Makers & Origins
The places behind the objects.
The forges of Sakai, the iron founders of Iwate, the kilns of Mino — stories of the towns and craftspeople behind Japan’s table craft.堺の鍛冶、岩手の鋳物師、美濃の窯元。道具の背後にある産地と作り手の物語。
Iga Ware: Pots from an Ancient Lakebed
The Mie valley where clay left by a four-million-year-old lake became Japan's great fire pottery — from Momoyama tea jars to the donabe on the stove tonight.
Arita: Where Japanese Porcelain Began
The Saga town that fired Japan's first porcelain, ate a mountain to do it, and sent its work to European palaces under another town's name.
Yamanaka: The Town That Turns Wood
In a hot-spring valley in Ishikawa, lacquer begins not with lacquer but with the lathe — how Yamanaka became Japan's great maker of turned-wood bases, grain and all.
Tokoname: The Town That Makes Japan's Teapots
How an iron-red clay town on the Chita Peninsula became the home of the Japanese kyusu — a thousand years of pottery meeting a lesson from Chinese Yixing.
Hasami: Porcelain for the People
How a small Nagasaki town spent four centuries making porcelain ordinary — from Edo-period bowls sold off riverboats to today's quietly modern tableware.
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.
Nambu Ironware: Iron from Iwate
The two towns of Iwate that gave Japan its most famous cast iron — how Nambu tekki began, how it is made, and why a sand-cast kettle can last a hundred years.
Sakai: The City That Sharpens Japan
How a port town near Osaka became the source of the professional chef's knife — the four-hundred-year division of labour behind a single Sakai blade.
Takayama: Where the Tea Whisk Is Made
Nearly every bamboo tea whisk made in Japan comes from one district in Nara — a five-hundred-year craft of splitting one piece of bamboo into a hundred tines by hand.