Thus ended a chapter in the history of Japan, on which her best friends can look back with neither pride nor satisfaction. This war was begun without any sufficient provocation, and its results did nothing to advance the glory of Japan or its soldiers. The great soldier who planned it and pushed it on with relentless energy gained nothing from it except vexation. Much of the time during which the war lasted he sat in his temporary palace at Nagoya in Hizen, waiting eagerly for news from his armies. Instead of tidings of victories and triumphs and rich conquests, he was obliged too often to hear of the dissensions of his generals, the starving and miseries of his soldiers, and the curses and hatred of a ruined and unhappy country. All that he had to show for his expenditure of men and money were several _saké_ tubs of pickled ears and noses with which to form a mound in the temple of Daibutsu, and the recollection of an investiture by the emperor of China, which could only bring to him pain and humiliation. The only beneficial results to Japan that can be traced to all this was the introduction into different provinces of some of the skilled artisans of Korea. The prince of Satsuma, Shimazu Yoshihiro, in A.D. 1598, brought home with him when he returned from the Korean war seventeen families of Korean potters,(187) who were settled in his province. They have lived there ever since, and in many ways still retain the marks of their nationality. It is to them that Satsuma _faïence_ owes its exquisite beauty and its world-wide reputation. [Illustration] Hideyoshi.