One of my favorite mornings in Hagi: come with me to the Okada kiln

Sourcing diariesTea ceremony
Written By Hannah

Okada Seiun-zan is a Hagi-yaki kiln in Yamaguchi Prefecture, firing since the Edo period, now run by its eighth generation, Okada Yū, alongside his son Yasushi. Yū developed ensai, a reddish, cloud-like slip technique inspired by his travels along the Silk Road. Yasushi developed tanseiyu, a pale blue glaze named for the Sea of Japan. This entry covers a visit to the kiln, its noborigama climbing kiln, and the reclamation basin where broken shards are dissolved back into usable clay.

I went to Hagi with one goal in mind: to actually understand how Hagi-yaki is made, not from a book or a listing description, but by standing in the workshops where it happens. Over one stretch of days I visited three kilns in Yamaguchi, each one answering a different part of that question. This is the first of those three visits. Okada sparked my interest also because I have one of their pieces in my collection.

The Okada kiln has been firing in Hagi for more than two hundred years, since the Edo period, and I felt that the moment I walked in. Not because anyone told me, but because of what was just lying around. Unglazed jars waiting their turn on shelves along the back wall. Kettles with their handles curved mid-arc. Tools worn smooth from decades of hands that were not mine and never would be. I remember standing there for a second longer than necessary, doing the math in my head, trying to imagine how many mornings it takes to wear a tool down like that. Nothing here had been arranged for a visitor. It felt like walking into the middle of something that had simply never stopped.

Before we even reached the workshop, the garden around the entrance had already slowed me down. Someone clearly tends to it with real care, flowers set out with the same attention you would expect inside a showroom, not the kind of planting that just happens to survive. It felt like a small preview of what was waiting inside: a family that takes care of things, whether that thing is a two hundred year old kiln or a flower bed by the front step.

→ Want to know more about the eight generations behind this kiln, and how to recognise a genuine piece? Meet Okada Yū and Okada Yasushi on the maker page.

Okada Yū is the eighth generation to run this kiln, and today he shares the work with his son, Yasushi. Yū himself was not there the day I visited, and I will admit I was disappointed for exactly a moment, before Yasushi's wife, his daughter-in-law, started the tour and that disappointment disappeared entirely. She spoke about this place the way you talk about a family member you have watched grow up. Patient, warm, clearly used to explaining things to people who do not yet know what they are looking at, and generous with her time in a way that made me feel like less of an interruption and more like a guest.

Even in a forgotten corner near a pair of work gloves, one glazed pot already carried a hint of what I would find waiting in the showroom: a reddish, cloud-like bloom across its surface, the same pattern I would soon learn had a name: ensai.

A wall built from fifty years

A small display near the main showroom stopped me before I had even registered why. A portrait of Yū, younger, next to a printed history of his career and a row of his vases, each one a different direction his glazes had taken over the decades.

I found myself doing something I do not normally do in a showroom: standing still and just looking, back and forth, from the young face in the photograph to the vases in front of me, trying to connect the style to the Hagi I knew.

But this one is deep and mottled in rust and ash tones, clouds of reddish brown breaking across a pale ground exactly like the pot I had seen tucked in the corner near the gloves.

That bloom belongs to Yū's ensai technique, developed from what he brought back from travels along the Silk Road, slip applied through stencils and sprayed onto the surface before firing, producing a reddish, flame-like transformation across a white ground.

Fifty years of a person's working life had somehow been distilled into six objects and one photograph, and that felt like more than I usually get from an entire museum room.

A blue that belongs to the next generation

Further into the workshop, two small cups sat on a tatami mat, and I actually laughed a little when I saw them, because the color had nothing rustic about it at all. Clear, pale blue, cool and quiet, closer to sky than clay. After everything warm and earthy I had been looking at, it felt almost like walking into a different season.

This is tanseiyu, the glaze Yasushi developed within his father's own workshop, named for the clear color of the Sea of Japan along this coast. Standing between his father's deep, flame-colored ensai pieces and Yasushi's own pale blue, I felt something I had not expected to feel in a pottery workshop: a kind of quiet tension between two people who love each other and still refuse to make the same thing.

Same clay, same family, same roof, and two potters working in registers that barely overlap. I liked that far more than I expected to.

What happens to the bowls that do not make it

When I went outside, right next to the mound of broken shards sat a basin of murky water, old tools resting against its concrete edge. I almost walked past it without asking what it was. Then it was explained to me what actually happens there, and I felt a small jolt of understanding I had not braced for: this is where the broken pieces go to dissolve, softened back down into slip until the clay becomes usable again.

