Meet the maker: Sekiguchi Sansaku
Sekiguchi Sansaku (1925-2018) was a leading figure in Gunma's post-war sōsaku kokeshi movement, designated a Contemporary Master Craftsman by the Japanese government in 1978. A survivor of wartime service in Manchuria and postwar internment in Siberia, he devoted his career to a craft he hoped could carry a quiet wish for peace forward to new generations.
A larger Dōjo, Sekiguchi Sansaku's own titled name for this young girl figure from 1979 showing his signature carved kimono technique and minimal painted face on a taller, dark lacquered figure.
Who was Sekiguchi Sansaku
Sekiguchi Sansaku was born in 1925 in Shibukawa, Gunma prefecture. He originally trained toward Japanese painting, winning several honours at the prefectural art exhibition between 1951 and 1957, before turning fully to sōsaku kokeshi from 1958 onward.
His early life included wartime service in Manchuria, followed by internment in Siberia after the war's end. In a 2005 newspaper interview he spoke about wanting the joy of making kokeshi passed on to children so that the sorrow of war might never be repeated again, a wish that runs quietly through the rest of his career.
He won the Prime Minister's Award at the national kokeshi contest in 1969, and in 1978 was designated a Contemporary Master Craftsman (現代の名工) by the Japanese government, a national honour recognising outstanding skill, awarded to a select number of artisans across all trades each year since 1967. He continued working for decades afterward, producing pieces across a wide range of sizes and subjects, from small dōjo (young girl) figures to large bujin (warrior) forms.
His dōjo design recurs across his career in multiple sizes: pieces we have handled ourselves span from a 13.5cm example dated 1991 to a 21cm example dated 1979, both carrying the same carved chrysanthemum motif twelve years apart.
He was a direct contemporary of Kano Chiyomatsu, another leading name in Gunma's post-war sōsaku kokeshi movement. Both men worked from within the same prefecture during the same formative decades, both won the Prime Minister's Award, and both were members of the Nippon Kokeshi Artistic Handicraft Association, appearing together in that association's 1983 directory and in the 1998 Shibukawa City exhibition catalogue. Their work is often presented together by collectors and archives as part of the same modernist Gunma generation, as they shared time, place, and professional circles.
What makes Sekiguchi Sansaku’s work distinctive
He carves his decoration into the wood rather than painting it on top, a technique distinct from the painted or pyrography work of many other Gunma makers. The design catches the light differently depending on the angle you view it from.
Faces are kept minimal, typically two lines and a single point, painted freehand, so no two pieces are ever quite identical.
His subjects range widely, from young girls (dōjo) to warrior figures (bujin), often in dark, restrained lacquered tones with fine incised kimono detail.
The same chrysanthemum. See the above pictures of two pieces dating twelve years apart. Two pieces we have handled ourselves, dated 1979 and 1991, carry the same carved chrysanthemum motif on the kimono, a sign of just how consistent and recognisable his design language stayed across decades of work.
Fun facts
A rare national honour. In 1978 Sekiguchi Sansaku was designated a Contemporary Master Craftsman by the Japanese government, one of a select group recognised nationally each year since 1967, across all skilled trades, not just kokeshi making.
A wish for peace, carried in wood. In a 2005 newspaper interview, he spoke about hoping the joy of making kokeshi could be passed on to children, so that the sorrow he lived through in the war would never return.
Signatures of Sekiguchi Sansaku in our archive
Signed on the base, typically with a red seal reading 三作 (Sansaku)Sansaku)
His bigger pieces are often also signed directly on the piece itself in brushwork, in addition to the base seal.
Meet the Sekiguchi Sansaku kokeshi in collection
Notice: This kokeshi has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.
Item details
A creative kokeshi by Sekiguchi Sansaku (関口三作, 1925 to 2018), titled Dojo (童女, young girl), Shōwa period, Japan, ca. 1979. The figure stands 21 cm tall in dark lacquered wood, with a carved chrysanthemum kimono, a calm half-hidden face beneath swept dark hair, and a carved obi at the waist. Weight 1176 grams.
