Japan Ceramics Tour - Bizen, Izu, Oiso

The tour continued to Bizen, via the charming but touristy town of Kurashiki, and then to the Izu area and Oiso, where we saw great ceramics but did not discover any great Japanese food. We did stay at an interesting inn, Arcana, on the Izu Peninsula, which featured beautiful Western style rooms with luxurious individual outdoor baths and carefully prepared (overly precious) Japanese French food.

The extraordinary artists that we visited included the giants of Bizen ceramics, Kakurezaki Ryuichi and Harada Shuroku, who have each in his own way broken with tradition in his forms and who masterfully develop amazing colors in their wood-fired kilns . . .

Sculptural forms by Kakurezaki

Side view of a plate by Kakurezaki

Powerful unglazed vessels by Harada Shuroku

. . . Ogawa Machiko, whose powerful forms look as if they have been torn from the earth (and who is having a major retrospective at the Toyota City Museum . . .

Ogawa in front of her exhibition poster

. . . Sugiyura Yasuyoshi, who is renowned for his ceramic flowers, among other things . . .

Flowers by Sugiyura

. . . and Kawase Shinobu, the greatest living Japanese celadon artist, whose elegant forms simply exude perfection.

 A pair of celadon bowls by Kawase Shinobu

Room with private bath and "French" breakfast at Arcana

And thus ended Joan's Magical Mystery Ceramics Tour, 2011.

Bobby Jay

Japan Ceramics Tour - Karatsu

Karatsu, in the North of Kyushu, is an old pottery town, and the leading ceramics clan is the Nakazato family, represented by the 12th generation Nakazato Takashi, his son Taki and his charming daughter Hanako, who spends half her time living and working in Maine. We visited all three Nakazatos, as well as Nakagawa Jinenbo and Hamamoto Hiroyoshi.

Nakazato Hanako and Her Bowls

Nakazato Takashi and Taki at Work and Their Beautiful Grounds

Nakazato Takashi Vessel

The added bonus was staying at the wonderful Yoyokaku Ryokan, one of the best in Japan. Wonderful food, especially breakfast (among the best I have ever eaten, anywhere), and lovely rooms facing on a fine garden, which includes a tea house and a dry stream. The service was truly excellent as well.

Bridge over Dry Stream in Yoyokaku's Garden

Beautiful Food Beautifully Served at Yoyokaku

While Karatsu is not exactly a destination, if you're somewhere nearby, Yoyokaku is definitely worth a visit.

Bobby Jay

Japan Ceramics Tour - Hagi, then on to Karatsu

We completed our stay in Hagi with a visit to Hamanaka Gesson, a potter who, unlike Kaneta and the Miwa family, is from outside the area and therefore works in a different tradition. In fact, he works in many traditions (but only wood-fired), making mostly inspired vessels and plates for use in decorating one's home, food and life.

Ceramics of Hamanaka Gesson

Hamanaka's beautiful home reflects his exquisite, and quintessentially Japanese taste. It is shadowy and tranquil, with shoji screens permitting ever-changing natural light to play over his sophisticated ceramic objects.

Hamanaka Gesson's Home Outside Hagi

A highlight was that Hamanaka's wife and friend prepared an elaborate lunch for us, which we ate from Hamanaka's own plates. Beautiful food -- not kaiseki but not everyday by any means -- made even more beautiful by those plates.

Lunch at Hamanaka Gesson's Home

After lunch, we took a number of small conveyances - bus, subway (!), train, bus - to reach Karatsu, a pottery village in Kyushu.

Bobby Jay

Japan Ceramics Tour - Hagi Continued

The next day we were regaled with a tour of the Hagi Museum and later visited the homes and ateliers of Miwa Kazuhiko and Miwa Haneko.

Ceramic Sculptures by Miwa Kazuhiko at Hagi Museum

Kazuhiko-san gave us matcha in precious tea bowls made by his 101-year old (and still working) father, Miwa Kyusetsu XI, a Living National Treasure, and discussed the history of the Miwa ceramics dynasty, and how his family's tradition influences his very modern work. I can't tell you what a thrill it was to hold, drink from and examine a Kyusetsu tea bowl!

Miwa Family Garden and House

Miwa Kazuhiko with a Great Tea Bowl by His Father

Later the same day, we visited Miwa Haneko, a fine potter and the daughter of Miwa Ryosaku (now Kyusetsu XII), Kyusetsu XI's oldest son and a wildly avant-garde artist. Here we heard from a potter of another generation how the Miwa legacy lives on and inspires her very modern works.