The mound itself is what genuinely stopped me in my tracks. A huge pile of dried, broken shards spread across the yard, some barely fragments, a few still recognisably parts of pots, and one small, cracked but whole vessel resting near the top as if someone had simply set it down and walked away. I crouched down next to it for a while. It did not look like waste to me. It looked oddly moving, actually, this pile of everything that had not worked, sitting right there in the daylight, right next to the water that would eventually dissolve it back into something usable again.

Wood, stacked and waiting

Firewood filled dense columns against the workshop wall, more of it stacked again further along near the kiln itself, and it was only standing next to it that I understood, physically, what firing a noborigama actually costs. Not as a fact I had read somewhere, but as a wall of wood taller than I am, right in front of me.

The kiln itself sits further back, a long structure of stacked stone and fired brick, its arched mouths dark and scorched black from years of use. It was not firing the day I visited, and I was almost glad of that. Standing next to it cold and quiet, I could take my time with it, walk around it, put my hand near the opening, without the heat and the noise of an actual firing pulling my attention away.

A cat, bought on the way out

Near the entrance, three small glazed cats sat on a wooden shelf, and something about them undid me a little. Glossy, warm toned, each one slightly different from the last, made by the youngest member of the family currently working here, a young relative already shaping and glazing her own small figures alongside three generations of potters with far more experience than she has.

I bought one before I left, almost without deciding to. It just felt like the right way to leave a place like this: carrying home something made by the newest hands in a two hundred year old line, right alongside everything made by the generations working ahead of her. It sits on my desk now, and every time I see it I think less about the kiln itself and more about that whole afternoon.

Where the day went next

Before I left, Okada’s wife made a phone call on my behalf, to a workshop further along the same street. Tenchozan, she said, an entirely different way of working the same clay. I had not planned for a second stop that day. I am glad one potter's family decided, without my asking, to open the door to another's.

I went to Hagi to understand how this pottery is actually made, and by the end of these three visits, I did. Not from a diagram or a paragraph in a book, but from clay under my own fingernails and three completely different sets of hands showing me how they get there. This is only the first stop.

The Okada pieces in collection

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Hagi-yaki kogo shaped as Hotei laughing god signed Okada Yutaka warm white glaze with tomobako displayed on tatami mat next to whisk for size, Shōwa period Japan
Hagi-yaki kogo in the shape of Hotei, signed by Okada, with tomobako from 1970-1980
€235.00

Some objects are immediately recognizable for what they are. This one is. The moment you lift the lid, you know exactly who is sitting in your hands: Hotei, the laughing god of contentment, belly forward, expression completely at ease.

Produced at the Seiun-zan kiln in Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture, by Okada Yutaka: eighth-generation master of a kiln that has been firing continuously since the Edo period, and holder of the Yamaguchi Prefecture designation for Intangible Cultural Property in Hagi-yaki.

This is not a decorative object made for the tourist market. It is a serious tea ceremony piece with full provenance.

  • There's a whole philosophy behind why a kogo is left open after use. Read it in my journal.

  • Plus, I spent a morning at this specific Hagi kiln, read about it here.

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Hagi yaki in the collection

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Crackle-glazed Hagi-yaki chawan by Tamamura Shōgetsu (1972), with a reddish foot, resting on its signed wooden box.
Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Tamamura Shōgetsu, Kōfūan kiln, dated 1972
€285.00

This chawan is lighter than it looks, which is the first thing you notice picking it up. The rim stays fairly calm, an even white, but your eye drops toward the base and that is where the crackle really lives, dense and a little chaotic compared to the rim above it, tea stains settled into every line of it. Someone used this bowl, and used it often enough that its history is written right into the glaze. Outside there is less drama. The white just fades out unevenly on its way down, and somewhere before the foot it gives up entirely, leaving bare reddish clay that is rough enough to feel the difference with your thumb.

This piece carries the signature of Tamamura Shōgetsu, whose kiln in Hagi has stood since 1952. Hagi ware ages the way almost no other tea ceramic does, the glaze slowly taking on colour and character through use, something tea drinkers have a specific word for. The box has its own small story too: an inscription inside notes the bowl was given as a gift in May 1972, back when there was only one Shōgetsu working the kiln, since the name did not pass to a second generation until 1988.

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Nagasawa Minoru, Izushi-gama chawan with a soft grey-blue crackled glaze and pink blush visible in the interior, on a wooden surface.
Izushi ware chawan by Nagasawa Minoru, Izushi-gama, signed tomobako, Hagi style, Shōwa period
€255.00

Pick this bowl up and the shape answers a question before you ask it. One side of the rim sits straighter than the rest, a shallow, deliberate press into the wall that meets your fingers exactly where a hand naturally rests. The glaze is a soft grey-blue, smooth under the fingertips, and where it catches the light around scattered pinholes a faint pink blush shows through, the same warm pink that spreads openly across the whole interior. Fine crackle runs over every surface, the kind that only comes from decades of tea passing through it.

