Page 54 - Catalogue of the Edward Morse collection of Japanese pottery MFA BOSTON

THE CATALOGUE
32
the quality of their own rude work was aroused, and history relates that in
1223 one Kato Shirozayemon, a potter of Owari, went to China to learn
the higher secrets of the potter's methods. After an absence of several
years he returned to his native village of Seto, and began the making of tea-
jars, water-jars, and other forms. A study of the work of this man and of
his successors is of interest, as exhibiting the dawn of that art which in
succeeding centuries was to make Japan famous the world over. So
important was the impress made by the potters of Seto that the name Seto
became the generic appellation of all Japanese pottery, just as China has
become the synonym for all porcelain. In New England every house con-
tains its " china closet," though its shelves may have sustained nothing
more precious than the white glazed stone pottery of England.

PREHISTORIC POTTERY (Case 2)
The pottery found in the shell heaps scattered along the coasts may justly be
regarded as prehistoric. In a memoir,* published by the University of Tokyo, I have
described and figured the characteristic features of some of this pottery, and have else-
where expressed the opinion, which I still hold, that the pottery was made by a people
who occupied the land before the Ainus. This pottery is rough, hand-made; rims
variously modeled and ornamented with curiously elaborate knobs, and sides deco-
rated with designs of scrolls, and inclosed spaces incised. In the north, cord-marked
pottery predominates ; this feature becomes less common towards the south, until
finally, in the extreme south, it almost disappears, and the design becomes broadly
incised. Each limited region on the coast has some peculiarity in form and marking.
The most elaborately made and decorated forms of shell-heap pottery are found near
the central portions of Japan. The pottery is usually found in fragments ; it shows
evidence of wear, breakage, and subsequent mending. No representation of a natural
object, such as an animal or a plant, appears in this pottery ; it is associated with
cannibalism and platycnemic tibiae, and, in the vicinity of Tokyo at least, with the
rudest stone and bone implements. Great age is indicated by a marked change in
the molluscan fauna since the deposits were made.
113. Fragments of pottery, from the shell mounds of Omori, near Tokyo.
II4-I23. Plaster casts of pottery vessels and pottery tablets from the shell mounds
of Omori, near Tokyo. The original specimens are in the Museum of the Imperial University
of Japan.
124. Jar, from shell mounds near Tokyo.
125. Fragments of pottery, from shell mounds on the west coast of Yezo, at Otaru.
126. Fragments of pottery, from shell mounds of Onomura, Higo.

' Shell Mounds of Omori.