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Lava rolls and cools. The Koto Cauldron is now a cup in my hand. Shinichi Kotsuji of Syunbougama studio in Iga city, Mie prefecture, Japan, invites the humble igneous rhyolite pebble to become fire again. Shinichi’s cup and bowl are liberated from the commonplace and become the answer to my questions about the unreasonableness of life. Textured rough imperfections of the Iga clay are fused into the light of Shinichi’s blue blaze fractured by the kiseto yellow, green, and brown glaze of ash and iron procured from two shiny spaceship-sized electric kilns and the devotion to his craft. Shinichi’s playful touch releases the stress in the living animal of earth trapped by the atmosphere that cooled the magma before it was willing to surrender its original energy and force.
I’m stunned into speechless poetry as I lift the cup to my lips, nattering along an unsmooth, dinted, and disheveled lip so much like my own. I want to weep again, as I did the first time I encountered this man’s ceramic craft near my Studio Kura residency. Instead, I rejoice and drink from a vessel so wholly in rebellion to the rules of ceramic ware production and practice; I am released from the pressure of perfection into a primal sensory memory now cupped in my hand. My nervous system relaxes into the fire. I did not know this was possible.
Particles of blue light are dancing on my hand, and I feel the syllables of Braille bones and stones and hubris from Lake Biwa, the Earth’s thirteenth oldest lake, formed four million years ago. The Koto rhyolite pebble where I rest my index finger front facing on my cup opposite the thick and almost too small handle is now weightless in my hand. I dissolve into my breath, and I become the cloud floating over the late Cretaceous rocks of the large-scale caldera of pyroclastic eruptions in Japan. The rhyolite pebble scraping my skin is the company I now keep with a volcano on my kitchen counter.
Shinichi’s noren curtain hangs at the studio door. He marks “bowl” over the fabric surface with a broad brush and ink to announce his place and purpose to the world. But I see how it divides his inner artistic life of curious play from the outer world, where we suffer as a species to know what we are. He is waiting for Mr. Imamura, who for thirty years has been his clay craftsman. The trestle of cotton relaxes on the wind. Shinichi is not disappointed. A truck has turned from the main road and labors up the hill. Shinichi is no longer the schoolboy of imaginary dragons who burst into joy the first time he touched clay. Shinichi is the dragon.
The curtain lifts to let him pass. He flies forth from his studio den to spread wide his seismic intelligence and survey the 1.5 tons of Iga clay. Mr. Imamura never disappoints. This artisan has left the guts and gizzards of iron and obsidian animal earth necessary for the dragon’s feast. Shinichi digs in to sift and toss and taste the bits of earth interesting enough to create the wild, raw surface or tsuchiaji texture he must find. And then tame. Shinichi’s having fun now. The dragon of his youth was no imaginary creature. It was his very self and now his imperial guide.
Shinichi’s hands travel unscathed over the bits of volcano that remain embedded in the hubris of 400 species of animals and plants. The potter man is not harmed. Touching clay is what calms him. Clay is what excites him. And it also amuses him. Shinichi’s play is the pleasure of creation. His fingers move the shapeless form. He will touch the voice of the clay and hear what it must say. He is happy. He is nourished. All of his senses focus on finding the form of each vessel. Shinichi centers the clay on the wheel and the cultural remains of the people of the Jōmon period of 14,000 – 300 BC, the 500 brooks, and the rivers that feed present-day Lake Biwa. Fingers, palms, tendons, and blood-filled veins shapeshift over the unrefined rhyolite scabbard and stones that come to purr under Shinichi’s touch. The potter is silent but for what the work can say and does speak.
And the clay did speak one day – rather loudly – to Masumi Mukai, a newscaster at a TV station. Masumi, perpetually tuned to locate, record, and share the stories of people, schools, or community efforts that inspire courage and lift up the world, heard the clay call her name. She lifted up Shinichi’s cup and listened. She could hear the sensitivity, warmth, and strength of the maker. She bought the cup, and every time she drank from the cup, her heart was filled.
Four years later, Masumi happened upon an exhibition of Shinichi’s at a gallery in Nara prefecture. Masumi mentioned to the attendant that she owned one cup and deeply admired this work. The clerk asked if Masumi would like to meet the man who made the work. Shinichi, coincidentally, was in the shop for that one day.