This bowl carries the signature of Nagasawa Minoru, third generation head of Izushi-gama, the Nagasawa family workshop that has worked in Izushi, Hyōgo Prefecture, since 1907. Minoru trained at the Kyoto Municipal Ceramics Training Institute before turning to painting under Akamatsu Unrei in Osaka, and went on to win the Hokuto Prize at the Nitten exhibition, serve as a Nitten judge, and receive Japan's National Yellow Ribbon Medal in 1974. Izushi-gama is best known for pure white porcelain, but Minoru was the generation who also worked in local clay, and this bowl, with its Hagi-like crackle and blush, is a rare piece of evidence of that side of his work.

Those small pinholes in the glaze aren't unique to Hagi and Shino wares alone. Curious what causes them, and why tea masters have prized them for centuries? Read more about su-ana, the "nest holes" of Japanese glaze here.

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Tokkuri and four stacked ochoko with a pink to light blue crackled glaze, on a low wooden table. A tatami mat and Japanese art print are in the background.
Hagi-yaki sake set, tokkuri and four ochoko, Shōwa period
€75.00

The gradient is the first thing that stands out A soft blush at the base, the colour of a winter sunset, rising into a cool pale blue-grey at the rim, as though the glaze caught its breath halfway through. One tokkuri and four ochoko, every piece moving through the same shift of colour, every piece a slightly different temperature when you hold it.

Hagi-yaki stands just behind Raku in the old hierarchy of Japanese ceramics, and its reputation rests on one quality: the clay is porous. Over years of use, sake works its way slowly into the surface and the colours shift. The Japanese call this shichibake, the seven transformations. For sake ware, this is not wear; it is the point. This set bears a kiln stamp pressed into the unglazed foot of each piece.

Pour sake into this set once and you have started something. Hagi clay is porous, so every cup you drink from leaves a trace: a slow, quiet shift in colour that the Japanese have a name for. Nobody can rush it, and no two sets change in quite the same way. I wrote about what actually happens inside the clay, why the crazing matters, and how to help the change along instead of fighting it. Read the full story.

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Hagi-yaki natsu-jawan matcha bowl beside signed tomobako wooden box, tatami mat, ukiyoe print background, Japan
Unavailable
(sold) Hagi-yaki summer chawan with karahai glow, signed by Matsuura Mugen, Shōwa period
€325.00

Notice: This chawan has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.

Held at an angle, this chawan catches the light differently every time. The pale, crackled glaze runs from a soft off-white into a warm, almost blush pink where it thins over the clay, a color Hagi potters call karahai, and it only appears where the firing has gone exactly right. The rim tilts and dips ever so slightly, a wall that never quite settles into a perfect circle, and that small imperfection is what makes it sit so naturally in the hand. It is a bowl built to be picked up, turned, and looked at again.

This bowl carries the tomobako signature of Matsuura Mugen, founder of the Shōunzan-gama kiln in Hagi, built on the very ground where Hagi-yaki itself began centuries ago. Mugen's work grew out of the tradition of Miwa Kyūwa, one of the defining masters of Hagi ware and a holder of Japan's Living National Treasure designation, and that lineage shows in the quiet, unforced warmth of this glaze. Its wide, shallow shape is a natsu-jawan, a summer bowl, made so the tea cools a little faster in the warmer months, which makes this the moment to bring it into use rather than let it wait. A signed, boxed chawan from this kiln is not something that turns up often outside Japan.

Hagi ware isn't meant to stay the same. Read how it grows with you, in my journal.

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Hagi-yaki chawan Hirose Tanga Tenpōzan kiln with tomobako and shiori, Heisei era
Unavailable
(sold) Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Hirose Tanga, Tenpōzan kiln, with tomobako and documentation
€285.00

The glaze on this bowl sits differently from most Hagi ware you will encounter. It is pale, almost creamy, with a softness that makes the surface look slightly matte until the light catches it and you see the depth underneath. The craquelé is fine and even. The form is quieter and more settled than early Hagi ware. It is less raw, more considered.

By the time Hirose Tanga made this bowl, he had been working in Hagi for decades. His name had appeared in exhibitions across Kyūshū and Yamaguchi since the 1960s, he had received a national fine arts prize, and his kiln held an official government designation as a traditional craft. The tomobako for this bowl carries his personal signature alongside the kiln name, and the shiori inside contains his full printed biography. That combination of the signed box, named maker and documented career is what the Japanese tea world calls full provenance, and it is genuinely uncommon to find outside Japan.