Sekiguchi Sansaku was the only kokeshi artist formally recognised by the Japanese government as Master of Creative Kokeshi, with work held in museum collections internationally. The base carries his signature 三作 (Sansaku) alongside a dedication in brushwork recording that this piece was gifted in January 1979 by the employees of the credit department of the Matsumoto branch, most likely a bank. A gift with a specific occasion and named givers is uncommon, and gives this kokeshi a documented social history alongside its artistic one.
Vintage condition, light surface wear consistent with age. Shōwa period, creative kokeshi tradition.
Sources
Physical examination of the seal, construction, and any award stickers on the pieces themselves
Information shared by dealers and specialists in Japan at the time of purchase
Nihon Kokeshi Kōgeikai (Japan Kokeshi Craft Association), official artisan profile: kokeshi.net/kougeikai/sansaku
Nippon Kokeshi Artistic Handicraft Association (1983). Creative KOKESHI Artistic Handicraft Directory. Edited by Kazuo Izumi, supervised by Daizo Nishide.
Shibukawa City Board of Education, Lifelong Learning Division (1998). Creative Kokeshi Doll Exhibition in Shibukawa City: 20th & 5th catalogue, 1994-1998. Edited by Ishihara.
Akahata (Japanese newspaper), 6 July 2005, feature interview: "9条こけし / 'Messenger of Peace' / 'Contemporary Master Craftsman' Sekiguchi Sansaku": jcp.or.jp/akahata/aik4/2005-07-06/2005070601_04_2.html
Gunma Prefecture official website, on the origins of Gunma kokeshi: pref.gunma.jp/site/kougei/131134.html
Read more
Curious how a maker's brushwork can shift over a lifetime, or across a family workshop? Both pieces in this collection carry the same seal in two different hands. Read the full story in the journal.
What draws you to a kokeshi is rarely the name on the base. Read more about how makers like Sekiguchi carve rather than paint their signature detail in my journal.
Wondering how to care for aged, wax-finished kokeshi wood like this? Here's what actually matters. Read the kokeshi care guide.
Browse all items
Small enough to sit in one palm, this kokeshi has a quiet, downcast composure that larger pieces often lose. Her dark lacquered hair falls in a smooth, sculpted line across a pale, softly painted face, eyes closed in a calm, almost sleepy expression. The kimono is deep and dark, incised rather than simply painted, with a fine red under layer just visible at the collar.
This is the work of Sekiguchi Sansaku, one of the defining names in Gunma's post-war sōsaku kokeshi movement and a recipient of the Prime Minister's Award. His young girl, or dōjo, design recurs across his career in many sizes, and this piece carries his own seal on the base along with a handwritten inscription dating it to the 21st of July 1991.
→ What draws you to a kokeshi is rarely the name on the base. Read more about how makers like Sekiguchi carve rather than paint their signature detail in my journal.
This kokeshi stands taller than almost anything else in the collection: 41 centimetres of smooth, weighted wood, its rounded head resting above a body that tapers in and out again like a figure caught mid movement. Rust red maple leaves drift across the surface in loose, hand painted clusters, their veins burned into the wood before the colour was added. At nearly a kilo in the hand, this is not a piece you display and forget. It asks to be picked up.
This is the work of Kano Chiyomatsu, a sōsaku kokeshi artist from Gunma prefecture whose career spans more than seventy years and includes two occasions, in 1981 and 1982, when his work was presented to the then Crown Prince and Crown Princess Michiko. His pieces have been included in Gunma's own middle school art textbooks and he has been recognised as a Prefectural Traditional Craftsperson. This particular piece carries his signature and seal.
The grain does most of the work before the paint even starts. This kokeshi is turned from dark keyaki, Japanese zelkova, and the wood has aged into something close to bronze: warm, dense, with a reddish-brown depth that shifts as the light moves across it. Over that, sweeping black brushwork and horizontal red-maroon banding run the full length of the body. The result is more calligraphy than decoration. It stops you because it looks like nothing else on a shelf.
Kawamura Shōji (川村昭治) was part of the Kawamura family of Yamagata kokeshi makers, a lineage documented across multiple generations in the dentō tradition of Tōhoku. This piece shows his more abstract side: the traditional training is visible in the precise lathe work and the weight of the form, but the decoration is entirely his own, abstract, direct, and confident.
