REFINEMENTS AND PASTIMES
sobriety prescribed by the classics of the cult. Hence from the catalogue of objects of virtu offered by China and Korea, her implicitly trusted preceptors in so many matters, Japan made a strikingly narrow choice. Instead of taking for porcelain utensils the liquid-dawn reds, the ripe-grape purples, the five-coloured egg-shells, or any of the glowing monochromes and half-toned enamels of the Chinese keramists, she confined herself to ivory whites, delicate céladons, comparatively inornate specimens of blue sous couverte, and full bodied, roughly applied, over-glaze enamels such as characterised the later eras of the Ming dynasty. It has astonished many students of Japanese manners and customs to find that objects which Europe and America search for to-day in the markets of China with eager appreciation, are scarcely represented at all in the collections that Japanese virtuosi made at an epoch when such masterpieces were abundantly produced within easy reach of their doors. The explanation is to be sought in the conservatism of the tea clubs. But the justice must be done of acknowledging that, to a certain extent, the Japanese adopted in this matter the standards set by the Chinese themselves. There exists in China an illustrated manuscript compiled by Hsiang, an art critic of the sixteenth century. Among some eighty specimens therein depicted as chefs-d'œuvre on which the Chinese virtuosi of the time had set their cachet, fifty are céladons. Hence, when
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