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Hagi-yaki sencha tea set Hirose Tanga Nanshu Tenpōzan kiln kyusu and six cups with original tomobako, late Shōwa period Japan, displayed with shiori on tatami mat with ukiyoe print in background
Hagi-yaki sencha tea set by Hirose Tanga, Tenpōzan kiln, kyusu and 6 cups with tomobako, late Shōwa
€185.00

Six cups and a teapot, and the whole set reads as one breath. The glaze moves between pale blue-grey and soft salmon pink depending on where the light falls, and a fine web of craquelé runs across every surface.

Nothing is decorated. Nothing needs to be.

Sencha culture in Japan is quieter than the matcha ceremony but no less intentional. It is the daily practice of making something ordinary into something considered. Choosing the right pot, the right cup, the right temperature of water. Hagi ware has been part of that practice for over four centuries, prized for a clay body so porous and alive that the glaze slowly shifts in colour with each use.

Hagi ware isn't meant to stay the same. Read how it grows with you, in my journal.

Read more →
Hagi-yaki sencha tea set Hirose Tanga Nanshu Tenpōzan kiln kyusu and six cups with original tomobako, late Shōwa period Japan, displayed with shiori on tatami mat with ukiyoe print in backgroun (Copy)
Hagi-yaki sencha tea set by Hirose Tanga, Tenpōzan kiln, kyusu and 6 cups with tomobako, late Shōwa (Copy)
€185.00

Six cups and a teapot, and the whole set reads as one breath. The glaze moves between pale blue-grey and soft salmon pink depending on where the light falls, and a fine web of craquelé runs across every surface.

Nothing is decorated. Nothing needs to be.

Sencha culture in Japan is quieter than the matcha ceremony but no less intentional. It is the daily practice of making something ordinary into something considered. Choosing the right pot, the right cup, the right temperature of water. Hagi ware has been part of that practice for over four centuries, prized for a clay body so porous and alive that the glaze slowly shifts in colour with each use.

A Hagi tea set does not stay the same. It becomes something over time.
→ Read how it grows with you, in my journal.

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(coming soon) Meoto yunomi pair, Taizan kiln, Hagi-yaki, with tomobako box and shiori documentation, Shōwa - Heisei ca 1980-2000s
Unavailable
(coming soon) Meoto yunomi pair, Taizan kiln, Hagi-yaki, with tomobako box and shiori documentation, Shōwa - Heisei ca 1980-2000s
€0.00

I work through my finds in small batches as each piece takes time to research, photograph and write properly. But some items are too good to sit invisible in the backlog, and if you have been looking for a Taizan klin Hagi-yaki yunomi meteo pair with their original box and documentation, I want you to know this one exists.

This is a meoto set, made for two, named 花容 on the tomobako. One cup runs warm with orange and rust, the other cooler with fine crazing across a celadon-grey glaze. Both from Taizan-gama in Tsubaki, Hagi, with the original signed tomobako and kiln documentation.

A meoto set, made for two, the slight difference in size a deliberate choice: the larger cup for him, the smaller for her. In Japan these sets are a traditional wedding gift, a pair of objects meant to be used together for a lifetime.

The full listing, photographs and price will follow. Want to know the moment it goes live? Scroll down.

👇

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Set of five Hagi-yaki yunomi in original tomobako box, signed, Taizan kiln, shira-hagi glaze, Shōwa period
Set of five Hagi-yaki yunomi in original tomobako box, signed, Taizan kiln, shira-hagi glaze, Shōwa period
€260.00

Five cups that move together without being identical. The glaze is the color of old paper washed with rust, white pooling in clouds where it thickens, warm terracotta clay pushing through where it thins. Each cup carries this differently. Set them on a table and the effect is immediate: a family of objects made from the same impulse, none of them the same.

These cups are wide and generous, substantial enough to hold with both hands and feel warmth come through the clay. Hagi-yaki has been placed second only to Raku by tea masters for four centuries. The shira-hagi glaze, made from rice straw ash fired until the carbon burns away, is among the most refined expressions of that tradition.

The set comes with its original signed and stamped tomobako and the kiln's own shiori, giving it a provenance completeness that is unusual for Shōwa-period teaware.

Hagi ware isn't meant to stay the same. Read how it grows with you, in my journal.

