Kyoto Chronicles: Inside the Workshops of Master Potters

For my first business trip to Kyoto, I wake at dawn. With the soft early morning light just touching the rooftops with a gentle pink, I lock my apartment door softly and set out into the chilly Tokyo air for the shinkansen. I feel a quiet excitement: Kyoto is one of my favorite cities, and today my colleagues and I will be allowed rare behind-the-scenes looks at not just one, but two kilns’ pottery workshops. Tosen Kiln and Touan had generously accepted our interview requests, and I couldn’t wait to see how their craftspeople work.

Once I arrive at Shinagawa Station, I walk briskly to the shinkansen tracks. I’m early, not in a hurry, but in a station with such a voluminous flow of people, briskly is the only way to walk. I buy breakfast in the form of an eki-ben, or “station bento,” and find my platform.

When a train leaves the station, taking many of the waiting people with it, I secure myself a seat on a platform bench and settle in for some people-watching. Directly in front of me are two very fashionable Japanese men, each with a large suitcase. Maybe it’s my imagination, but something about their body language makes me think they’re colleagues—maybe in the entertainment or fashion industry—and traveling for business, like me. I wonder if they’re heading to a photo shoot in Osaka, their luggage full of camera equipment. Then their train comes and whisks them away.

When my colleagues and I board our own train, I settle in to do some work, but can’t help but move to the window when Mount Fuji comes into view.

Ah, Mount Fuji! I am greedy for views of the mountain, always snatched between Tokyo buildings and Yokohama hills, dependent on the whims of weather, cloudy or clear. To see it unimpeded is exciting. The alternating foregrounds of nature, small towns, and industry make me truly feel like I’m on a journey.

At Kyoto Station we hail a cab, and when the driver maneuvers us free of station traffic we are immediately faced with the majestic gold-tipped gables of a massive temple.

“Wow, and so close, too. We’re really in Kyoto now,” our cameraman, Shimokawa-san, says.

As we head for Tosen Kiln, I’m surprised by how golden the gingko trees are still. Even though it’s December and the foliage is past its colorful peak, the gingkos’ bright and even yellow lines the avenues. Having spent most of my previous time in Kyoto during the height of summer, I didn’t realize the streets were planted with gingko. Our experiences of a place can be so different based on the season.

Taniguchi-san of Tosen Kiln greets us warmly when we arrive and welcomes us with carefully brewed tea, then shows us around the workshop.

The entire back of the building is lined with shelves upon shelves of ceramics in various stages of completion. It’s amazing to think how each elegantly shaped piece was carefully formed by hand.

The kilns themselves are surprisingly small considering the huge volume of pots and bowls on the shelves. Taniguichi-san estimates that about 200 sake cups would fit at one time in the bigger of the two kilns, but explains that usually items of multiple different sizes are fired at once to achieve the right internal balance. The chemical reactions between heat and clay are a delicate thing, and the heating, internal temperature, and cooling processes of the kilns must be carefully controlled in order to produce the exquisite Kiyomizu ware that is Tosen Kiln’s specialty.

Next, we go upstairs and learn the secrets of Tosen Kiln’s exclusive glazing techniques. Our merchandising director, Shirata-san, writes about that in detail in her own blog, so give it a read here. Tosen Kiln has figured out how to revive a fifty-year-old, rare pigment to achieve their latest works: pieces featuring a spectacular, auspicious black dragon.

When we finish at Tosen Kiln, Taniguchi-san generously takes us to a favorite local lunch spot specializing in Kyoto udon. The mouth-watering umami scent of broth envelops us as soon as we step inside the narrow space. Grabbing spots at the counter, we have front-row seats to the hand-calligraphied menu behind the counter and signed mementos from Kyoto kabuki actors and entertainers.

The hot, almost clear broth is fortifying, and subtly different in a delightful way from what I’m used to tasting in Tokyo. Seeming to read my mind, fellow writer Aiba-san leans over and says, “A Kansai flavor.”

After lunch and many repeated thanks, we part ways with Taniguchi-san and head over to Touan in Kyoto’s historic Higashiyama Ward. Literally meaning “east mountains,” this is a temple- and shrine-packed area where houses and shops steadily climb up slopes until eventually petering out to make way for mountain forests.

Touan is tucked into a narrow residential street lined with traditional Japanese houses. The street narrows so much ahead of us that two high school girls can barely fit shoulder-to-shoulder, looking cozy as they walk in their wool blazers and chunky scarves.

We are here at Touan to interview Dobuchi Yoshiaki, the kiln’s fourth generation of master potters, who has reverse engineered the ancient, rare, and highly sought-after glaze technique yohen tenmoku. Only three yohen tenmoku pieces exist in the world, all in Japan, all national treasures. Dobuchi-san believes he has replicated this precious glazing technology.

Yohen tenmoku is characterized by its pattern of speckles that appear due to a chemical reaction in the precise right formula of glaze when fired under the precise right conditions. The speckles are flat against the ceramic, yet appear deeply hollowed out. With their auroras of soft colors, they look like holes in the universe.

I let my colleagues talk shop while I look, fascinated, around at the workshop. About a dozen large kilns stand in the front room, while the back is lined with shelves of pieces in various stages of production. Big lidded buckets of glaze are dispersed throughout the workshop, as are wooden boards holding small, rectangular glaze tests.

I watch as a Touan craftsperson hand-shapes identical pieces. There is something magical about how they can make the same thing over and over again and have it look the same every time. It really brings home to me the skill and technique involved in this hand-crafted work.

Dobuchi-san demonstrates for us how he glazes his yohen tenmoku pieces. Keep an eye on Musubi Gallery for their upcoming release! This is a true example of where the human hand steers science to achieve masterpieces, and is not to be missed.

With that, the business part of our trip is brought to a close—but since we’re already in the neighborhood, we swing by Tofuku-ji, a thirteenth century Buddhist temple famous for its two wooden bridges that offer stunning views of iconic Kyoto red maple leaves. An 800-year-old temple: just something you can have in your metaphorical backyard when you live in Kyoto.

The leaves are fading now and most have fallen. But across the ravine, on the higher bridge, we can just make out many people as eager as us to take in the trees’ dying embers.

As the light fades and we wander back through the centuries-old temple lanes toward the modern trains of Kyoto, it feels like a fitting end to a day centered on ceramics that link past, present, and future generations. In a city where tradition is respected as much as, if not more than, innovation, I board the shinkansen again. The train approaches full speed as outside my window, dark rice paddies rush past before vanishing into the twilight.