Kioto was already in the sixteenth century the seat of more than one ceramic industry, but it was not so much the problem of the materials for a true porcelain, as the questions connected with the coloured enamels lately brought over from the West, that excited the curiosity of the Kioto potter at this time. The story goes that one Aoyama Koyemon (I quote again from _The Chrysanthemum_, April 1883), who came to Kioto from the porcelain district of Hizen, to obtain orders for the new enamelled ware, allowed the secret of its manufacture to be wormed out of him by a crafty Kioto dealer, and that for this breach of trust the wretched ‘traveller’ was crucified by his liege lord on his return to Arita. This occurred just before the death of the great ceramic artist Ninsei (about 1660), and the old potter at once obtained the knowledge of the new enamelling process from the above-mentioned crockery merchant. This man, we should add--the dealer--is said to have gone mad when he heard the dreadful fate of his friend Koyemon--a fate for which he was in so large a measure responsible. Such stories as this, and there are other similar ones in the annals of Japanese ceramics, call to mind the adventures of the experts of the eighteenth century, who trafficked with the German princes in the _arcana_ of the newly introduced porcelain, but for these German experts the penalties for breach of confidence were not of so severe a nature.
Nomomura Ninsei is generally held to be the greatest ceramic artist that Japan has produced. The decorated stoneware and pottery that he turned out late in life may be regarded as the common source from which the wares produced in the two main groups of kilns in the neighbourhood of Kioto took their origin. With one of these groups, with the wares produced in the factories around Awata, we are not concerned here, for no porcelain was ever produced in that suburb of Kioto. But to the other group of kilns, called after the beautiful temple of Kiyomidzu, to the north of Kioto, belong some of the most artistic specimens of porcelain in our collections. It was here that this somewhat uncongenial material was forced for the first time to adapt itself to the fanciful genius of the people. It was to this district that the great original artist Kenzan, the brother of the still more famous Ogata Korin, came towards the end of the seventeenth century. It is true that little of this artist’s work is executed in a true porcelain, but his picturesque signature, scrawled in black, is sometimes found on the so-called more noble ware (PL. B. 21). Like his brother Korin, Kenzan obtained his effects by the simplest means, sometimes by mere patches of colour cunningly distributed over the surface. The work of both these men has of late found many admirers and imitators in France.