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(coming soon) Hagi-yaki Ido chawan by Tamamura Shōgetsu, Tokugetsu-gama
Unavailable
(coming soon) Hagi-yaki Ido chawan by Tamamura Shōgetsu, Tokugetsu-gama
€0.00

I work through my finds in small batches as each piece takes time to research, photograph and write properly. But some items are too good to sit invisible in the backlog, and if you have been looking for a Hagi-yaki Ido chawan with full provenance, I want you to know this one exists.

This chawan comes from the Tokugetsu-gama kiln in Hagi, run by the Tamamura family whose lineage of master potters stretches back to the Edo period. The name Shōgetsu is a generation name passed down within this family line, which holds an exceptional reputation among tea ceremony practitioners in Japan. The original signed tomobako is included.

The full listing, photographs and price will follow. Want to know the moment it goes live? Scroll down.

👇

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Oni-Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Hirose Nanshū, founder of Tenpōzan kiln, with tomobako and shiori documentation, early Shōwa era
Oni-Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Hirose Nanshū, founder of Tenpōzan kiln, with tomobako and shiori documentation, early Shōwa era
€325.00

The clay here is warm and gritty in a way that reads almost geological. The glaze deepens to amber-brown at the base and fades toward a pale sandy beige at the rim, and the transition between the two is not a line but a gradual dissolve. The form is slightly irregular, soft-shouldered, made without any ambition to be symmetrical.

This bowl comes from the founding generation of one of Hagi's most recognised kilns. The tomobako carries the hanko of Hirose Nanshū (南州), the man who established the Tsubaki-gama Tenpōzan in Hagi. The telephone notation on the shiori dates the documentation to before direct-dial lines existed in the city. Somewhere in the 1960s or earlier.

The shiori itself was signed by his son Hirose Tanga, who took over the kiln and continued his father's practice. That combination (the father's box and seal, the son's documentation) is a quiet record of how Japanese family kilns pass from one generation to the next. Hagi-yaki has held the second rank in the traditional tea master's hierarchy for centuries, behind only Raku. A bowl from the founding generation of a kiln in that tradition is not a common thing to find.

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Japanese Hagi-yaki yunomi pair gohonte Tenryu gama kiri-kodai Showa stacked on wooden plank next to chasen whisk for size
Hagi-yaki yunomi pair milky glaze pink spots signed by Tenpō gama, Shōwa period
€85.00

These cups are from the Tenpō gama kiln in Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture, a kiln founded in 1973 that has built its reputation on classical Hagi technique: soft forms, understated glazes, and the porous clay that makes Hagi ware change with use.

The iron-bearing spots in the clay bleed through the white glaze during firing: no two cups come out the same. As tea slowly stains the clay through the craquelé over years of use, the cup deepens in colour and texture, a process the Japanese call nanabake, the seven transformations.

The craquelé covers the full surface in a fine irregular network. The form is round and low, wider at the lip than at the base, and each cup sits on the kiri-kodai foot: the triangular notch cut into the clay that has been a feature of quality Hagi ware for four centuries.

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Shira-hagi chawan Taizan kiln white Hagi ware matcha bowl displayed on wooden plank with original tomobako, Shōwa period ca. 1960 to 1975 Japan, ukiyoe print in background
Shira-hagi chawan, Taizan kiln, white Hagi ware matcha bowl, original tomobako, Shōwa period, ca. 1960 to 1975
€255.00

This bowl has a way of looking complete from any angle. The form is low and wide, the rim gently uneven in the way of something made by hand rather than adjusted toward perfection.

The glaze is a full, dense shining white over most of the body, with orange pushing through directly where the clay asserts itself. It stops you before you know why.

This chawan comes from an earlier generation of Taizan-gama, one of the kilns that has worked in the Tsubaki district of Hagi within a tradition tea masters have placed second only to Raku for four centuries.

The tomobako is inscribed 白萩 茶碗 and the bowl carries the full rectangular 泰山 seal, the older mark of the kiln used before the oven was incorporated as a company.

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(sold) Shira-Hagi chawan by Yamato Yoshitaka, Matsuroku-gama, signed tomobako and kiln documentation, Taishō period
Unavailable
(sold) Shira-Hagi chawan by Yamato Yoshitaka, Matsuroku-gama, signed tomobako and kiln documentation, Taishō period
€285.00

Notice: This chawan has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.

Soft. That is the first word for this bowl.

Not white exactly, more the pale warm tone of early morning light on clay, with a blush of peach that deepens toward the foot and fades near the rim. It shifts depending on where you hold it. In shade it reads warm and rosy. In direct light it almost disappears into the clay beneath it. The form is generous and low, the kind of chawan that settles into two hands naturally, and the rough dark foot ring anchors everything.

This is shira-Hagi, the white Hagi style, made with the characteristic straw ash glaze over Daido clay from Yamaguchi Prefecture. The glaze sits on the clay like a pale morning sky, rosy and warm, shifting between peach and white depending on the light.

