in art that has never been surpassed and seldom equalled elsewhere in the world and Japan was an eager pupil of those master artists. Actually there were two ways in which Japan received Chinese art and culture, one, perhaps the first, through Korea and Korean teachers; and the other through Chinese teachers who came to Japan direct from China and through Japanese who went to China to study.
Japanese ceramic art has felt the influence of four great waves of culture from outside the narrow borders of the country.
First:—That of the T'ang dynasty (618 to 907) and the Sung dynasty (960 to 1126). This brought with it the beautiful old celadons which are known as seiji in Japan, and three colour pottery (sansai). In their attempt to reproduce the Chinese celadon wares the Japanese happened upon Yellow Seto (ki seto yaki) in the sixteenth century and this ware has been accepted by them as meeting their aesthetic needs.
Second:—From Korea in the sixteenth century came a crude form of porcelain, white wares (kakuji) and under-glaze blue wares (sometsuke). Koreans built kilns in North Kyushu at Karatsu and in South Kyushu at Satsuma and elsewhere.
Third:—About the middle of the seventeenth century the Chinese art of overglaze decoration on pottery came to Japan and on the foundation laid by the labours of Korean and Japanese potters that art was developed in Japan. This was the art of the Ming dynasty (1368-1643) and the early part of the Ching dynasty (1644-1910) which from small beginnings in the island of Kyushu spread all over Japan by the eighteenth century.
Fourth:—An influence undoubtedly cultural but of doubtful artistic value exerted by the demand for wares pleasing to the people of other countries. This was first felt early in the seventeenth century, spearheaded then by Dutch traders and now in the twentieth century spearheaded by American merchants. Although this influence is directed on wares for export it did not fail to affect the purely local art.
It is not the intention of the author of this book to sit in judgement on the ceramic art of Japan in this the year of our Lord 1951 (the 26th year of Showa in Japan) for we feel that is best left to the discretion of our readers. Our effort is to enable them to recognize what is essentially Japanese and what is due to outside influences. We believe that Japan has contributed to the ceramic art of the world through her love for simplicity and naturalness. We acknowledge Japan's great debt to older cultures but we also think that she has something of value to offer in return. Of all the forms of art in Japan that of pottery is perhaps the best illustration of the Japanese sense of individuality. Japanese porcelains do not show this as pottery does, porcelains are more apt to follow stereotyped shapes and patterns; but in the making of pottery wares the Japanese artist allows his individual fancy full sway.
The seclusion policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate has placed Japan in the position of being the least understood country in the Orient, culturally. When, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Japan burst forth from this seclusion, her people's admiration of foreign things knew no bounds and, alas, also no discrimination. Japanese taste and Japanese art went into abeyance and ceramic productions in their attempt to appeal to European taste (of which Japanese artisans had not the faintest conception) reached unbelievably low levels. Thus, to judge Japanese ceramic art by things that have gone abroad is obviously unfair. The attitude towards wares for export taken by the Japanese in general is one of total indifference, they simply ignore them, and it is doubtful if there is in existence any writing in Japanese on this subject.
Of course some of the productions intended for export must have remained in Japan and these have a certain value to Japanese collectors as marking successive steps in the development of Japanese ceramic art, or are treasured as family possessions because of the circumstances under which they came into the possession of the owners. With the early wares of Imari as with the once scorned woodblock prints (ukiyo ye) the passage of time has brought about a change in the thinking of some Japanese. And dealers in antiques for the tourist trade and manufacturers are obligingly reproducing these old wares for sale to the tourist of today.
Historical Outline of the Development of
Oriental Ceramic Wares
The history of the development of decorated ceramic wares runs parallel with the history of many other forms of culture and civilization, from West to East. Cultural influences originating in such ancient civilizations as Egypt, Persia, and Greece traveled eastward by camel caravans over the deserts and by ships over the seas. This fact must not be forgotten in any attempt to understand the cultural products of Asia, and cannot be ignored when trying to judge and appreciate today's ceramic art of Japan. Okakura Tenshin wrote in his Book of Tea "Asia is one" and by this he meant one in cultural forms, for the great cultural current from the West in its surge to the East influenced all countries of Asia.
Group known as rokkasen, or The Six Poets; one, sometimes two, of them are women. This group has five men and one woman.
Glazes
The history of industrial art objects made of clay begins with the sunbaked tiles of Egypt and Mesopotamia and the development of glazes in those countries.
The secret of the preparation of glazes was known only to the potters of Babylonia and Assyria for many years and the current of that form of culture flowed eastward through Persia and Gandra before it entered China. In the ruins of Han dynasty settlements (202 B.C. to 220 A.D.) green glazed pottery is still being brought to light and fragments of glazed articles of the Shang dynasty (1766 to 1123 B.C.) are found.
Historically it must be considered that the art of glaze of the Han dynasty was the result of the amalgamation of two arts, that which came from the West and that which sprang up in China independently. From this fusion of native and imported arts the Chinese potters developed other colour glazes and the three colour (sansai) pottery of the T'ang dynasty (618 to 907) came into existence. Among the many arts which came to Japan from China was that of pottery glaze, and so the ancient art of Egypt in the West came to Japan in the East. The Shoso-in at Nara, the Imperial Repository, has many articles of pottery closely resembling the Tang three colour wares and from them we can get an idea of the condition of the Japanese ceramic art of that period.
Pottery and the art of glazing made steady progress in Japan, especially in what is known as the Momoyama Period (approximately 1574 to 1602). This period can be called the renaissance in Japan when the cult of cha no yu was at its height and under its influence and encouragement pottery making rose to a high level and in the subsequent half century the manufacture of porcelain was begun.
It was during this period that Japan received from China the arts of under-the-glaze decoration in blue (sometsuke or gosu) and of over glaze enamel colours (akaye or gosu-akaye), which completely revolutionized the native ceramics. The perfection of the art of porcelain decoration was a slow development in China from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century when it flamed suddenly into a beauty that has never since been equalled: and it burst upon Japan with an impact that is still felt.
At first only a small part of Japan was affected because all contact with the outside world was confined to a few ports in Kyushu but by the beginning of the nineteenth century this cultural wave had swept all over Japan. Japanese ceramic artists, all unknown to themselves, were following the tradition of centuries, the aesthetic tradition and the accumulated experiences of the potters of the world, and they in their turn produced things of beauty and of individuality.
With the removal of the veil of mystery from the manipulation of ceramic glazes and the mastery of their use, a new element entered and a great modern industry was under way.
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