Kawamura’s work sits on the boundary between dentō and shingata. His foundation is traditional Yamagata-kei kokeshi making, but his output ranges from pieces that stay close to that convention to others that drift toward the freer, more individual expression associated with shingata and sōsaku work.
→ Interested to read more about the woodworking on kokeshi like these? I wrote about it in my journal.
→ Wondering where Yamagata fits among the eleven kokeshi traditions? Here's the full picture.
Two cups, two sizes, one shared ritual. The glaze is what stops you first: thick, white feldspar that has pulled itself into small rough patches over the surface, almost volcanic in places, then thins out just enough at the shoulder to let warm reddish brown break through from the clay beneath. Small dark iron spots scatter across both cups, no two placed the same way. This is Shino at its most unpolished and most honest, the kind of glaze that looks different every time the light shifts across it.
These yunomi carry the tomobako of Katō Shōhei (加藤庄平), fourth generation head of the Marugama kiln in Seto, one of Japan's Six Ancient Kiln towns, working under his personal art name Yōkun (窯薫). The box is inscribed with the piece's name, Shino yunomi, signed Yōkun saku, and stamped with his Shōhei seal. Packed alongside it is the kiln's own printed history, describing ceremonial and decorative work made for temples and for several branches of the Japanese imperial family around 1940. A cup with this much of its own paper trail is not something you find often outside Japan.
Curious what fire alone can do to a glaze? I wrote about Bizen's flame effects, a different technique but the same idea: the kiln, not just the potter, decides the final look. Read more here.
The wood here is stained almost to the point of black, but hold it under a lamp and it turns, deep brown catching the light across grain of the rounded okappa hair. Against that dark ground sit two chrysanthemum medallions in pale, untouched wood, their petals radiating out in fine ridges, close enough to touch and count. The face is set low and quiet, downcast eyes, a small red mark for a mouth, the kind of stillness that makes you stop scrolling and just look at it for a second longer than you meant to.
This is a sōsaku kokeshi signed by Yuji Okamoto, second generation maker at Usaburō, the Gunma workshop that has been making kokeshi since around 1950 and today ships its work to collectors across the world. What makes this particular figure worth pausing on is what is stuck to its base: the original gold award sticker from the All Japan Kokeshi Concours, the country's oldest and largest kokeshi competition, held every year in Shiroishi. This piece carries the Forestry Agency Director-General's Award, one of the recognised honours given out at that event alongside the Prime Minister's Award. It was made to be judged against the best kokeshi in Japan, and it won something.
The sticker on the larger of these two pieces carries exactly that award. The grain visible beneath the kimono decoration is central to what Usaburo built his reputation on: the wood is not hidden, it is part of the design.
Interested to read more about the woodworking on kokeshi like these? I wrote about it in my journal.
They look down with the kind of stillness that takes a moment to place, heavy lidded eyes under thick brushed eyebrows on the larger figure, the same sharp piercing eyes on the smaller one. A full beard is painted strand by strand rather than filled in flat, while vermilion lacquer sweeps around him in one unbroken line, giving way to a dark, almost black hood at the crown. Beside him, the smaller daruma that carries an deep warm lacquer worn into a darker tone where beside the decades of handling he still holds his shine.
Both take the armless, legless form associated with Bodhidharma, the monk said to have meditated so long in stillness that his limbs withered away, leaving only the seated shape carried in his memory ever since.
Both made by different well-known woodworkers. The larger daruma has a black seal pressed at its base, belonging to Shido Shozan, a Yamagata carver known chiefly for his sōsaku kokeshi rather than daruma like this one. The smaller daruma is made by Seifu Gono. A mingei craftsman known for turning keyaki, the slow growing Japanese zelkova prized for its depth of grain, into figures exactly like this one. Keyaki is not an easy wood to source, it takes centuries to mature, and Gono treated every piece as something meant to outlast him.
Curious where this expression comes from in the flesh? I found a thousand versions of it on one hillside in Osaka. Read about it in my journal.
