Worldwide Interest
More than all the other Japanese crafts combined, pottery has brought and continues to bring students from abroad to study the techniques and aesthetics of ceramics in Japan. The names of various Japanese ceramic wares have long been part of the antique shop vocabulary in the West, but the books of Bernard Leach, in particular, and the strong interest in crafts during the fifties and sixties are responsible for the West recognizing not just the decorative quality but the practical beauty of Japanese ceramic art. Though the more ornate Japanese ceramics have long been part of Western museum and art collections, in the postwar decades, Japanese pottery techniques and concepts exerted profound influence on ceramic art outside Japan.
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Unglazed and Glazed Traditions
| Decorating a vase, Tsuboya Ware |
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Though Japan has one of the world's earliest dated and longest continuous pottery cultures (the Jomon culture; lasting from roughly 10,000 b.c. to about 300 b.c.), there is no known direct continuity with today's traditional Japanese pottery. Today, most Japanese pottery--besides porcelain, a small amount of earthenware, and Raku--is stoneware. That is, it is pottery fired at around 1250°C. A kiln design--the subterranean anagama, a "hole kiln" dug into the slope of a hill--that allowed such temperatures was brought from the Asian continent in the early centuries of the common era. Unglazed wares have the longest history in Japan, being thought to derive directly from the vitreous Sue ware fired in these anagama. Bizen ware, and the historical wares of Shigaraki, Tokoname, Echizen, Tamba, and Suzu are the most famous. Glazed wares were produced at an early date briefly at different sites, mainly emulating Chinese pots, but Japanese glazed stoneware had its real start after warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi's abortive invasions of Korea--sometimes now called the "Potters Wars"--in 1594 and 1597. One result of these military failures was the bringing of Korean potters to Japan, who either started new potteries or revitalized flagging Japanese kilns. All the Japanese glazed wares--major tea wares and folk kilns as well--were the result, either direct or indirect, of this influx of Korean technique (see the Porcelain page). The continental ceramics techniques included an efficient kick wheel and climbing kilns capable of sensitive temperature control.
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Letting Everything Speak
The aesthetic of letting all aspects of the craft--materials, processes, and techniques--speak holds sway in the world of ceramics. The clay, the forming processes, the tools, the decoration techniques, the glazes, the kiln, and fire all have their own voices and modes of expression. The Japanese potter works to allow these individual statements and expressions--these essences of the craft--full freedom to emerge and sing. Technical mastery and intense intimacy with all aspects of the craft are needed to achieve this.
Whether a potter digs the clay or buys it, he or she must know the clay as well as his/her own skin in order to utilize it fully and free it to speak with its own voice. This intimacy of maker and materials removes aesthetic restraints. For example, a clay does not have to be the best. "Living National Treasure" Shoji Hamada used the decidedly problematic local Mashiko clay, but allowed its character to fuse with his own aesthetic aims, thus freeing both clay and artist for creative release.
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Nuances of Clay and Fire
Particularly with unglazed stonewares (known as yakishime), the potter must know both the clay and the kiln better than his/her own offspring. The serious Japanese potter generally digs his/her own clay, at least in part, and develops an embarrassing intimacy with all its attributes and idiosyncracies. All a potter's hand tools are made by the potter to fit his/her hand and custom. Artist potters today often build a number of different kilns to obtain different effects, with glazed as well as unglazed wares.
Variations and derivations of the through-draft anagama kiln are particularly popular with contemporary potters. To allow the kiss of flame or the dramatic accumulation of natural ash glaze from the wood fuel to remain on the pot surface, the potter must know how flame behaves in every part of the kiln, what forms to put where and what clay types to put where. Assuming that a traditional wood-fired kiln (an anagama or a climbing kiln) is used, the type of wood will make a great difference, as will the timing of throwing in logs and amount of fuel. Even how the logs are chucked into the kiln has an effect.
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Sweet Technique
The traditional Japanese potter internalizes this technical proficiency as a matter of course. But (in the ideal world), rather than technique glorified, technical proficiency shouting out its importance as a virtuoso achievement, as is the case in the European pottery tradition, technique in Japan becomes important because it does not itself assume grandeur, because it remains the supporting, unseen servant and handmaiden not only of the potter but of the materials and the art itself. Perhaps this is the reason for another fact--in no other country is there a public that supports the art of pottery as in Japan.
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The Beauty of Diversity
The aesthetic of allowing all the materials and techniques of pottery to speak out comes in large part from the aesthetic of the tea ceremony and is far too involved to discuss here. Enough to say that Japanese pottery displays a kind of intimacy and affectionate quality that does not interfere with expressive or artistic strength. Japanese stoneware is easy to relate to. In the case of a Japanese meal, not only is food savored, but the vessels are as well. Each vessel is noticed and, if it deserves it, is admired. A vessel serves as a "picture frame" for food and is also there to be appreciated on its own. Thus, the wares in which a Japanese meal is served provide nourishment to every aspect of the human psyche--the body, emotions, and mind, particularly if the diner has an eye for beauty and even more so if he/she has knowledge about the kind of ware, its history, the period or contemporary potter who made the pot, the glazes, and all the other techniques of the craft.
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