A revolutionary ceramic product, one that looked more like a painting than a pot, made its debut in Kyoto in the opening years of the eighteenth century. These rectilinear dishes and trays were decorated with monochrome painting, poetic inscriptions, and personal signatures. The designer and frequently the calligrapher for these works, Ogata Kenzan (1663-1743), understood the codes of poetry, painting, and writing that had evolved in China and Japan. His knowledge was mediated by the reproduction of those codes in contemporary painting and especially in illustrated literature. His products were functional ceramics, which means that these images had now migrated from the tokonoma to the tatami, so to speak; at the same time, the decidedly “non-ceramic” shapes and impromptu painting-poetry provided the work with a performative aura that resonated with the consumers, specifically that segment of the population who, from the 1680s, had begun to learn Chinese and use it in their pastimes. 　This article is the first of two installments that survey this genre of Kenzan ware, hich the authors call the “gasan” style after the Chinese expression for inscribed aintings, or hua zan. Kenzan-ware gasan ceramics from the Narutaki (1699-1712) and Nijo-Shogoin workshops (1712-mid-18th century) are the focus. Judging from the number of surviving works, the style was remarkably popular, and it came to be mass produced at Shogoin, first under Kenzan himself and then under his adopted son and successor Ogata Ihachi (dates unknown). 　This installment on Kenzan-ware gasan treats landscape, human figures, and animal subjects. The article begins by reviewing the Chinese locus classicus for the combined arts of poetry, painting, and calligraphy, with special attention to the way in which this synthesis articulated the values of the scholar-official class. A discussion of the appropriation of that tradition in Japan follows. 　In the data section, surviving works and archaeological specimens are studied in terms of their inscriptions, including sources and meanings, and painted decoration, including styles and lineages. Landscape themes are the most numerous, and they divide into panoramic scenes descended from the Xiao and Xiang river tradition (J: Shosho hakkei) and close-up views of “pavilion landscapes” (J: Rokaku sansui). The former type, which occurs most frequently in Kenzan’s first decade of production, features full-length poems and rather detailed painting in the Kano style. The latter type, which is common to Kenzan’s later production and also the work of his adopted son Ogata Ihachi, typically features single-line excerpts and highly abbreviated, often amateurish painting. 　Figural themes constitute the second category. Here too the subject matter is orthodox, drawing from the Muromachi-based line of Chinese “saints and sages” that had become increasingly popularized in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The poetic excerpts for this category are typically couplets, and the painting is either by or in the style of Ogata Korin (1658-1716). This approach is also limited to Kenzan’s first decade of production. 　The last category, animals, makes use of creatures associated with Buddhist or literati values; the wares are inscribed with couplets or one-line excerpts, and most of the painting is quite abbreviated. Wares decorated with animals appear at the end of Kenzan’s first decade of production, specifically in association with Korin, but they also appear in later work as well. 　For all three categories, the poetic inscriptions are taken from the Yuan- dynasty anthology Shixue dacheng (J: Shigaku taisei) and its Ming successor Yuanji huofa (J: Enki kappo). Both of these collections enjoyed considerable popularity in Kenzan’s day. 　In selecting the poems for his pottery Kenzan exhibited a preference for those that had been originally composed as ti hua shi (J: daiga shi), that is, poems that were w