She looks out from under a heavy dark bob, two sliding wooden panels framing a small painted face with the calm, slightly downturned eyes typical of a well made kokeshi. Turn her around and the whole story changes: her body carries a painted scene, thatched farmhouse roofs rising steeply against a stand of trees, rendered in dark ink tones against the warm honey wood, like a print laid straight onto the grain.
Usaburō Kokeshi was founded by Okamoto Usaburō in Shinto Village, Gunma Prefecture, in 1950. Rather than following the strict regional patterns of traditional kokeshi, his workshop became known for sōsaku kokeshi, free in subject and form. Sometimes painting real places travellers had visited directly onto the wood. This particular scene depicts the Hida road, the old route through the mountains of Gifu Prefecture that leads to Takayama and the thatched villages of Shirakawa-go, a well loved keepsake from one of Japan's classic postwar travel routes.
Interested to read more about the woodworking on kokeshi like Usaburo? I wrote about it in my journal.
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.
She stands taller than most kokeshi you will come across, and heavier too, with real weight settling into your palm the moment you pick her up. The head is covered edge to edge in fine combed striping, dark lines cut close together into a rounded cap, with a single red wooden bead perched at the crown like a stray plum bud. Sprays of red plum blossom trail down the body, each one carved first and filled with pigment after, and held against her side is a separately turned wooden kasa, a wide travel hat, raised the way a Heian noblewoman would once have lifted hers to shield her face on the road. Nothing about the proportions is timid: this is a maker working at full scale and full confidence.
The base carries the brush signature of Suigai, a painter who found his real language in wood. He spent a lifetime letting plants speak for people, plum blossom especially, always returning to it the way you return to a word that still means something. That instinct is what earned him Japan's Prime Minister's Award, but it is also simply what makes this particular figure feel considered rather than decorative. You are not buying a doll. You are buying the version of plum blossom one specific person kept coming back to, and decided, of everything he could have painted, this was worth painting again.
→ Interested to read more about the woodworking on kokeshi like these? I wrote about it in my journal.
→ Curious about the theme behind this pose? I wrote about oshinobi dōchū, the Heian tradition of travelling in disguise, in my journal.
The glaze moves across this bowl like weather crossing a landscape, white where it lies thick, sliding into a soft blue grey where it thins, with a line of warm rust colored fire blush running unevenly along the rim where the clay broke through during firing. A carved geometric pattern circles the exterior, cut through the dark iron ground before the glaze was applied, so the pale clay shows through in a repeating motif that catches the light differently depending on where you stand. Small dark specks surface throughout the glaze, scattered without any pattern, the kind of detail that only shows itself once you start looking closely.
This bowl comes from the Han'emon-gama, a kiln in the Mino region of Gifu Prefecture whose own written history traces its family back through generations of potters working in the Shino tradition, one of the oldest white glaze traditions in Japanese ceramics and still closely tied to the tea ceremony today. The piece is signed with the kiln's stamp on the foot, and it comes with its original tomobako and an accompanying document that lays out the family's own account of its lineage. Owning it means owning a small, physical piece of that continuity.
New to chawan and wondering what to look for? Read about why size and weight change everything in my journal.
Her eyes are closed, her expression somewhere between sleep and prayer, and the wood beneath her seems to be moving. A pale, matte face gives way to a trunk of deep near black, streaked through with fine reddish lines that follow the grain like brushstrokes. Fine carved ridges wrap around her body, echoing the soft folds of a kimono without a single seam. She stands quietly, but she is not simple.
This design is called Chigozakura (“Cherry Blossom Child”) and it comes from the hands of Watanabe Masao. He is one of the founding figures of the sōsaku, the creative kokeshi movement that broke away from strict regional traditions in postwar Japan.
Watanabe spent decades collecting national awards for work exactly like this, and pieces from his hand now sit in museum collections abroad. Owning one is owning a small, quiet piece of that history, not a copy of a tradition but an original expression of it.