This bowl was made by Yamato Yoshitaka (大和吉孝), tenth-generation master of Matsuroku-gama in Miyano, Yamaguchi, during the Taishō period. The kiln's lineage begins with the Mōri clan's official Tōkōji kiln in Hagi, one of the historically significant lines in Japanese ceramic history.

Complete with the original signed tomobako wooden storage box, the original printed kiln document, and a fitted silk drawstring pouch.

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Hagi-yaki chawan by Moriwaki Fumitada: a low, pale blue-grey ceramic bowl, with a bamboo whisk, scoop, and patterned mat, and a calligraphed wooden box behind.
Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Moriwaki Fumitada with warikodai and signed tomobako, Shōwa period
€255.00

The glaze on this chawan is the quiet kind. Soft white shifting into blue-grey and pale lilac depending on the light, a surface that looks different in morning sun than in lamplight. The form is generous and low, the kind of bowl that settles into both hands rather than sitting in them.

Hagi ware asks to be held. In the tea ceremony it is the object that passes through the most hands, that is turned and considered from every angle, that is meant to reward this kind of attention over years and decades of use.

The porous clay body gradually absorbs tea, shifting slowly in color, deepening where the glaze cracks finest.

Moriwaki Fumitada made this bowl at his Chigiri-gama kiln in Seto, where a decades-long practice in the technical traditions of Japanese ceramics underlies work that carries Hagi-yaki's quieter, more intuitive qualities.

A Hagi-yaki glaze is never fully sealed. It develops a fine network of cracks called kan'nyū as it cools in the kiln, and through those cracks water, and later tea, slowly enters the clay beneath. What happens when water or tea meets Hagi-yaki: kan'nyū and nanabake, watched in real time → Read journal post.

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See all tea ceremony items

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A selection of other kiln visits and glaze traditions from Japan.

→ Hagi-yaki isn't meant to stay the same. Read how the glaze itself keeps changing, in my journal.

→ Curious what that crackle actually does the moment it meets tea? I filled a Hagi chawan with water and watched it happen in real time: What happens when water meets Hagi-yaki

→ Ensai and tanseiyu both come from a kiln that lets fire and slip decide the surface. Bizen goes even further: no glaze at all, only what ten to fourteen days in the flame leaves behind. Bizen-yaki: the Okayama tradition without glaze

→ Curious how to care for a piece like the Okada kogo in the shop?I wrote a full ceramics care guide.

→ Want to know more about the eight generations behind this kiln, and how to recognise a genuine piece? Meet Okada Yū and Okada Yasushi on the maker page.

Read more journal posts

My journal
Su-ana: the nest holes hiding in Japanese stoneware glazes
Su-ana: the nest holes hiding in Japanese stoneware glazes

Tiny pinholes scattered across a thick glaze, a texture called su-ana, tell you more about Shino and Hagi ceramics than most people realise. Here's what causes it, and why potters never smoothed it away.

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A quiet morning at Senryūzan: inside a Hagi kiln that has worked since 1826
A quiet morning at Senryūzan: inside a Hagi kiln that has worked since 1826

Senryūzan (泉流山) is a Hagi-yaki kiln in Yamaguchi Prefecture founded in 1826, tracing its roots back further still to the late Edo-period Obata-yaki tradition. The kiln was led for decades by Yoshiga Taibi, a recognised Person of Cultural Merit, and is now run by his son Yoshiga Hatao. Senryūzan still fires in a wood-burning noborigama, one of the few climbing kilns in Hagi still worked this way.

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Oshinobi dōchū: the kokeshi tradition of travelling in disguise
Oshinobi dōchū: the kokeshi tradition of travelling in disguise

Oshinobi dōchū, travelling incognito, shows a Heian noblewoman shielding her face with a kasa hat while journeying in disguise. Two pieces in the collection, by Sato Suigai and Seiju Kon, show how differently that same story can be built in wood.

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One glaze, three lives: a wood-fired chawan explained
One glaze, three lives: a wood-fired chawan explained

This chawan was fired at the Kakuzan-gama, a kiln built in 1959 inside the Kyoto headquarters of Ōmoto, a Japanese religious movement, by Kaneshige Sozan, a member of Bizen's most celebrated pottery family. It is signed by Deguchi Eiji, who served as Ōmoto's Sōchō (director) from 1958 to 1962. A single white glaze on this bowl developed rust, near-black and crystalline blue effects during firing, the result of flame position, ash deposit and heat variation inside a wood kiln, not of painting or decoration.

