In
the year 1513, Gorodayu, Shonsui, of Ise, returned from China and
settled in Arita, in the province of Hizen, which at once became and
still remains the headquarters of the famous Imari ware. The porcelain
produced here is chiefly, but not altogether, the blue and white
combination, but Arita also makes porcelain ware decorated in various
colours and exceedingly ornate in appearance. It is, however, stated
that this ornate Imari ware was first made for exportation to China to
supply the Portuguese market at Macao, and that it was afterwards
fostered by the Dutch at Nagasaki, whose exportations of the ware to
Europe were on a considerable scale. This peculiar style of decoration
is believed to have been due to the demands of the Dutch, whose
patrons in Europe would have none other. One remark I may make in this
connection, viz., that those enormous vases and other similar articles
of Japanese ware which have long been so greatly prized in Europe, and
many of which are magnificent specimens of decorative art, are not, in
one sense, characteristically Japanese. The Japanese has always, if I
may so express it, used art as the handmaiden of utilitarianism. Every
article intended for the Japanese home had to be not merely a thing of
beauty but a thing for use. It never entered the minds of the Japanese
to hang beautiful specimens of their porcelain ware on their walls, or
what did duty for walls, to collect dust. They used vases certainly of
a moderate size to hold flowers, tea-pots and tea-cups for the purpose
of making and drinking tea, water-bottles and various other articles
for domestic use; everything in fact was, as I have said, designed not
only from an artistic but a utilitarian standpoint, and hence it is, I
think, that art, as I have already remarked, has permeated the whole
people. Even in the poorest house in Japan it is possible to see, in
the ordinary articles in domestic use, some attempt at art, and, I may
add, some appreciation of it on the part of the users of those
articles. In my opinion when art is not applied to articles of general
utility but is confined to articles not intended for use, art becomes,
as is largely the case in this country, either the cult of a class or
the affectation of a class, and its beauties and inward meaning cease
to have any effect upon, just because they are not understood by, the
great mass of the people.

Satsuma ware is probably the most widely known, and the most estee