kilns were, not technical excellence, decorative tastefulness and richness of colour, but dinginess, imperfections and dirt; persons who imagined, in short, that defects which they would condemn at once in new porcelains ought to be regarded as merits in old. Of course a trade of that kind, based on deception, could not have permanent success. One of the imitators of "old Satsuma" was among the first to perceive that a new line must be struck out. Yet the earliest results of his awakened perception helped to demonstrate still further the depraved spirit that had come over Japanese art. For he applied himself to manufacture wares having a close affinity with the shocking monstrosities used for sepulchral purposes in ancient Apulia, where fragments of dissected satyrs, busts of nymphs or halves of horses were considered graceful excrescences for the adornment of an amphora or a pithos. This _Makuzu_ faience, produced by the now justly celebrated Miyagawa Shozan of Ota (near Yokohama), survives in the form of vases and pots having birds, reptiles, flowers, crustacea and so forth plastered over the surface--specimens that disgrace the period of their manufacture, and represent probably the worst aberration of Japanese ceramic conception. Adoption of Chinese Models. A production so degraded as the early Makuzu faience could not possibly have a lengthy vogue. Miyagawa soon began to cast about for a better inspiration, and found it in the monochromes and polychromes of the Chinese _Kang-hsi_ and _Yung-cheng kilns_. The extraordinary value attaching to the incomparable red glazes of China, not only in the country of their origin but also in the United States, where collectors showed a fine instinct in this matter, seems to have suggested to Miyagawa the idea of imitation. He took for model the rich and delicate "liquid-dawn" monochrome, and succeeded in producing some specimens of considerable merit. Thenceforth his example was largely followed, and it may now be said that the tendency of many of the best Japanese ceramists is to copy Chinese _chefs-d'oeuvre_. To find them thus renewing their reputation by reverting to Chinese models, is not only another tribute to the perennial supremacy of Chinese porcelains, but also a fresh illustration of the eclectic genius of Japanese art. All the products of this new effort are porcelains proper. Seven kilns are devoted, wholly or in part, to the new wares: belonging to Miyagawa Shozan of Ota, Seifu Yohei of Kioto, Takemoto Hayata and Kato Tomojiro of Tokyo, Higuchi Haruzane of Hirado, Shida Yasukyo of Kaga and Kato Masukichi of Seto. Seifu of Kioto.