He looks caught mid turn. One section of his dark hair is brushed back in short, dry streaks, as if just ruffled, while the rest sits in a neat round cap above a calm, half lowered gaze. Down the long cylinder of his body, four flowers stack in grey and black, each bloom slightly different from the one above it, hanging leaves drifting between them. There is a stillness to him that a mass produced kokeshi rarely has, the kind that comes from a hand working without a template.
At 46.5 centimetres, this is not a doll you tuck onto a shelf and forget, it commands a room the way only a handful of vintage kokeshi can. The name on the base, Tetsuen, belongs to a small, tightly knit Shiraishi workshop where a style was considered worth keeping alive even after its maker was gone. Female kokeshi maker Chiyoko Hamatsu picked up the brush in her brother in law's memory and kept his flowers blooming for another four decades. Owning a piece like this means owning both the scale and the story, a kokeshi large enough to anchor a room and old enough to carry a small piece of a family's determination not to let something disappear.
Want to understand the difference between dentō and sōsaku kokeshi? I wrote about it, with a trip through Fukushima along the way.
Two takobozu kokeshi standing shoulder to shoulder, the way they were clearly made to be seen. Both have that unmistakable oversized round head and the wide, startled eyes rimmed in red that give this Nakanosawa style its nickname, octopus priest.
This is not two random old kokeshi that happen to look similar. They come from one hand, a hand trained directly by Iwamoto Yoshizo, the man who carried this exact design forward after his father invented it. Tokuju spent the rest of his life protecting that design rather than putting his own spin on it. That is rare enough to be worth a spot on a shelf where you will actually see it every day, not tucked away as an investment. A signed pair like this, from a maker specialists still name when they talk about this style, is not something you will come across twice.
→ Want to understand the difference between dentō and sōsaku kokeshi? I wrote about it, with a trip through Fukushima along the way.
→ Curious how Tsuchiyu compares to the other ten traditional kokeshi lines? Read the full guide.
The hair on these two is the first thing you notice, and the last thing you expect. No black lacquer, no painted bob. Just the wood itself, left to show its own colour and grain, warm and pale where the light catches it. Below, plum blossoms scatter across both figures in red and cream, unhurried, some caught mid-branch as if the painter simply stopped when the flower looked right. The larger figure stands with quiet composure, the smaller one echoes her almost exactly, a pair clearly made to be seen together.
Usaburo's studio built its reputation on the opposite of this: a glossy black bob that became so recognisable it is often the first thing collectors associate with the name. This pair by Yuji Okamoto, second generation of the workshop, does something quieter. Leaving the natural wood exposed where paint would usually go asks the material to carry the character instead of colour doing it for him. It is the same hand and the same studio you find behind some of the most awarded creative kokeshi in Japan, working here in a lower key.
Interested to read more about the woodworking on kokeshi like these? I wrote about it in my journal.
This one fits in the palm of one hand, small enough to forget it is bronze at all until you pick it up and feel the weight settle. The surface has softened into a deep, warm brown, dimpled all over from a hammer that clearly knew what it was doing.
Bells like this lived on home altars long before they found their way into meditation corners further from Japan, struck once to open or close a moment of quiet. This one sits on a cushion knotted from red silk and indigo brocade, with loose strands of coloured thread gathered at each seam.
The sound is very clear and bright.
Read more about the objects for your Japanese meditation corner, and why each one matters in my journal.
Most orin you come across fit in one hand. This one does not. It takes up real space, dark bronze gone almost black in the low points and warm brown where the light lands, its whole surface alive with tiny hammered ripples that never quite repeat themselves. Rest your palm against it and the cold of the metal surprises you every time, heavier than a bowl this size has any right to be. You do not so much notice this piece as feel the room shift around it.
Strike it, and it does not simply ring, it opens. The tone spreads outward and keeps going, long past the point where a smaller bell would have already gone quiet, the kind of deep, unhurried resonance that once called a temple hall to attention rather than a single room to prayer. Turn it over and a stamped mark reads 堤製, signed by Tsutsumi, a name history has otherwise let go of. What remains is the sound itself, and the sense that whoever made this understood exactly what they wanted it to do to a room.
Read more about the objects for your Japanese meditation corner, and why each one matters in my journal.
