Page 134 - Chinese Porcelain Vol II, Galland

322 FOREIGN INFLUENCE.
"
Old to the while
Japan," evidently belonging Kang-he period,
now and we come across a
again panel, as in the vase No. 624,
perhaps painted by a Japanese artist ; later on we find dessert
and other services made in imitation of Imari, but no marked
undercurrent of influence. Corea and Siam traded with China
from early times, and we here and there meet with pieces
made for these markets.
If the is to be as a of
key pattern regarded proof European
influence, then it may well be as old, or older, than any of the
others already named, but for all practical purposes we may be
content to award to the Jesuit Fathers the honour of having
been the first to bring European art to the notice of the
Chinese, and it is probable that some of the so-called Jesuit
china dates back to Ming times, as there seems to have been
a considerable trade in it with where at
Japan, Christianity
first took hold. Introduced
deep by Franpois Zavier, in 1549,
it with such wonderful that, combined with
spread rapidity
the ambition of the the Japanese Govern-
political Portuguese,
ment took alarm, and in 1601 a broke out which
persecution
continued with more or less until the 12th of
severity April,
1638, when Christianity was supposed to be stamped out by
the massacre of thirty-seven thousand Christians who had met
for mutual in the castle of Simabara, on the coast
protection
of Arima, which fell after a of three months. Many of
siege
the noblemen had become converts, and it was
Japanese
a civil war that ended in 1640, when was
virtually Japan
shut with the
finally up, all foreigners being expelled excep-
tion of the Dutch, who were confined on the little island of
Desinia, at Nagasaki. From that time Japan remained closed
to the rest of the world for two hundred years, but it is
probable that between 1601 and 1638 a considerable trade
was done in china decorated with biblical and even
subjects,
Japan to Europe from the middle of the seventeenth century. The shapes
and decoration were not of pure Japanese taste, and never were appreciated
or hardly noticed by them with the exception of the Kakiyemon porcelain,
which they did like and prize, and which the Dutch could not get in any
quantity for exportation. I fail to see how the Japanese exerted any influence
upon Chinese ceramic arts, and with our opportunities and knowledge of
to-day, the so-called <; Old Japan," like the so-called " Hawthorn," is some-
thing of a misnomer, and should preferably be termed Old Sinico-Japonico
T. J. L.
porcelain.