The merits of Chinese porcelain, however, have long been acknowledged by the Japanese. Possibly as early as the ninth century specimens of celadon were imported. Direct communication with China has indeed since that time been subject to many interruptions, and it has at all times been carried on subject to galling restrictions and heavy duties levied by the governments of both countries. The Japanese have at many times made piratical descents upon the coast of China, and among the loot thus obtained many fine pieces of Chinese porcelain may have found their way to Japan. There was, however, a period in the fifteenth century during which a pretty steady trade was kept up, under the patronage of the pleasure-loving Ashikaga Shoguns, and many specimens of the earlier Ming porcelain must have reached Japan at that time. It has always been the celadon ware that has found most favour with the Japanese, and fabulous prices were, and indeed still are, given for fine pieces. We may note that such specimens are as a rule associated in the Japanese mind with the Yuan or Mongol dynasty. Speaking generally, however, it was not to this direct intercourse with China that the Japanese attribute their knowledge of ceramic processes. From an early date nearly all that they knew of the continental lands of Asia seems to have reached them from Korea, a country where they played alternately the part of ruthless invaders and devastators, and of eager and submissive students. Let us then rapidly glance over the records preserved by the Japanese of their early lessons in the potter’s art, that we may better understand the conditions under which the manufacture of porcelain was at length established in the country at the end of the sixteenth century. Of the early pottery of Japan--rude figures, coffins, and strange-shaped vases of coarse earthenware dating from the early centuries of our era--we know, thanks to the researches of Mr. Gowland, much more than we do of the products of a similar stage of culture in China. In the British Museum we may see a collection, unique of its kind in Europe, of prehistoric objects, found most of them in or around the dolmen tombs of the early emperors, and brought together in Japan by that energetic explorer. As, according to Japanese tradition, Korean potters were in those early days already settled in Japan, we need not be surprised to find that vessels of very similar shape, but of a rather better ware, have also been found in Korean tombs.