There is a quiet violence to how this tokkuri came out of the kiln. No glaze was ever applied, everything you see, the deep olive shoulder, the passages of smoky grey, the flush of aubergine low on the body, happened because ash and flame found this exact spot in the kiln and nowhere else. The form is rounded and a little heavy in the middle, the neck flares just enough to pour cleanly, and it sits with the kind of quiet confidence that unglazed stoneware only earns after firing for days.
This comes from Isezaki Sō, born into one of the defining pottery families of Bizen and a full member of the Nihon Kōgeikai, the Japan Craft Association, since 2004. He trained under Yamashita Jōji from 1987 and has spent the decades since collecting awards at the Nihon Dentō Kōgei-ten and the regional Chūgoku exhibitions that matter most within the tradition. Owning this is owning a piece from someone who has spent a working lifetime answering to that lineage, not performing it.
No glaze, no paint, just fire. I wrote about how Bizen gets its color, in my journal.
Two small egg-shaped figures, standing no taller than a teacup, each carrying its own season on its body. One is wrapped in soft olive waves that curl toward a pair of birds caught mid-flight. The other is scattered with dozens of white, snow-like specks that spill straight onto the kimono without a break. Side by side they hold a kind of quiet balance, warm summer green against honey-brown winter, two halves of the same idea standing a hand's width apart.
These two belong to Okamoto Usaburō's "Shiki no Uta," (Poem of the Four Seasons) a design created for his workshop at the foot of Mount Haruna in Gunma. Usaburō spent his career developing carving and burning techniques that let wood carry more expression than kokeshi traditionally allowed, work that eventually reached the collection of Emperor Shōwa.
This pair represents summer and winter from his four-part seasonal design, and the softer linework and gentle surface patina on both place them earlier in the workshop's long production history, well before the cleaner, more uniform look of the pieces made today.
Interested to read more about the woodworking on kokeshi like these? I wrote about it in my journal.
The weight of cast iron is its first greeting. Three short legs, a round belly, and a lid cut through with a five-petalled flower. The iron has darkened over the decades into a warm reddish brown that photographs cannot quite capture, and the casting texture catches the light in a way that makes the surface look almost alive. This is the kind of object you pick up and do not immediately put down.
This koro was made by Iwachu (岩鋳), Morioka's most recognised ironware foundry and one of the defining names in the Nanbu Tekki tradition. That tradition has its roots in the mid-17th century, when the ruling Nambu clan invited a Kyoto kettle-maker north to produce vessels for the tea ceremony. Iwachu has been part of that lineage since 1902, and its foundry stamp carries enough weight that the company explicitly warns buyers against imitations.
Read more about the objects for your Japanese meditation corner, and why each one matters in my journal.
The first thing you see is the orange. The high-contrast vermillion that has been Japan's colour of celebration for centuries. Against it, an Okina mask appears in gold on each lid: rendered as an object, complete with the silk cords used to tie it to an actor's face, as if it has just been set down between acts.
They are “owan”, the lacquered covered bowls used at every formal Japanese table: New Year's meals, kaiseki, wedding banquets. The combination of vermillion exterior and black interior is a classic of the form. This pair carries maki-e decoration of Okina, the most sacred figure in the Noh repertoire, and dates from somewhere between the late Meiji and early Shōwa periods.
Five small plates, each carrying the same quiet scene.
A gold plum branch in bloom, and beside it a red Daruma, round and still. The black lacquer makes both motifs glow as if lit from underneath. It's a combination that would have been immediately familiar to any Japanese household. And still is.
These are kashizara, the small lacquered plates used to serve wagashi sweets at tea ceremony or at the start of a formal meal. It is decorated in a combination of gold hiramaki-e for the plum branch and painted red urushi for the Daruma figure. The wood grain is visible through the lacquer on the interior, which gives each plate a slightly different depth of tone.
Two daruma sit together like a small, watchful family: one broad and full, the other its smaller echo. Both wear the same fierce expression, thick black brows drawn in a single confident stroke, eyes rimmed white around a dark centre, a short orange mustache below. On the belly of each, the character for fortune sits in solid black. Nothing about them is dainty. They look like they mean it.
