The earliest ware whose origin we can trace to a definite spot, is that formerly made at Karatsu, in Hizen, near to the great porcelain district of later days. Korean potters are traditionally reported to have been established here as far back as the early part of the seventh century. Of this primitive ware we will only note that the pieces were placed in the kiln in an inverted position, either without supports (the _Kuchi-nashi-de_, or ‘unglazed orifice ware‘), or supported by two props of rectangular section (the _Geta okoshi_, or ‘clog supports‘). This is a point of interest in connection with the similar devices used in firing some of the early celadon. But, as Captain Brinkley points out (_The Chrysanthemum_, vol. iii. p. 18), it was the introduction of tea from China[112] early in the thirteenth century that gave rise, for the first time, to a demand for a better kind of pottery. Kato Shirozayemon, a native of Owari, made, we are told, a five years’ visit to China about this time (he returned to his native village of Seto in 1223) in order to study the potter’s craft. The ware that he succeeded in making on his return to Japan has a reddish brown paste covered with a dark glaze, streaked and patched with lighter tints. This was probably more or less an imitation of the Kien yao, the ‘hare-fur’ cups made in the province of Fukien in late Sung times.[113] These cups, so prized by the Japanese, are of interest to us, as they may, in some degree, be regarded as the ancestral type from which the long series of Japanese tea-bowls is derived. But neither the ware of Toshiro (he is generally known by this shortened form of his name), nor that of his followers, has any claim to be classed as porcelain. It is, however, from Seto, the native village of Toshiro, where he set up his kilns on his return from China, that the commonest Japanese name for all kinds of ceramic ware, but more especially for porcelain, is derived, and the district is now a great centre for the production of blue and white porcelain. Apart from this dark ware and from the heavy celadon, it would seem that at this time, and even later, the only true porcelain known to the Japanese was the white translucent ware of Korea, itself probably an offshoot of some early form of Ting ware. That Toshiro, who must have travelled in Fukien barely two generations earlier than Marco Polo, should only have learned to make this one kind of dark ware, shows how locally circumscribed was the knowledge and use in China, in Sung times, of different kinds of porcelain.