there at the end of the 

 sixteenth century is understood (Brinkley, p. 329). Nearly every piece of Imbe 

 ware bears a mark of some kind, usually impressed (Morse, p. 49) so that the 

 pieces without marks seem to be the exceptions justifying to some extent the sus- 

 picion of a foreign origin. 



6 It is difficult to understand what is meant by unmarked pieces of Karatsu, as 

 the Karatsu potters were not in the habit of marking their productions, and have 

 left no personal records (Brinkley, p. 311). See also the last paragraph of this 

 chapter where the presence of marks on Karatsu is utilized as evidence of its foreign 

 origin. 



7 On the pottery of the province of Tamba see Brinkley, p. 398, and Morse, 

 pp. 178, 347, 360. 



8 Apparently celadons. 



'Jap. shiro-nezumi, "white rat." 



10 Manufactured in the province of Nagato, with a pearl gray glaze (Brinkley, 

 p. 343; Morse, p. 81). 