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Fourteen days, one fire: what it actually takes to fire a Bizen kiln
Fourteen days, one fire: what it actually takes to fire a Bizen kiln

Bizen-yaki is never glazed and never painted. Everything visible on a finished piece was decided during the firing itself, by potters who spend two weeks feeding a kiln by hand, reading the fire instead of a dial. On a return visit to Shibaoka Tōsendō, the Kōzan-gama kiln in Imbe, here is what that actually looks like from the inside.

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What happens when water meets Hagi-yaki: kan'nyū and nanabake, watched in real time
What happens when water meets Hagi-yaki: kan'nyū and nanabake, watched in real time

I filled a Hagi chawan with water and watched what happened. Within a minute, the glaze showed exactly how it will change with years of tea, and four other pieces revealed just how differently that process can unfold, starting long before the kiln, in the clay itself.

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The eleven kokeshi traditions and how to tell them apart
The eleven kokeshi traditions and how to tell them apart

Every kokeshi carries the place it comes from before it carries anything else. A guide to the eleven regional traditions of Tōhoku, and how to recognise each one on sight.

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One of my favorite mornings in Hagi: come with me to the Okada kiln
One of my favorite mornings in Hagi: come with me to the Okada kiln

Three generations under one roof, a blue glaze that surprised me, and a cat I bought on the way out. One of my favorite mornings in Hagi, at the Okada kiln.

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Journey to Katsuo-ji: The Temple of a Thousand Daruma in Osaka
Journey to Katsuo-ji: The Temple of a Thousand Daruma in Osaka

Perched in the forested hills of Minoh, Katsuo-ji is known throughout Japan as the Daruma Temple, thousands of red daruma cascading down its steps, each one carrying someone's wish. A visit that changed how I see the wooden daruma in our own collection.

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Three objects for your Japanese meditation corner, and why each one matters
Three objects for your Japanese meditation corner, and why each one matters

Every temple I visit in Japan has the same quality of quiet, and it starts with three things: scent, sound, and a presence that holds the space. Here is how to bring that same intention home, starting with a single kōro and the concept of ma.

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Tea bowls crossing time: a visit to the Raku Museum in Kyoto
Tea bowls crossing time: a visit to the Raku Museum in Kyoto

Inside the Raku Museum in Kyoto during the Raku Successive Generations exhibition. Chawan from Chōjirō to the 16th Kichizaemon, a quiet garden, and one idea about tradition that stayed with me.

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Caring for your vintage urushi lacquerware
Caring for your vintage urushi lacquerware

Urushi looks fragile and behaves like the opposite, until it meets a sunny windowsill or a winter radiator. Here is what actually damages lacquerware, what does not, and the handful of habits that keep a piece looking the way it did the day it was finished.

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Caring for your vintage kokeshi
Caring for your vintage kokeshi

A kokeshi asks for very little once it has found the right spot. Grouped in threes on a shelf, alone on a windowsill out of direct sun, or standing next to something entirely unrelated, like a stack of books or a single dried branch. Here is what I have learned about placing them so they actually get looked at, instead of disappearing into a room.

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Caring for your vintage ceramics: chawan, yunomi and ikebana vases
Caring for your vintage ceramics: chawan, yunomi and ikebana vases

Every ceramic piece I bring home has already been through decades of hands before mine. A chawan changes colour with tea over the years, a vase collects mineral marks if you let it, and neither of those things is damage. Here is what actually matters when you look after one.

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My journey through the Mountains of Fukushima and the kokeshi I meet throughout Japan
My journey through the Mountains of Fukushima and the kokeshi I meet throughout Japan

A week in the heartland of kokeshi: Fukushima. From climbing Mount Bandai before sunrise to studying the unique facial expressions in the work of masters like Ichiro and Sato Fumio. Discover how the landscape and deep-rooted woodcarving traditions shape these authentic vintage treasures.

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What the wood remembers: grain, fire and chisel marks and the face that looks back
What the wood remembers: grain, fire and chisel marks and the face that looks back

What draws you to a kokeshi is rarely the name on the base. It is the grain showing through the dark wood, the mark the tool left, and the two lines that somehow become a face. A close look at how makers like Usaburo and Sansaku Sekiguchi work with and against the wood itself.

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Bizen-yaki: the Okayama tradition without glaze
Bizen-yaki: the Okayama tradition without glaze

Bizen-yaki has no glaze. Every color, every mark, every surface effect is made in the kiln by fire, ash, and position. This guide explains what hidasuki, goma, sangiri and shiro-Bizen actually are, how they are made, and what to look for when you buy.