Daruma dolls carry one of the most recognisable stories in Japanese folk craft: the wish made, the goal set, the eye left blank until the promise is kept. Pieces like this pair were turned on a lathe by the same craftsmen who shaped kokeshi, in the onsen towns of Tōhoku where wood was the material at hand and every visitor wanted something to bring home. No maker signed this pair. What they carry instead is smaller and more personal: a handwritten date on the underside, someone once marking the day this pair came into their life.
Nearly a kilogram of matte black Nambu cast iron, every surface covered in the arare dot pattern — the raised hailstone texture that has defined this craft tradition for centuries. This kōro sits low and wide, shaped as a chrysanthemum in full bloom, its scalloped outer edge giving it a silhouette that reads clearly from across the room. The three openings are proportioned with care against the flower form, and the raised bud at the centre draws the eye exactly where the smoke will rise.
This piece was made by Iwachu, the Morioka foundry established in 1902 that became the definitive name in Nambu tekki. Their 岩鋳 seal on the base is a guarantee that has meant something for over a century: the piece is what it says it is, made the way it was always made, in the ironworking tradition that took root in Iwate Prefecture under the Nanbu clan lords of the Edo period and received National Traditional Craft designation from the Japanese government in 1975. A Shōwa-period Iwachu kōro in this condition, apparently unused, is not something that turns up often.
Read more about the objects for your Japanese meditation corner, and why each one matters in my journal.
Notice: This chawan has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.
Nearly the entire surface disappears into black, a glaze so deep it seems to swallow the light around it. Then, sweeping across one side, a pale arc of ash white clay breaks through, and from that ground three cherry blossom branches rise. The blossoms are carved into the clay itself, the branches traced in warm gold. The bowl is compact, a little heavier than it looks, and it settles into two cupped hands as though it were made for exactly this grip.
Okugawa Katsuomi built his reputation the hard way, striking out on his own rather than working under an established kiln name, and the confidence in this piece shows why that risk paid off. A potter working independently answers to no house style, only to his own hand, and a cherry blossom cut this precisely into a glaze this dark is the kind of detail that gets noticed. This bowl comes with its full history attached, both in the tomobako it still carries and in a maker whose name is now well documented.
Two faces, nearly identical at first glance and then not at all. One laughs with its mouth open, a flash of red catching the light like a hint of tongue. The other's mouth is small, round and pursed, closer to a kiss than a laugh. Tilt either head and it turns with a small resistance and a soft squeak, the same trick Tsuchiyu makers have used for generations. Both dolls are signed on the base by Jinnohara Kazunori (陳野原和紀). More info on the makers page.
Where they differ further is the hand that painted the bodies. One carries a busier decoration, a looping purple line, a wider red band, a restless zigzag near the base, the wood warmer and more time worn. The other stays quieter, its red kept narrow and calm. The motif itself, a scatter of grass and small flowers, traces back to Kazunori's lifelong reconstruction of the historic Kumematsu style.
Want to understand the difference between dentō and sōsaku kokeshi? I wrote about it, with a trip through Fukushima along the way.
The glaze is what stops you here. Deep amber and bronze pool across the shoulders, then shift into a stormy blue-grey lower down the belly, alive with texture where the wood ash settled unevenly during firing. No two kilns fire the same way twice, which means no other piece looks quite like this one.
On the lid, a small shishi, part lion, part dog, sits mid-pose, claws gripping the knob beneath it. The sculpted handles on either side echo the same restless energy. This is an object you keep circling back to look at.
A kōro like this was used to purify a room before meditation or ceremony, to mark the quiet shift from day into evening, or simply to settle a busy house. The base carries an impressed workshop stamp, and the original wooden box holds matching calligraphy alongside a personal red hanko seal, a level of documentation that vintage Japanese ceramics rarely arrive with intact.
Read more about the objects for your Japanese meditation corner, and why each one matters in my journal.
Three cups, no two exactly alike in shape. Look closely and you'll see it: a slightly different curve here, a different scoring there, the way light catches each glaze a little differently from cup to cup. That's what handmade looks like when nobody's trying to hide it. The clay carries small flecks of stone straight from where it was dug, and the glaze sits warm and understated, never showy. Set out on a shelf or used daily, they hold their own without asking for attention.
