It was not till the beginning of the eighteenth century that we have any definite record of the manufacture of porcelain in Kioto. About that time Yeisen devoted himself to the imitation of Chinese celadon. If we are to find any common note in the wares produced in the various Kioto potteries, it would be in a certain studied rudeness both in shape and decoration, the very opposite of the delicately finished products of the Hizen kilns. The rare pieces of Ming porcelain with coloured decoration were eagerly sought for and copied, not in a slavish way, but rather so as to catch the spirit of their design. In fact these Japanese copies might be made to throw some light on that rather obscure subject, the origin of enamel decoration in China in the days of the later Ming emperors.
An apparently early class of Chinese enamelled ware, somewhat rudely painted with a predominant iron red combined with a subordinate green, was a great favourite with the Kioto potters, but we find also copies of the Wan-li ‘pentad,’ the designs in this case sparely scattered over the ground, generally in formal patterns of a textile type. The blue and purple ware with ribbed _cloisons_ which the Japanese associate with their mysterious land of Kochi was also in favour, but at Kioto, I think, this ware was not copied in porcelain. So of the blue and white made at this time at Kiyomidzu, it is distinguished from both the Hizen and the Seto wares by a certain rudeness in the shape and decoration, a character preserved by a great deal of the _sometsuke_ still made in this district.
Quite a different spirit was, however, brought in by Zengoro Riyozen, the tenth descendant of a famous family of potters. This Zengoro was a potter of universal genius, the foremost ceramic artist indeed of the peaceful and luxurious period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Tokugawa Shogun at Tokiyo set an example of an extravagant expenditure and brilliant display which was only too readily followed at the courts of the great feudal nobles. In the art work of that time, in spite of the unsurpassed perfection of execution and love of gorgeous decoration, we can already trace the signs of a coming decay. Zengoro, besides reviving with some success the deep sapphire blue, _sous couverte_, of Ming times, succeeded in producing from an iron-oxide a red ground which vied with the famous coral reds of the previous century in China. But it was rather the Ming red, _sous couverte_, that made from ‘powdered rubies of the West,’ that he professed to copy. Over the red ground of his plates and little bowls he painted his design in gold of the finest quality, and on the white ground of the inside placed a scant decoration of his under-glaze sapphire blue. Some of these dainty little cups are shown in a table-case in the British Museum, but if we compare them with the exquisite Ming bowls of a deep red derived from copper in the same collection, the difference of the quality of the two tints is at once apparent. As, however, it was a matter of _convenance_ to go back to a Ming model, it was with the latter ware that Zengoro’s work was compared. It was for his success in this kind of decoration (produced about the years 1806-1817) that the great Kioto potter received from his patron, the prince of Kishiu, a seal with the character _yeiraku_, or reading in modern Chinese _Yung-lo_, the name of the Ming emperor (1402-24) with whom the red copper glaze is traditionally associated (PL. B. 22).[125] This, then, is the origin of the name _Yeiraku kinrande_ for the ‘gold brocade’ ware of Zengoro. At a later time this form of decoration was carried by Zengoro’s son to Kaga, where in a debased form it became characteristic of a ware with which our markets were at one time flooded.