The National Crafts Museum’s move to a downtown area

It’s been a month now since your move from Tokyo to Kanazawa. How has it been so far? (At the time of this writing, it’s November 2020.)

Before the move, the museum was next to the Imperial Palace. It was place to relax with no shortage of greenery, but it was also far removed from people’s daily lives. Here in Kanazawa, however, it’s right in the city center. Now the National Crafts Museum so close to where real people live their lives, and I think there’s a significance in that.

Also, Kanazawa already has its own craft culture. I think that’s important. Kanazawa is a city in which many cultural activities are voluntarily organized, not only for the public, but also by the power of individuals, and we hope to connect with that network. I can also see creating a space to mix “past” and “future,” “what is” and “what isn’t.”

So, the first exhibition to commemorate the relocation opening, Japanese Crafts: Materials, Techniques & Regionalities (which ran until January 11th, 2021), also served to acquaint new arrivals to Ishikawa with the figures who already had roots here. For examples, Kenkichi Tomimoto* and Hazan Itaya** are prominent figures in the history of ceramic art and both have deep connections with Ishikawa. Of course, they had connections with people, but their work is notable for techniques that could only have developed in this region. I believe the relocation of the National Crafts Museum has many significant points like this.

* Kenkichi Tomimoto (1886 – 1963) was a potter from Nara Prefecture and a Living National Treasure, a master of the Important Intangible Cultural Property, overglaze enamelling. From 1945, he switched to Kutani color porcelain.

** Hazan Itaya (1872 – 1963), born in Ibaraki Prefecture, was a ceramic artist who pioneered modern techniques from the end of the Meiji era into the Showa era. When he was 24 years old, he taught at the Ishikawa Technical Senior High School in Kanazawa.

Techniques and expressions drawn from the sense of an area

You use the terms “regionality” and “regional characteristics” as keywords for the exhibition. Does this come from your own view of Japanese crafts?

Yes. After completing graduate school, my first job was at a museum at a kiln in the Kanto called “Kasama.” It was a grounded production center with a creative atmosphere, with a craft market founded by artists from other areas that has been running for over thirty years. The production site was very close.

I could see the artists at work and get their thoughts on the next project. And anytime I was at the supermarket or a bar, I would often run into them. I became very familiar with the “craft-making lifestyle,” which was woven into the fabric of every day and every season.

After that, I worked at the Ibaraki Prefectural Museum of Modern Art in Mito and then at the Crafts Gallery of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Artists came to visit the museum from all over the country, but the time I spent in the workshops was short, and I had begun to lose my sense of the area as a craft-production site.

Even now, artists can order their materials online or by phone, so they don’t have to be the area where the material is drawn from to create. However, I feel that when I go to that area, there is a certain aura unique to that place.

You also moved from the Kanto region to Kanazawa. How do you like the regional characteristics here?

I’ve only been here for a month, but it’s been an intense month. [Laughter.] I can clearly see the change in seasons just commuting to work. Each of the gardens is wonderful, and I always see people sweeping away the leaves in the morning. It feels like the lifestyle of existing with plants and nature has been going on for a long time, and it creates the landscape of this city.

As a lover of architecture, I enjoy that the buildings are not uniform and there are modern buildings and traditional machiya houses interwoven and renovated to suit modern life. In Tokyo, I hardly felt the change of seasons and scenery, so I thought, “Living in Kanazawa will be interesting.” I think it’s a place that’s particularly stimulating for people who create.

The importance of juxtaposition

As a researcher specializing in the history of ceramics, you’ve organized several exhibitions of Kutani-ware. Kutani is a traditional Japanese craft representative of Ishikawa Prefecture, but what makes it special?

One of the first things you realize through this exhibition is that Kutani is not just one thing. From the outside, Kutani is associated with just the area in general, but it actually varies from Nomi to Komatsu to Kaga. Each region has it’s own climate, history and artisan specialties, and even the businesses practices related to distribution. Each area has its own attitude toward Kutani-ware and it’s own micro-history of ceramics. It’s why when scholars, artists, and researchers hold discussions on Kutani, it can get very heated. [Laughter.]

There’s also a lot of diversity, but the materials are consistently the same, so you can tell which pieces are Kutani. It has its own core, and from there you can create freely. I feel Kutani has a great depth from this.

Once, I was invited on a talkshow with Kutani-ware artists, and I dared to ask a nasty question: “How do you feel about having so many rivals?” I imagined that it must be difficult for artists in the middle of their careers, as there are long-established kilns with many young artists on one side and older generations still thriving on the other.

However, everyone answered, “The more, the merrier.” The most important thing to them was being able to continue as a Kutani craft region. They look beyond their own positions to support the materials, from the clay to the paints and brushes. When I realized this, I knew I was looking at a type of “ecosystem.”