“Yes,” Masumi said. She said “Yes” again a few months later. “Shinichi was the very person I felt from the cup. It didn’t take me long to marry him.”
Partners in love, they are the partners in the life of Syunbougama studio. Masumi now broadcasts the text of the Iga clay and interviews the harmony of their rural life, the studio, their home, and two cats. She prepares the invoices and packaging for the sixty business partners and pottery shops in Japan, Paris, and Belgium and communicates to translate for an essay such as this. Shinichi has no assistant. He works every day regardless of the season and cycles through working on the wheel, molding, drying, and glazing. The electric kilns fire eight to ten times a month.
The cycle repeats, as do the seasons. Syun means spring. Bou are the plants and trees that sprout and live again. Gama means kiln. For Shinichi, spring is the season when plants, animals, and insects that have been quiet in the cold winter begin to move. He observes how humans, too, become free from the cold and feel the spring with their whole body. “My hands,” Shinichi says, “stretch out alongside all living things and come alive.”
Mr. Imamura opens the door of his truck. He has come with a dare. Not a promise. There is nothing in this batch of clay that is exactly like any other batch. And Shinichi has no one formula or perfected glaze recipe that will guarantee “the one and only beautiful blue.” Shinichi hands Mr. Imamura a blue bowl born from last year’s delivery. He holds it to the sky. There is no difference to compare. The tender blues are married as one. Shinichi’s blue is not a color. It is an experience. Ocular illusions and the memory of a perfect summer day we never shared – divided as we were by the ocean and a different language – merge. I hold my blue bowl, too.
The play and light in Shinichi’s cup and bowls of blue are what have beckoned and chased me since I first could walk, but now I crawl out from under my lazy existence to hold the sky, the ocean, the blue kingfisher and peacock of blue bubble that I’ve never understood but in the kindergarten of pure unexplainable experience. The blue above is no more real than the blue around me. The ocean is no more blue than the sky above. The conditions for my breathing body turn out to be an illusion. But now, all of my senses are turned back to their original nature, and memory is the light I can touch and believe in. However, I’m no longer afraid of the earth crashing through the sky. I’m holding a cup that embraces the unexpected, and I am comforted instead of afraid. Light becomes matter. Clay, glaze, and kiln temperatures are controlled in an effusive atmosphere of intangible blue that I hold in my hand.
This blue glaze is not a rare glaze. The “turquoise glaze” has existed in Japan and elsewhere for centuries. However, Shinichi’s particular blue was produced by accident four years ago. Now, he searches for the reason. He does not doubt there is one. Shinichi changes the temperature setting of the electric kiln. He changes the place where the work is placed. Or he changes the time the glaze is applied. He is constantly changing his methods because his clay is constantly changing. And because a bisque will destroy the Iga impurities he prizes, Shinichi fires his electrics on high in two cycles. He dials and controls the rate of increase with computer precision that is difficult, if not impossible, with a wood kiln. Digits red with electric energy eyes of 0’s blink and increase, flicker and change. One dragon taunts the other. It is time to play. There is one more chemical to capture the blue.
Shinichi’s thick, brackish tail is the taiko drum to mark the score. There is nothing to stop him now. The dragon does not sleep, but Shinichi will close his eyes to aim. He exhales. Gas consumes the interior of the electric kiln and reduces oxygen to the blue Shinichi seeks. “The blue is not magic. It is science,” he says. The chemistry between clay and glaze is never confused. But Shinichi does not suffer, even if he is struggling. This is all part of the game and nothing but fun, even if he doesn’t win. Shinichi’s averages improve every season. He opens the kiln to blue eighty percent of the time. Six months ago, it was only fifty.
Shinichi’s magic is the boy explorer who will not give in to the guarded fear of adulthood and refuses to take risks because struggle is mistaken for weakness. Shinichi knows better. Playing with fire is not a risk if the flame is your true quest. Shinichi’s skill is to create work that looks as if it emerged from a woodfire for reasons that can be explained but not always understood, like the human condition.