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A tiger made for its own year: kinsai gold and a Kyoto tradition
A tiger made for its own year: kinsai gold and a Kyoto tradition

There is a small tiger on my desk with gold worn down to almost nothing on its ears and shoulders. It was made for a Year of the Tiger, in Kyoto, by a kiln lineage going back to 1771. The wear is not damage. It is exactly what the gold was always going to do.

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Inside a 200-year-old Kyoto raku-yaki kiln that still makes tea bowls by hand
Inside a 200-year-old Kyoto raku-yaki kiln that still makes tea bowls by hand

Behind the curtain at Raku Studio Waraku in Kyoto's Gion district. How aka-raku and kuro-raku tea bowls are hand-formed, fired, and finished with charcoal by 8th generation master Kawasaki Motoo. A sourcing diary entry from KAIKO&CO.

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Sourcing in Japan Day 3: The hunt for haori & hidden treasures
Sourcing in Japan Day 3: The hunt for haori & hidden treasures

Furukawacho Shotengai in Higashiyama: an arcade frozen in the 1970s, a kimono specialist with six haori I had not expected to find, and a folder of 1895 Kyoto lithographs from an antique bookstore tucked behind a curtain. Day three of my Sourcing Week in Japan series in Kyoto and Okayama.

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Finding Ouchi-nuri hina dolls in Yanaka, Tokyo's cat town.
Finding Ouchi-nuri hina dolls in Yanaka, Tokyo's cat town.

An antique market stall on temple grounds in Tokyo's Yanaka cat town, a lacquered doll pair from the ‘50’s with a story about a homesick bride, and a cat print.

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Ōbi-yaki: the Kanazawa tea bowl tradition born from a Kyoto restriction
Ōbi-yaki: the Kanazawa tea bowl tradition born from a Kyoto restriction

A Kyoto potter stayed behind in Kanazawa in 1666, and the Raku family sent a glaze north with him, one built for the cold. Eleven generations later, that same amber glaze still catches the light.

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The same face, eighty years apart: Naruko kokeshi and the art of handing something down
The same face, eighty years apart: Naruko kokeshi and the art of handing something down

Two kokeshi, eighty years apart. Same face, different hands. The story of the Sakurai family and five generations of Naruko tradition.

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Sourcing in Japan Day 2: Meeting my favorite chawan supplier in Osaka
Sourcing in Japan Day 2: Meeting my favorite chawan supplier in Osaka

Some supplier relationships take years to build. In Osaka I have a meeting over tea and chawan pieces that never reach any public market. Day two of my Sourcing Week in Japan series in Kyoto and Okayama.

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Sourcing in Japan Day 1: Kobo-san Antique Market at Kyoto's Toji Temple
Sourcing in Japan Day 1: Kobo-san Antique Market at Kyoto's Toji Temple

This is where the week begins. An early alarm, a heavy bag, and the first market of the trip: Kobo-san at Tōji Temple, Kyoto, at 5:30 in the morning. Day one of my Sourcing Week in Japan series in Kyoto and Okayama.

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The most beautiful objects in the Japanese tea ceremony tradition are made to be emptied
The most beautiful objects in the Japanese tea ceremony tradition are made to be emptied

This is Hotei, the laughing god of contentment, made in soft Hagi-yaki. Hagi ware made by the hand of potter Okada Yutaka. He holds a single piece of incense. After that piece is placed near the charcoal, he sits empty for the rest of the session. Japan put its finest craft into this moment of emptying, and then into the silence after.

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Why size matters: what a chawan feels like before you drink from it
Why size matters: what a chawan feels like before you drink from it

Before you taste the tea, you hold the bowl. Weight, diameter, the way the foot sits in your palm: these are not secondary details. They are the bowl. On what I look for when I source chawan in Japan, and why size tells you more than the glaze ever will.

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How to live with kokeshi: placing a Japanese wooden figure in a modern home
How to live with kokeshi: placing a Japanese wooden figure in a modern home

A kokeshi placed well in a room is more powerful than five grouped without thought. Here is what I have learned about height, background, and the quiet effect of giving one figure enough space to simply stand.

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The objects of the tea ceremony and what to look for in each one. What I bring home from Japan, and why.
The objects of the tea ceremony and what to look for in each one. What I bring home from Japan, and why.

Every time I return from Japan, I carry objects built around a ritual. Not decorative pieces, but things that were made to slow things down. This is what I look for in each one, and why.

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The beauty of Hagi-Yaki that will grow with you
The beauty of Hagi-Yaki that will grow with you

Hagi-yaki has been made in western Japan for over 400 years. What makes it special is what happens after you buy it. The bowl changes with every cup of tea you drink from it. That is why hagi-yaki is so loveable.

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Hannah
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