Jinrikisha Days in Japan

The porcelains of Kiomidzu, renowned as they are throughout Japan, figure lightly in the export trade lists, as compared to the immense shipments of decorated faience from the Awata district, for which there is such demand in foreign countries. On the main street of that quarter, which is the beginning of the Tokaido, the larger establishments cluster near together, and Kinkozan, Tanzan, and Taizan attract one in turn. Latticed walls and plain gate-ways admit visitors to a succession of show-rooms, where they may wander and look. As it is the characteristic Japanese custom to consider every foreigner as a mere sight-seer, who puts tradesmen to trouble for nothing, the bushy-headed young men in their clean, cool cotton gowns make no effort to sell until he purchases something. Then he is led through further rooms to godowns or upper chambers, and their more desirable wares are displayed.

Kinkozan's specialty is the manufacture of the fine, cream-colored faience with a crackled glaze, which, when decorated in one way, is known as Kioto or Awata ware, and when covered with a blaze of color and gilding is the gaudily gorgeous, modern, or Kioto Satsuma, exported by ship-loads to America, where its crude hues and cheap effects are enjoyed. No cultivated Japanese, however, would ever give these monstrosities a place in his own home. In America these garish six-months-old vases and koros are even passed off as old Satsuma, to which softly-toned and simply-decorated ware it is no more like than is a Henri Deux _tazza_ to a Limoges garden-stool. Kinkozan turns out also a coarse _shippoyaki_, or _cloisonné_ enamel, some on faience and some on copper ground; and the blue-and-white-gowned young man will lead one past garden and godown, and show one every stage and process of the manufacture of the different wares. The potters sit in little open alcoves of rooms, each with his low wheel and heap of clay before him. One old man sits with his feet doubled up before him, his right foot locked fast in the bend of the left knee, and the left foot laid sole upward on the right thigh, in the impossible attitude of so many Buddhas.