The everchanging unpredictable surface of Syunbougama ware comes to me in the igneous collision of earth and earth, and earth and electricity, and my seemingly inert magma pebble. But it’s not. The crystals in the rhyolite are hard to see, but they are there like the love we look for in each other. Love is the crystal that formed in the magma of our universe. Blood iron pumps the stars. The pressure we feel in our daily lives is the universe still forming. Crystals are microscopic in the hapless pebble. The drab exterior invites derision and disrespect. However, cruel forces are tamed, and the cracks of the earth fill the sky with a hope. I trust the intrinsic value of Shinichi’s ability to demonstrate that beauty is imperfect and there is no shame in this. Imperfection is our experience. Be kind to the pebble. Be kind to each other. Our matrix is love.
Shinichi sees ceramic art as a chemical change caused by materials and heat. There is always a reason for the result. What I know now is that if Shinichi can transform the irreducible combinations of a clay purposefully burdened with impurity, the viscous silica of a rhyolite magma cooled too soon and hungry for revenge, with a glaze that depends on split-seconds of a ripe reductive invisible atmosphere into the elegant imperfection of beauty, there is nothing to fear.
But the fear of failure and not a hint of blue. “There are times when I’m betrayed by clay, but there are times when I’m saved by clay,” he says. “There are times when the ideal work is not completed, but there are times when more than the ideal is completed.” In between these hours and days and a lifetime of seasons, Masumi says, “Shinichi is always thinking. He is constantly thinking about clay, glaze, and kilns. He thinks so deeply that if I stare at him, I can almost hear the sound of his mind running.” She goes on, “And when he can’t make his work well, he doesn’t say a word to me; he goes into his shell and just reviews practices and studies the production method.”
However, Shinichi will emerge from that shell when a beautiful piece of pottery appears that no one has ever made before, and he will never make it again. “What humans can do is limited,” he says. “I do not modify the shape more than necessary. The essence of my craft is to help the chemical reaction of the natural, simple clay and glaze.” Masumi says that she believes the Kobiwako layer of Lake Biwa is the Earth itself and that Shinichi is blessed with it. Shinichi’s finger marks on the potter’s wheel become for him “like the grooves on a vinyl record. The artist’s breathing, body temperature, feelings, and background are all recorded. The marks on the potter’s wheel are not just marks of the work, but they seem to speak something to you. You can touch the artist’s heart by following the finger marks.”
Shinichi does not have a religion. He believes in sincerity and respect for others, and above all else, he cannot tolerate unreasonableness. But too often, anger is what we know and experience. Not all people are happy. There are too many absurdities, tragic disasters, incidents, and accidents. Shinichi struggles against this absurdity.
Masumi tells me that when Shinichi can “sublimate the frustration and helplessness that wells up in one’s heart, to express the passion of a nobler object,” he is “healed from the absurdity he faces” – that we all face – and from the unreasonableness we suffer because of unhappiness. Shinichi’s mastery is his ability to exfoliate reasonable explanations from absurd and unreliable outcomes in a ceramic practice that purposefully mirrors the conditions of my experience. Life rarely offers any explanation for my struggles, but now I know there is one. A moist and soft luster softens the biting remains and stress of the sentient Koto Cauldron. I see and feel that beauty and fear can coexist and that the struggle is also play. I will not give in to despair. “If everyone acted with respect,” Shinichi says, “there would be no unreasonableness.”
Shinichi was born in 1964 in Kumamoto, on the island of Kyushu. As a young child, he was not good at studying, but he loved crafts and drawing and was better at it than anyone else in his class. When he was young, although there are no potters in Shinichi’s family, his uncle showed him the pottery of Shigaraki-yaki. Not long after this, the young boy touched clay. The malleable, irregular, misshapen mass yielded to Shinichi’s intention. Unlike the kanji lesson of lines that taunted Shinichi with their misbehavior, this new material obeyed his vision. Shinichi knew a life in clay was a profession he could have and the language he would “write” with.
“Children are small,” Shinichi says, “but each and every one of them is a reliable person.”
When he was eighteen, Shinichi left for Honshu and studied at the Shigaraki Ceramic School in Shiga prefecture for one year. He interned at a Shigaraki pottery for three more years and then opened his own workshop in Shiga. Mr. Imamura would transport the clay from Iga. After twenty-five years, the Shiga studio became too small, and his dedication to the Iga clay had grown. The obvious move was to Iga, where he would be closer to the playground of his ceramic exploration. When Shinichi was fifty, he made this move.
