Japan has plenty of pottery kilns with long histories. But how many of those kilns these days are headed up by a younger generation of the family? This week we spoke to a young man who is eighteenth in a line of porcelain artisans who originally came over to Nagasaki from Korea over four hundred years ago.
Interview by Takafumi Suzuki
Translation by Claire Tanaka
You’re the eighteenth generation at this kiln. That’s quite a long history!
There are pros and cons to having such a long history. When I go out and talk to customers about the shop, the history is a good talking point and it gives me an edge. But when I think about what my forbearers achieved and see it in front of my eyes, I feel like I am being crushed under the pressure. I get dizzy just thinking about it. Personally I still haven’t mastered my work, and my predecessors developed to a phenomenal level, both technically and aesthetically. I acutely feel the pressure of tradition. (laughs)
You’re quite young, but have you changed anything compared to how your father’s generation did things?
In my father’s era, they did it all through a distributor. But now I’m trying to be as outgoing as possible in raising the visibility of Mikawachi porcelain. We participate in exhibitions and hold shows in Tokyo and all over the country. It’s craft where you can meet the craftsman. Thanks to taking that sales approach, our name has started to be known a bit, and best of all, we get to hear feedback directly from individual customers.
It must be very helpful to have customer feedback when you’re developing original products.
It is. Wholesalers don’t actually know a whole lot about pottery. (laughs) So if you’re only selling through a wholesaler, you end up dealing with these guys with no knowledge and unreliable information, and you have to make your product based on information from someone with no sense of accountability. In that respect, getting comments directly from customers is great. Plus, people who come to gallery shows really have quite a deep knowledge of pottery.
Improving knowledge and skills is an important key to spreading your name. Did you personally learn how to make pottery through your family?
That’s right. I grew up in a pottery town, so I saw people making pottery a lot more than people from other regions would. I’d always heard people using the industry terms, so in that respect it was easy to get into it. But truth be told, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted until I was about twenty five. I studied social welfare in university, and I spent some time just drifting around working part time jobs. I learned most of my pottery skills during the two years I spent studying at a technical center. After that, I went to Delft in the Netherlands and spent some time training at Royal Delft. I knew that once I took on the family business I would have to give it my all, so I wanted to see some other worlds before I settled down.
Expanding your horizons before taking the heavy load of tradition on your shoulders…
Yes. I really got serious about it after I went to Korea and saw my roots with my own eyes. Before they were taken to Japan by the Hirado-han, my ancestors were living in Korea. The Korean pottery industry was uprooted and brought to Japan by Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s orders. That’s all in the past for us living in Japan now. But for them, it’s as if time has been stopped for four hundred years. We travelled a long, rocky road to get there, and received a hearty welcome. A representative of the Hirado family in our group offered a formal apology, and they said, “We both fought well back then.”(laughs) They talk about a war that happened four hundred years ago as if it was yesterday, and that really surprised me. It really made me think about the importance of knowing your roots. I decided that I want to make sure my children are well aware of that history as well.
The Hirado Kosho kiln has been around ever since that time, hasn’t it.
It has been around continuously, but there was a period with some family trouble, so it’s a bit complicated.
Family trouble?
It’s always been the custom around here that the oldest son takes over the business. And my grandfather was the oldest son. But during the Taisho Era (1911 – 1925), my grandfather was sent to war. During that time, Suetaro, my grandfather’s younger brother, took over the kiln. But when the war ended and my grandfather came home, his little brother was running the kiln. Well my grandfather was not too happy about that. So he wound up founding his own kiln.
I see. This kiln has several staff working at it, so it must have been hard to build it up to the stable, well-run business that it is today.
No, when you compare it to how it was in its boom days, this is nothing. Our kiln used to have a hundred and some odd people working at it in its heyday. But the businesses that did work for the GHQ (the American postwar occupational government) after the war lost a lot of business and wound up having to lay off a lot of staff. (bitter laugh)
A kiln with over a hundred employees – that’s pretty amazing. What kind of business did you have with the GHQ?
The GHQ wanted to use Mikawachi porcelain techniques to make western-style dishes, and put in a huge order. The plan was to export them to the United States. However, as timing would have it, America entered an economic slump and the company in America that was placing the order went bankrupt. We ended up taking the brunt of that.
Your kiln sure has a lot of history behind it. I have really gotten a sense for your feeling of the “weight of tradition”.
That’s why I have to learn from what my forbearers left behind and work to make this pottery more widely known. From both an aesthetic perspective and a technical perspective, I don’t want to make something phony or something that is just weird for the sake of being weird. I just want to preserve what is good and traditional in the original Mikawachi porcelain.
Hirado Kosho Danemon Kiln
889 Mikawachi-cho, Sasebo city, Nagasaki
Taiyo Nakazato
Born in Sasebo, Nagasaki, 1977
22 Comments
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PingMag MAKE is the sister site to PingMag. We use an interview format to put the spotlight on a wide range of people active in rural areas. We document the voices of these unknown heroes and broadcast them to the world. It’s the Japan-based magazine about people and making things, coming out once a week. We’re passing on the passion, ideas, skills, and life stories of people who are building today and exploring tomorrow: craftsmen, engineers, entrepreneurs, and inventors. Stay tuned!
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Hi Taiyo,
I write this email from South Africa. My interest is in developing ideas around businesses that can be developed in the rural communties.
My people in South Africa are poor and require great assistance in the rural development. Pottery would be one of those business streams that will help them a great deal. South Africa has the market together with opportunties in the Southern African Development Region.
Would your organisation be interested in developinga partnership with a community based organisation in South Africa?
Regards
Thembelani
Posted by: Thembelani on October 23rd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Hello my friend Taiyo,
After all these time Iam looking for again! It has bin a long time but you are still in my mind.I have some questions for you, I should like to talk with you by e-mail.
I look forward to it. I will give you my addres, paulgbartels@hetnet.nl
With kind regards,
Paul
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