These cups come from Shigaraki, one of Japan's six ancient kiln towns, the Nihon Rokkoyo, with pottery traditions reaching back centuries. The original studio sticker still intact, reading Shigaraki-yaki, tezukuri (handmade), Royal Yamamoto.
Shigaraki stoneware has been prized by tea practitioners for generations for exactly this quality: unpretentious, tactile, made to be used rather than admired from behind glass.
At 37 centimetres this kokeshi commands rather than decorates. The body tapers from a broad shoulder down to a narrow base in one long, uninterrupted line, and the proportions are exactly right: it reads taller than it measures. The banding is bold, red and black on pale natural wood, with small painted crosses breaking the rhythm of the stripes just enough to hold the eye. This is a piece that works from across the room.
Tilt her head and she answers back, a soft, hollow squeak from the loose-fitting joint where the head meets the body, the same trick every Tsuchiyu maker has used for generations. What marks this particular piece is the banding itself: a zigzag line dotted with small crosses partway down the body, breaking from the plain horizontal stripes typical of the tradition, followed by a single sweeping red arc lower on the torso, a freer, more painterly touch than the usual strict rings.
→ Want to understand the difference between dentō and sōsaku kokeshi? I wrote about it, with a trip through Fukushima along the way.
→ Curious how Tsuchiyu compares to the other ten traditional kokeshi lines? Read the full guide.
The first time I held this bowl, I turned it slowly in both hands and tried to work out what I was looking at. Purple, deep crimson, ashy grey, a band of pale white on the inside where the heat had settled differently. None of it looked applied. It looked like something that had happened to the clay rather than something done to it.
That is, more or less, exactly what yakishime is.
Yakishime is the practice of placing unglazed clay in a wood-fired kiln and letting the fire decide the rest. In the Bizen tradition this has been practiced for over a thousand years, and the surfaces it produces, rough clay, fire-born colour, marks that record the firing like a landscape, became one of the foundations of Japanese tea ceremony aesthetics. A bowl made this way was not decorated. It was shaped, placed in a kiln, and submitted to fire.
Read more about Bizen yaki here.
The zelkova grain runs through the entire body of this kokeshi like a landscape, visible beneath the painted camellia flowers and the yakie-burned fan and lattice decoration of the kimono. The dark upper section of the body, a deep burgundy against the warm honey of the wood below, is not paint covering the material. It is the material, treated and turned until it reached that colour. The proportions are generous: broad at the shoulder, tapering at the base, heavier in the hand than you expect.
Usaburo Kokeshi was founded in 1950 in Shinto Village, Gunma Prefecture, by Okamoto Usaburo, the craftsman who introduced the yakie burning technique to sōsaku kokeshi and worked with zelkova and chestnut at a time when most makers dismissed these woods as unsuitable. His studio went on to win the Minister of International Trade and Industry Award at the All-Japan Kokeshi Competition, one of the most significant government recognitions in Japanese craft.
The sticker on the larger of these two pieces carries exactly that award. The zelkova grain visible beneath the kimono decoration is central to what Usaburo built his reputation on: the wood is not hidden, it is part of the design.
Interested to read more about the woodworking on kokeshi like these? I wrote about it in my journal.
Small enough to sit in one palm, this kokeshi has a quiet, downcast composure that larger pieces often lose. Her dark lacquered hair falls in a smooth, sculpted line across a pale, softly painted face, eyes closed in a calm, almost sleepy expression. The kimono is deep and dark, incised rather than simply painted, with a fine red under layer just visible at the collar.
This is the work of Sekiguchi Sansaku, one of the defining names in Gunma's post-war sōsaku kokeshi movement and a recipient of the Prime Minister's Award. His young girl, or dōjo, design recurs across his career in many sizes, and this piece carries his own seal on the base along with a handwritten inscription dating it to the 21st of July 1991.
→ What draws you to a kokeshi is rarely the name on the base. Read more about how makers like Sekiguchi carve rather than paint their signature detail in my journal.