Senesi Manji Inoue and tea

The spirit of the land felt from another time, as we visited an ancient Shinto shrine and poured water over our hands from a bamboo dipper before climbing up two tall fights of a stone stairway. Reaching the top, we communed with the place where potters have come for hundreds of years, to affirm that they will do their best when creating pottery.

Porcelain pottery was first developed in Arita 400 years ago. Today, Arita is home to a tradition and culture surrounding porcelain pottery making.

The Arita tradition began with the discovery of kaolin at Izumiyama Quarry. We stood at the base of the kaolin quarry, now 20 stories below the surface from where it was originally mined. The ground is speckled with porcelain potsherds and a golden kaolin rock lines the basin walls; a raven’s call in the distance gave me the feeling that the place was enchanted. Much of the fired porcelain created from this quarry can be seen in museums in Europe, but we saw many examples in the museums of Arita.

Visiting the museums in the company of Sensei Inoue, we were able to photograph: ancient tools and artifacts; examples of early rare red over-glaze painting; countless bowls, cups, plates and vases with glaze treatments that reminded me of those created 300 years later during the modernist era; a six foot tall vessel with a blue underglaze painting of a rooster; a wall filled with examples of colorful over-glazed porcelain for trade with Holland; and contemporary forms with dimensions surpassing those for everyday use, to name just a few.

Several ceramics artists who were former apprentices of Sensei Inoue, gave us a tour of their studios. We saw ware boards filled with forms faintly familiar to our own attempts, and we were shown an old secret of surface decoration. It was a transfer technique of floating liquid oxide onto a cutout piece of tissue paper while placing it on top of bisque ware. The tissue is lifted away, and the oxide remains soaked into the bisque. After studying in the studio/galleries and drinking green tea from handmade porcelain cups, we realized that we were experiencing living museums.

Porcelain ceramics is an integral part of daily life in Arita. Along with local artists and museums, there is a high school devoted to porcelain study, a college for the sole purpose of creating porcelain and developing the next generation of ceramic artists, and a porcelain science institute. The press is appreciating and informs the prefecture of events pertaining to this living tradition.

I became a little anxious when I discovered that we would be participating in a throwing workshop with Sensei. We met a little earlier before our meeting for spiral wedging “practice” kindly given to us by Nakao san - one of Sensei’s original apprentices in the 70’s. The UNM students were relentless in wedging the golden clay, that was not only much softer than the commercially mixed porcelain we use in the US, but also had a life if its own because it came directly from nature. Sweat fell from everyone’s forehead. When Sensei entered the studio, we all bowed and greeted him good morning. He began with each student individually showing them how to create a plate using the traditional method from Arita.

A visiting gentleman peered through a window in amazement, and told me that, you never see a National Treasure teaching this method hands-on with students. I later learned that he was a journalist and that he wrote an article for the regional newspaper about our visit.

When I asked the students what they enjoyed the most about Arita, some said the delicious food, the greenery, the humidity; others, the socializing, the connection of art to life, and how it changed their view of the world.

What I recognized when we returned was the spirit of the journey in their pots.