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Mino: The Everyday Pottery of Japan
The Gifu region that makes more of Japan's tableware than anywhere else — and how, four centuries ago, its potters invented the country's most expressive ceramics.
Open a cupboard almost anywhere in Japan and some of the plates and bowls in it will have come from Mino, in the hills of Gifu. It is the country’s largest pottery region, making more than half of all the everyday ceramic tableware produced in Japan — the quiet source of much of what Japanese homes actually use.
The clay country
Ceramics have been made in this part of Gifu — around the towns of Toki, Tajimi and Mizunami — for well over a thousand years. The land gave the craft its start: good potting clay in the ground and wood for the kilns on the hills. What began as rough ware for daily life slowly grew into one of Japan’s great ceramic centres.
Today Mino’s strength is breadth. Because it never bound itself to a single look, it makes almost everything — plain white rice bowls, glazed noodle bowls, café mugs, restaurant plates — which is exactly why so much of it ends up on ordinary tables.
The Momoyama moment
Mino’s most famous chapter came around the turn of the 17th century, in the tea-drinking Momoyama period, when its potters broke from the neat imported styles and made something freer. Four Mino styles from that moment are still named today:
- Shino — a thick, milky white glaze, often with a warm blush and tiny pinholes.
- Oribe — bold copper-green glaze and deliberately irregular, off-square shapes.
- Kiseto — a soft yellow glaze.
- Setoguro — a deep, matte black, pulled from the kiln while glowing to fix the colour.
These were among the first Japanese ceramics prized for looking handmade rather than perfect — a taste that still runs through the best Mino ware.
Perfectly imperfect, on purpose
That is the thread from the tea bowls of 1600 to the mug on the shelf today: Mino ware is comfortable being a little uneven. A slightly wandering rim, a glaze that pools thicker in one place, a base left rough — these are not flaws but the signs of a pot made to be handled and used, not admired from a distance.
Bringing Mino home
Everyday Japanese ceramics reward a little care to keep them good for years. The guide covers what to choose and how to look after it.
Read: Japanese ceramics for every day. Or browse hand-picked, Japan-shipped ceramics on The Table.
Sources & Further Reading
- Mino Ware — Visit Gifu (Gifu Prefecture Tourism) — Gifu’s official guide: some 1,300 years of pottery in the Tono towns, and around half of Japan’s ceramic production today.
- Mino Ware — Traditional Crafts Aoyama Square — The national traditional-crafts association’s page on Mino ware, designated a traditional craft in 1978, with notes on Shino, Oribe, Kiseto and Setoguro.
- Mino Ware — Google Arts & Culture (Ritsumeikan University) — A closer look at the four Momoyama-period glazes and how each was made.