13th Edition: Legends Exhibition Interviews

The work I am exhibiting this time is a white porcelain vase that was shown at Nitten.

I think it was made in the Showa 20s, around 1945–1954.

He was born in the Meiji 20s, so perhaps around forty.

Probably. About my age now. [laughs]

Yes, that's right. And my father was born in Showa 22, in 1947.

He used to say that he often exhibited in two-person shows with Yasutaka Shimizu.

One was with the Japan Kogei Association and the other with Nitten. They worked in quite different fields of ceramics, but they were the same age, and Manjudo introduced them. Apparently they exhibited together every year. I was surprised to learn that my father had a connection like that. They did not seem like two people who would have much to do with one another. In the ordinary course of things, their paths would not cross, would they? This is unrelated, but I have also heard they served together on the PTA at Rakuto Junior High School.

Sometimes, as you happen to remember things and talk about them, you discover for the first time that people were connected in that way. I also wonder whether the pottery trade around here might be a little different if Manjudo were still here today. It was a shop that really championed individual artists.

I do not know very much myself, but the biggest thing was that he belonged to the ceramic artists' club led by Rokubei Kiyomizu VI. He was very much Rokubei's right-hand man. Rokubei was chairman, and my grandfather and Mr Shinkai were vice-chairmen. Then came Seitoku Kawai, and in those days Uichi Shimizu and the previous Bunsai Ogawa, too. And in the next generation after them, my father and Mr Kano…

Yes. Come to think of it, we still have a calligraphy board on which my grandfather wrote, ‘White porcelain is my very life.’ Our family pursued porcelain very deeply—white porcelain, in particular. He left some words that go, ‘This white porcelain shining in confinement… captivated by its rays of light…’ I sometimes borrow those words for my own solo exhibitions. [laughs]

We were originally a pottery producing tableware for kappo restaurants, but apparently my grandfather could not be satisfied with that. He became an individual artist and stopped making the kiln's products. That seems to have been when we became a family of artists.

His father was apparently called Genshiro. The brothers lived together and all made tableware.

There were craftspeople working for us, too, so when my grandfather decided to close the pottery business, he introduced two of our craftspeople to the vocational training school. Apparently they went on to teach there. I have heard that many people who attended the school learned their skills from the craftspeople who had worked with us.

Apparently they were very skilled.

I have also heard a story involving Kazuo Yagi.

Somehow, my grandfather was asked to come and teach ceramics at Omi Gakuen in Shiga Prefecture. Apparently there was already a program for making plates, rice bowls and other vessels, but someone suggested they try making something more artistic. My grandfather seems to have been busy at the time, and he said, ‘I cannot really go myself, so I will introduce a young fellow who is working hard in Gojo.’ The person he introduced was Kazuo Yagi, or so I have heard. When people talk about Yagi and the experiences and influences he had at Omi Gakuen, my grandfather only introduced him, but… even knowing he had some connection to it makes me happy.

About three years ago, Omi Gakuen called. They were publishing a book for their hundredth anniversary or something like that, and asked how Yagi had come to teach there. They said, ‘We understand that Haruo Inoue introduced him. Is that true?’ That is how the story has come down to us, but I do not actually know what happened myself. [laughs]

There are very few works whose dates we know. Pieces were normally fired without recording the year. This one is also illustrated in a catalog, where it is dated Showa 15, or 1940. It is five years earlier than Showa 20 and does not quite fall within that period, but this is about the only piece from around then whose date we know.

Even during the war, she was certified under the Maru-gei designation, so materials were supplied and she seems to have been able to make work despite the times. Our family had connections with people in the military. I think it was a struggle, but I feel they may have given her some help.

Actually, I know very little… Speaking of the war, she adopted a boy from among her relatives as her successor. She raised him from around elementary or junior high school age, and he attended what I think was Kyoto Higher Technical School, the predecessor of Kyoto Institute of Technology. He was in the equestrian club and could ride horses, so around the time he was due to graduate, he was sent to war. He died of illness while serving in China. I have heard that she was deeply saddened then.

The family of her younger brother, Soho Yonezawa, had two sons, so apparently their second son—my father—was adopted into the family and became her successor.

Yes. They were very close and constantly visited one another. Apparently they promised that whichever of them outlived the other would chair the other's funeral committee.

Looking through various examples, it seems that most of the work he was making in this period was of this kind. If you look closely, it is a little like a face, isn't it?

With hands and feet and so on, the overall direction seems to have been like that. At first, he seems to have made things resembling works by Hikaru Yamada and various other artists, but around then he appears to have turned in this direction.

My father left Sodeisha in Showa 42, in 1967, when my younger sister was born. There were three of us: my older sister, me and then my younger sister. I do not think that was the main reason, but my younger sister has always been conscious of it and has feelings about it. She wanted to keep at least one of his works, so we kept just this one and donated the rest.

In fact, there is a photograph from the time showing Kazuo Yagi with this work, and it has sometimes been mistaken for a work by Yagi.

Then, just as we had kept only this one piece of my father's at home, we were approached about the Legends Exhibition. I am very grateful that people here in Gojo now have an opportunity to see his work.

He was still in his late teens and twenties. Quite a lot of work survives from 1955. A curator has also told us that he made a concentrated body of very good work between 1955 and 1960. To have your peak at twenty-four is almost unimaginable now. It amazes me.

There was a time when he made odd, hand-built things at home, but after leaving he no longer went as far as firing them.

In those days, my uncle Toraku's workplace was across the way. My father would get some earth from him, add water himself to make clay, and make strange things, but in the end they were never fired. I think they have probably been disposed of by now.

He died at forty-eight, you see. If he had lived a little longer, perhaps he might have had time to make things again.

I think making those works was probably becoming a burden for him. But because he had not made vessels before, he never managed to make a successful transition to them either. It is a shame.

I do think my father must have struggled considerably in his own way at the time. From childhood I sensed that life seemed hard for him, and that feeling stayed with me. But looking back now, I also think he might have enjoyed it more if he had carried on all the same.

Speaking of vessels, he did make teacups when people asked him to. They are quite peculiar teacups, though.

If only he had been able to manage all those different things well. I do not know whether this work would have been well received then, either. Today, people might look at it and think it is rather interesting, but I suspect it would not have struck people that way at the time, even if he made it. So I feel it probably did not fit into the production system of those days.

Actually, the person who prompted my father to join Sodeisha was Kozo Kawashima. Kawashima's younger sister married my uncle Toraku. So, in a way, we were related. I think he drew my father in, feeling that since the younger brother was doing that sort of thing, he should come along too. I think that is how he introduced him to Kazuo Yagi. Kawashima was also an early member of Sodeisha.

He moved to Sumiyama and established what they called a craft village. Rather than a village, it was a workshop and housing like a row of apartments. My uncle moved there, too. Apparently a man around here who made plaster molds and his son, who made ceramics, also moved there with them.

Yes, there were.

The road in front of here was gravel in those days. A lot of people made porcelain, and everyone threw fired clay onto the road. If you excavated the roads around here, you might find almost nothing but pottery. Perhaps vessels made by people who worked here would turn up.

I am just starting to think about sorting them out. There are still some, actually, but none is complete. Like the piece in this exhibition, they have all sorts of little parts attached, and those have come off. It seems I broke them all when I was little…

So there are no complete ones. There was actually a work called Insect that won a prize at the Asahi Ceramics Exhibition or something like that, but it was so delicate that various parts have come off, chipped or broken. It is still tucked away somewhere, but it is very badly damaged. I will have another look.