Page 25 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

PORCELAIN AND POTTERY

t"epromrc"elpaoirnce"lawians"ofcaannnoitropnr-orpeedrlcyolboeura.ppliPeldaitnolysutchhe
wares, and it becomes evident that both in the origi-
nal of the distinguished sinologue's translation and in
the translation itself, the same looseness of phraseology

occurs.

Turning now for information to the neighbouring

empire of Japan, it appears that in the middle of the
fifth century of the Christian era, a Japanese Emperor,
Yuriaku, issued a sumptuary decree requiring that a
class of ware called seiki should be substituted for the

earthen utensils hitherto employed at the Court.

Ancient Japanese commentators interpret this seiki as
"
Nowanother for tao-ki, the so-called porce-
expression
" of China. it is known that, despite the

lain

importation of Chinese wares into Japan which had

taken place either directly or through Korea from

the earliest times, and despite the tolerably regular

trade carried on by Chinese merchants with the neigh-

bouring empire, not so much as one piece of ware to
" " could be
which the term porcelain accurately

applied, reached Japan before the twelfth century.

The seiki of Yuriaku's time cannot, therefore, have

been anything better than glazed pottery, and the

same is doubtless true of its synonym, the tao-ki, said

to have been invented in China at the beginning of

the Christian era. In addition to this negative evi-

dence, there are the positive statements of Japanese

antiquarians, who unhesitatingly ascribe the invention

of porcelain proper to the keramists of the Sung

dynasty (9601279). It was then, they aver,

whatever value the assertion may have that the

ideograph tsu was first written in such a way as to

indicate the presence of kaolin in the ware and it
;

7