Page 110 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

and that the prince of Japanese robbers, Ishikawa

Goemon, entering the Taikos chamber with the in-

tention of assassinating him, silenced the censer by
muffling it in an an equally miraculous tabard. Such
fables show in what degree of estimation a choice piece

of celadon was held by mediaeval Japanese, and how

highly their appreciative sense was educated. This
marvellous censer was a tiny cylindrical vase, about

four inches high and as many in diameter. It had

only three beauties, perfect uniformity of glaze, a

wonderful colour, and the lustre of a gem. Yet it
inspired its first owner with such poetic admiration

that, carrying it home in his bosom and hearing the

musical note of the peewit sounding over a moon-lit

moor, it seemed to him a fitting thing to call the

peerless censer after the solitary, soft-voiced bird.

The number of fine celadons remaining in Japanese

collections is very great. Scarely a temple of note is
without some example of the ware, whether vase or

censer. Among these, however, the majority cannot

safely be referred to factories of earlier date than the

Yuan (12791368) or Ming (1368-1644) dynasty.

It is, indeed, scarcely possible to distinguish between
two specimens of Lung-chuan-yao dating respectively

from the Sung and the Ming dynasty. The manu-

facture of the yu-yao and original Kuan-yao celadons
ended with the Sung era, but the manufacture of the

Lung-chuan-yao continued at the Liu-tien and Chin-
tsun kilns throughout the Tuan dynasty, and at
Ch'u-chou-fu, in the same province of Che-kiang,

throughout a considerable portion of the Ming
dynasty. At these same factories imitations of the

yu-yao and Kuan-yao were also made, and there is no
reason to think that they differed greatly from their

76