Kutani Ware: World-Famous Pottery.

(From Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry (JJTI))

Byline: Toshioka Kosen

Centuries ago, small quantities of gold were discovered in Kutani, a part of Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture. The local Daishoji Domain daimyo (feudal lord), Maeda Toshiharu, invited an expert goldsmith called Goto Saijiro from the Shibata Domain in Echigo, Niigata, to develop the gold mine. While he was working on the mine, a clay suitable for making pottery was discovered.

Nagasaki was the only place in Japan where trade was permitted at that time. Having a strong interest in arts and crafts, the Kaga Domain, the main domain of Daishoji, opened a purchasing office in Nagasaki to satisfy the demand for artistic collectors' items from abroad, including pottery made in Europe and Persia. Beautiful Imari ware (also called Arita ware) was made near Nagasaki, and the feudal lord of Daishoji had wanted to produce similar pottery in his own domain. The domain authorities sent a man named Tamura Gonzaemon, along with the goldsmith Goto to Saga, which was known as a center of ceramic production, and had them study pottery-making techniques. Later, they brought back potters from Karatsu, another pottery manufacturing area near Imari, and built the first Kutani kiln in 1655, exactly 350 years ago. This was the beginning of the Ko-Kutani (Old Kutani) style. The problem, though, was that Tokugawa Shogunate suspected that some potters were from the Korean peninsula. The Shogunate's policy of the time was to keep foreign influences out of Japan. Kaga officials did not want the Shogunate "meddling" in the domain's business, so in 1692 it destroyed the two climbing kilns in Kutani. The kilns operated for only 37 years, and the pottery produced during the time is now called Ko-Kutani.

About 120 years later, in 1805, two town officials of Kanazawa went to Kyoto to invite an expert potter to the Kanazawa region. The potter, Aoki Mokubei, constructed his kiln in Utatsuyama, Kanazawa, and established what became a large-scale pottery workshop in those days. This was the revival of Kutani ware, and pottery made in the workshop is called Mokubei. Although Mokubei favored a more artistic type of ceramic, such as the red glazed Gosuakae, his patron asked him to make dinnerware for daily use, so he decided to follow his own aesthetic sensibilities, and returned to Kyoto. One of his disciples, Honda Sadakichi, remained behind and continued production, but ...