Miwa Hanako, 13th Generation Miwa Potter

And we were still not done with Hagi . . .

Bobby Jay

Japan Ceramics Tour - Hagi

The next stop on the tour was Hagi, a charming town of 60,000 on the Japan Sea known, among other things, for its great ceramic tradition that began late in the 16th century when a number of Korean potters were brought to this area of Japan.

We stayed at Tomoe Ryokan, a first-class modern inn that was built on the site of the previous Tomoe, which was destroyed by fire about 15 years ago. The kaiseki food at Tomoe can be intimidating for Westerners, but our guide had negotiated out the more edgy items, leaving us with a fantastic meal suitable for the adventurous Western palate.

As noted above, Hagi is famous for ceramics, and we had a great visit with Kaneta Masanao, an eighth generation potter who makes powerful sculptural vessels with variations of Hagi's traditional creamy white and pink glaze.

Hagi Ceramics by Kaneta Masanao

Bobby Jay

Japanese Ceramics Tour Day 3 -- More Great Ceramics, Beautiful Garden, Ryokan

We spent the night in the small town of Hirose, not far from Matsue, at the Saginoyuso Ryokan. A nice place with a great outdoor bath (rotenburo). Food was solid kaiseki style.

Freshly cooked tofu for breakfast at Saginoyuso

The attraction of Hirose is the Adachi Museum, just across the street from the ryokan. This museum has a huge garden that may be the best post-war garden in Japan, as well as stupendous collections of works by the ceramic artists Rosanjin Kitaoji and Kawai Kanjiro and various Japanese painters of the early 20th century (e.g, Taikan Yokoyama and Seiho Takeuchi).

Garden at Adachi Museum - note the borrowed landscape (right)

After a bus, three trains (including a one-car one) and another bus, we arrived in Hagi, a famous pottery city that is also known for the role of key intellectuals in bringing down the shogunate, and ushering in the Meiji Restoration, in 1868. But more on Hagi later.

This whole area, the western part of Honshu facing the Japan Sea (and quite near to Korea), is quiet and sparsely populated. A stark contrast with the Pacific and Inland Sea side of Honshu, which is a densely populated narrow corridor extending from Tokyo to Kyushu, by way of Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Okayama and Hiroshima.

Bobby Jay

Japan Ceramics Tour Day 2 - Great Ceramics and Wonderful Food

Tea Bowl by Ajiko Hiro

The tour being focused so intently on ceramics, I hadn't really reflected on how fantastic Japanese food is, particularly in the autumn. But we ate really well for eleven days, including some fantastic kaiseki meals.

Japanese kaiseki meals are elaborate, with countless small dishes, normally including boiled, stewed, sauteed, grilled, pickled and fried items. In fall, most meals include chestnuts in some form and red maple leaves, both natural and formed of vegetables, such as carrots. Rice in some form always follows the meal, and a fruit dessert generally follows. Although this may sound a bit formulaic, the enormous array of perfect ingredients -- exquisitely and imaginatively presented -- never fails to dazzle, as the picture below demonstrates.

Our tour's first stop after Tokyo was in Izumo, far to the Southwest of Tokyo. There we visited two brilliant ceramic artists, Ajiki Hiro and Mihara Ken, and enjoyed a marvelous lunch with Ajiki-san at a lovely 200-year old house that has been maintained as a restaurant for eight generations. (Ajiki-san's wife also gave us formal tea served, of course, in the artist's wonderful tea bowls.)

Garden View from 200-Year Old Restaurant

Kaiseki Lunch

A lovely start.

Bobby Jay

Tokyo -- Tsukiji Fish Market

My wife Joan recently led a small group of contemporary ceramics collectors on a tour of Western Japan. I accompanied the group and enjoyed being back in Japan, where we lived for three years from 1998 to 2001.

The group assembled in Tokyo before leaving for southwestern Japan. Led by our wonderful guide Steve Beimel, our first stop was the famed Tsukiji fish market, the largest in the world, serving the 25 million people who live in the greater Tokyo area. The market's hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish and other sea creatures smell like, well . . . nothing. This is accounted for the by impeccable handling of the fish and shellfish from the moment they are caught until the moment they are sold. Storage in ice or cold water guarantees this.

I have no idea how many different varieties of fish and shellfish may be found on a given day at Tsukiji, but there are no doubt hundreds. Some look appetizing, others not, at least to a western eye, but all are interesting. Here are some photogenic ones.

Bobby Jay