Little remains of Shinichi’s investment in the Shigaraki school, but he respects those who seek to understand the traditional forms. Shinichi follows a style of Shigaraki, but the design, color, and texture of Syunbougama studio are not culturally dictated or bound to the boundaries of prefectures or cities constructed by human society. His work comes from within the clay that is Iga. He labors for the spirit of the Iga clay to be free as much as he labors for his own artistic freedom. Shinichi’s creative devotion is housed in a studio near the epicenter of a longstanding pottery tradition, but he is not bound by it. Shinichi's pottery is neither Iga-yaki nor Shigaraki-yaki. It is Shinichi Kotsuji-yaki.
Mr. Imamura turns to leave. He has not so far to drive home. He will return next year with another 1.5 tons of Iga clay. They shake hands like they have since the first time Shinichi received a sample of Imamura’s clay. It is a flesh and bone signal that sets Shinichi on his next quest to touch the beginning of time delivered as a truckload of clay.
Shinichi writes, “The Japanese sense of beauty is more attractive in a dim moon hidden by clouds and haze than in a moon floating on a cloudless night sky. Based on the beauty of imperfection and unique beauty born from the strength of the clay, the artist’s sensibility and the dynamism of manual labor are expressed. This is the beauty I seek.” [1]
I turn my bowl over. The convex globe of ochre iron, clay, and light is transfixed inside the shape of a ring base that looks as if the center was intentionally shifted and carved away, but it was not. The meaning of “kiri” is “detach or cut off. The charm of kiri-kōdai is the “tsuchiaji” that comes from simply detaching the cup from the potter's wheel with a thread. There is no additional manipulation or trimming. Japanese tradition calls this ito-kiri. However, because Shinichi does not like rules, he will call the bottom whatever he wants. I will call the surface a kitten’s nose. Blood-red capillaries of ochre covered in the transparent nacre of the dragon’s pearl become the glaze that reveals the soft blue and gold flecks of an extraterrestrial earth. Never again will my world feel the same. I now play with fire.
This kōdai of kiseto and ash glaze – the mark of the potter’s skill – can also be marked, marred into dense red in a small crucible in the base of every vessel. The glaze accumulates into a veritable force. The kitten has claws. The wild animal will play and pull apart the bored and well-worn synaptic paths in my head. I understand I’m looking at the death of my sun beneath the liquid refraction of my soup while I also behold the visual magnificence of what light looked like when the particle and wave were born. I hear it say, “Meow.”
The dense, unexpected pattern of the teppun, or black-brown iron powder, that plays over the surface is Shinichi’s ultimate surrender to expressing the human condition that mystifies him while it inspires him – incandescent dark dances from inside the light. Iron is on stage and explodes from within the clay to oxidize and appear as black-brown spots from within the inferno of blue.
This teppun is now the ink that spills like the words from my pen. The cellulose of my thin paper remembers it was a tree and holds the gravity of my imaginary worlds. Life is nothing but unexpected. Some stories are heavy. And others I cannot explain. So are the elements of life cradled in Shinichi’s matrix of blue genius, sparking the iron to lace his vessels with a pattern of love. The volcano remembers it was energy before it was Earth. Shinichi’s bowl is helium in my hand. The clay walls are delicate and airy. Yet I see and hold the weight of the Cosmos snapping as teppun from Shinichi’s dragon eye. Iron ore expands like the original creation of our universe, but now I know there’s nothing to worry about.
All I can see is beauty, and what I touch is peace.
NOTES
[1] Shinichi Kotsuji, "Philosophy of Syunbougama," https://www.syunbougama.com/index2.html.
Resources:
With gratitude to Masumi Kotsuji for our correspondence: February 2023 – September 2024.
https://www.syunbougama.com/index.html
https://www.instagram.com/syunbougama/
https://www.instagram.com/shinichi_kotsuji/?hl=ja
https://shinichi-kotsuji.stores.jp/
http://www4.fctv.ne.jp/~q-koubou/koudainokatatinoiroiro200802w.htm
http://02-maruni.sun.bindcloud.jp/
https://kogeijapan.com/locale/en_US/shigarakiyaki/
https://www.instagram.com/maison.wabi.sabi/?hl=ja#
https://www.instagram.com/utsuwamarukaku/?hl=ja#