People often divide the concepts of this being the painter’s work and that being the kiln’s work, but it’s wrong to think they’re in any opposition, and, in fact, one person can span both. If I’m honest, there can be no production area strictly for painters, and a production area of only potters would become rigid. Where there are both painters and potters, Kutani can be supported. Works are often presented as that of an artist, but there are always hands that go unrecognized: the people who use the works, the people who make the tools and materials, the people who add their own expression to them. If all of these elements are not in tandem, the craft will not survive. When I encountered the production region of Kutani-ware, I was made aware of how important this is.

What characteristics are most common to the crafts of Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, or even the Hokuriku region as a whole?

Overall, I’d say many of the works have a “severe” aspect to them, or the kind you need to examine closely and directly. While each of the four seasons are rich, the winters are particularly harsh. Even in this exhibition, even when it’s the same detailing, wouldn’t you say that work from tropical Okinawa has a much more laid back feeling? That difference in regionality is also interesting.

And the ability to develop the technique is simply amazing. Not only have they got the
techniques, but they have an attitude of, “How can I build on this?” In the case of Kutani-ware, the focus is often on the Edo period, when the style was established, but I’m also fascinated by how the technique has developed through trial and error over the Meiji period.

It’s also lovely that Ishikawa is a place where so many kinds of crafts are available. It’s referred to as an “adjacency region” where neighboring differences influence each other. For example, Hazan Itaya applied the techniques of Kaga-yuzen silk dyeing to his own work. I think when he came to Kanazawa, having that close exposure to something so different helped him create new work.

If a city is compact, many things become condensed within the range of one’s activities, and what neighbors each other naturally becomes closer. In urban areas like Tokyo, the city is divided by function, but it inevitably becomes homogenized. I think it can be said that the more proximal differing genres are, the greater the chances for innovation.

How “how we live” is changing craft

What do you think is the most important factor for traditional Japanese craft’s continuing presence in daily life?

Some old works are so superbly crafted, they border on kitsch, and there are some that make you think, “Well this is wonderful, but I don’t want this now.” I think it’s natural. The term “museum piece” implies that what museums collect are a separate thing from what is brought into the living space, and, as a researcher, I’m interested in what doesn’t simply match the values of the “here and now,” precisely because it’s what I don’t understand. I think it’s very important to have things you don’t understand, what is “other,” close to you. It’s important to ask, “Why was this made?”

Even what is valued in a piece is changing. The second exhibition demonstrates the process of craftwork, starting with the superb techniques of the Meiji period and moving onto simpler techniques in the early Showa period. In the Meiji period, the trend was to show off the extent of one’s skills and push them to the limit, but later, modernity and simplicity were preferred, and the previous style would have felt excessive. A work’s evaluation should always be viewed in the context of its time.

It’s interesting to imagine expanding and extending the kind of place that a work was created in. Firstly, Japanese crafts are not made in a vacuum; rather the surrounding space is preparation for the work. In that sense, this building, which was reconstructed from the Meiji era, is a perfect space to display works of that era, such as “Twelve Hawks.”

The simpler the times, the rarer and more valuable high-quality technique will be, and the more value will eventually find its way throughout our lives. As time goes it, we may be the ones called “people of a simpler time” by posterity. [Laughter.]

History shows us “times change.” However, we can’t know how. The coronavirus pandemic was an unexpected event, but I’m hearing that it’s led to more sales of traditional Japanese craft online as people want to enhance their time spent at home.

This is why as the way we live changes, the way crafts are made also changes. Of course, works of art are subject to the artists, and there are many factors that influence the artist’s unique experience, but the artist is also a person of their times. And so I think it’s easier to understand kogei craft if we zoom out and include things like what we eat, what we wear, and where we live, over time.

It’s more like an interaction between “me” and “us,” where each individual is one of a whole, and at the same time, one can change the whole. I can see both sides of this when I view Japanese craft.

＝＝＝＝＝＝

INFORMATION

The National Crafts Museum
hours: 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. (last entry: 5:00 p.m.)
holidays: Monday (or the following weekday when Monday is national holiday), year-end holidays, and during exhibition changes
address: 3-2 Dewamachi, Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture
url: https://www.momat.go.jp/cg/

Exhibition Information
Ishikawa Relocation Commemorative Opening Exhibition I: Japanese Crafts: Materials, Techniques & Regionalities
dates: Oct. 25, 2020 – Jan. 11, 2021

Ishikawa Relocation Commemorative Opening Exhibition II: “I Wish I Had Something Like This in My House”
dates: Jan. 30 – Apr. 15, 2021