38 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 



tures in view of the presence of the seals. Such canisters were the 

 models of the Oribe ware. 1 Karatsu pots are not made with a view to 

 durability and therefore not in need of affixing a seal of the furnace. 

 According to clay and glaze, they are objects of the Man. It may be 

 that Japanese who went abroad imported this ware, or some may have 

 imported the clay and glaze and baked the vessels at home. At any 

 rate, it is not the clay and glaze of Karatsu. 



II. Luzon 



Of pottery vessels of Luzon, there is a large variety. As a rule, 

 people call only jars (tsubo) and tea-canisters (cha-ire) Luzons. Owing 

 to the fact that all other articles of Luzon bear out a similarity to those 

 of Hagi, Karatsu, Seto, Bizen, Tamba, Takatori, Higo, Oribe, and 

 Shino, 2 Luzons are erroneously believed to be restricted to the above 

 two articles. Comparing the specimens discovered by me with those 

 imported at present by Chinese junks, I may give the following de- 

 scriptions of the various wares. 



1. Tamba looks very much like Luzon. Luzon is of hard clay 

 and lustrous glaze. Greenish -yellow glaze is splashed (fukidasu) over 

 the bottom. Our home-made ware (i. e. Tamba), however, is soft, 

 and greenish -yellow glaze is painted on the bottom. It frequently 



1 Brinkley, p. 275. 



2 These are, with the exception of Shino, names of pottery-producing localities 

 in Japan; the wares themselves are simply named for the places of production. 

 Most of them have been referred to in the preceding chapter. Hagi is the chief 

 town in the province of Nagato where pottery kilns were started in the sixteenth 

 century by a Korean whose descendants have continued the manufacture down to the 

 present time. Higo is the principal province on the island of Kiushu where pottery- 

 making, also under Korean influence, commenced in 1598. The Shino pottery, a 

 rude stoneware of thick, white crackled glaze, decorated with primitive designs in 

 dark-brown (shibu) pigments, was originated in 1480 by Shino Ienobu, a celebrated 

 master of the tea-ceremonies (Brinkley, p. 276); Morse (p. 191) gives 1700 as the 

 earliest date to which pieces recognized under the name of Shino go back, but the 

 type of this pottery must have been made long before this date, as the gray, white- 

 inlaid Shino is accorded an age of three hundred and fifty years. 



Our author Tanaka has a different story to tell regarding the origin of Shino. 

 In his second volume (p. 9) he relates that Shino Munenobu utilized a white-glazed 

 water-basin from Luzon and turned it into a rice-bowl, which gave rise to the name 

 "bowl of Shino" {Shino chawan) ; later on, this bowl was handed down to Imai Mune- 

 hisa, but the book Mei-butsu-ki ("Records of Famous Objects") says that it is 

 Chinese; imitations of this bowl made in Owari are called Shino-yaki; there are 

 many wares from Luzon and Annam which are like Shinoyaki, and which should be 

 carefully distinguished according to clay and glaze. This account plainly shows how 

 hazy and uncertain Japanese traditions regarding their potters and pottery are. 

 The man Shino Munenobu is called by Brinkley Shino Ienobu, by Morse Shino 

 Saburo or Shino Oribe (pseudonym Shino So-on), by T. Oueda Shino Soshin. Has 

 he really lived, and when? If he lived in the latter part of the fifteenth century, as 

 maintained by a weak tradition, he is not very likely to have obtained any pottery 

 from Luzon, as there is no evidence of Japan having had any intercourse with the 

 Philippines at such an early date. 



