Japanese porcelain development?

Japanese ceramics history may be a long time, but the single out of porcelain, no matter how to count is only 500 years of history. Compared with China in the Eastern Han Dynasty on the emergence of real celadon, Japan's porcelain history can be said to be very short. About the beginning of Japanese porcelain, we can tell the story very emotional. It can even be used to explain Toyotomi Hideyoshi's military campaign against Koryo. In Toyotomi Hideyoshi's time, perhaps because he was tired of war, tea drinking became popular among military generals. The originator of the Japanese tea ceremony, Sen Rikyu, accepted the tea culture from China and completely nationalized it. Rikyu's influence went far beyond tea itself, expanding to all aspects of Japanese culture, with the so-called "Rikyu Manju", "Rikyu Oyster", "Rikyu tofu", "Rikyu turban", "Rikyu clogs", "Rikyu fan", "Toshihisa satin," and so on were everywhere. It is clear that this man had a great influence on the aesthetics of the Japanese people at that time. In the tea ceremony, this person's favorite was the "Koryo tea bowl" of the time. Toyotomi Hideyoshi was obsessed with the tea ceremony in his early years, and his relationship with Chirikyu was very close. "The Koryo Tea Bowl not only aroused the admiration of the people, but it also aroused Toyotomi Hideyoshi's great interest in Korea, where it came from. Soon afterward, he marched to Korea and brought back thousands of Korean potters. His aim proved to be successful, and in 1616, a man called "Lee Sampei" started the history of porcelain in Japan. When the then lord of the Saga domain took him away from Korea, he certainly had no idea of the impact he would have on Japanese porcelain.

Lee Sampei initially refined and fired porcelain in Saga Prefecture, where the soil was not suitable for production at the time. He began searching for porcelain clay throughout Japan, and finally found excellent porcelain stone in Izumiyama, Arita, in the year 1616. The year was 1616, and with this as the center, kilns flourished in the surrounding area, and the porcelain industry developed rapidly. At the beginning of the Edo period, white porcelain was fired for the first time in Japan. This is the "Arita-yaki", which represents Japanese porcelain, and Lee Sampei is honored as the originator of white porcelain. Since then, Japan's porcelain ended the era of complete dependence on imports.

But at that time the white porcelain is really just white porcelain, no colorful decoration. Then Kisanemon Sakaida, after repeated experiments, finally succeeded in firing the first colored porcelain by applying the terracotta technique in the third year of Shobo (1646). For thirty years, Kisanemon worked hard for this day, and this first-generation "Kakiemon" and the "Kakiemon"

painted porcelain that he created have gone down in the annals of Japanese ceramics. It is characterized by the use of greenish blue or red to depict gaudy designs on a large area of remaining white. The key to the colors, which produce a feeling that is both bright and vivid and elegant, lies in the unique white color of the surface layer, that distinctive gentle white. After about 40 hours, 1300 degrees under the high temperature firing, only to produce that soft white, firing produced after the white called "turbid hand" so-called turbid, in the local dialect is the rice water, painted porcelain unique delicate patterns, and then the third time into the kiln, so, turbid hand on the white, color pigments The white of the cloudy hand is then filled with various colors of pigments. It is as transparent as a watercolor painting on pure white paper. Kakiemon's distinctive feature is the vividness of the colors on the turbid white porcelain.

The history of porcelain in Japan is short, but before that it went through a change from earthenware to pottery to porcelain. This process of change is quite long. The history of Japanese ceramics began with Jomon earthenware. Some scholars have suggested that, based on the results of radiocarbon 14 measurements, Jomon earthenware can be dated back as far as 12,000 years, with a survival time of more than 10,000 years. Jomon Ware is generally made of clay strips, and is wild-fired, i.e., fired without a kiln chamber, at a temperature of 800 to 900 degrees Celsius. From this point of view then Japanese ceramics have undergone quite a long evolution.

Japanese pottery began in the second half of the 7th century, when the emergence of glazed pottery represented by green glazed pottery. This was the result of the influence of China and the Korean Peninsula on Japan. Nara? Heian period (538 AD to 794 AD) there are two general types of pottery, low-temperature lead-glazed pottery with three colors and green glaze, and high-temperature gray-glazed pottery. The former type is a product of the influence of Chinese Tang Sancai and green-glazed pottery from the Korean Peninsula, and mainly consists of colored-glazed pottery such as Nara Sancai and green-glazed pottery represented by Shokurain Sancai. They were called "porcelain", "china", or "celadon" in the literature at that time. However, it is worth noting that although they were called porcelain, they were not yet porcelain in the true sense of the word.

Japanese ceramics are known for their rustic, Zen-like style. But in fact, most of the classic styles and pieces in Japan's more than 500-year history of porcelain have been workmanlike and detailed, with garishly bright colors or heavy use of contrasting colors. Time came to 1655, this year Japan appeared later famous "Kutani-yaki". It was the Edo period in Japan, and Toshishi Maeda, the first lord of the Daishoji domain of the Kaga domain, took the discovery of a magnetite mine in Kanayama, Kutani-Mura, as an opportunity to send Saichiro Goto, who had been working as a goldsmith in Kanayama, to Hizen-Arita to learn porcelain-making techniques. Later, he introduced the technology and started to build a kiln in Kutani to produce porcelain. From then on, the Kutaniya kiln was born.

Most of the porcelain made at the Kutaniya kiln was colorful and grand, in keeping with the consumer mentality of the aristocracy at the time. One of the most notable features is that it is very good at using gold, silver and other flashy decorative materials for decoration or painting. Chinese porcelain also use gold, but are very small amount of decoration, such as cup mouth, pot button and other positions often appear, and generally appear in the body of the plain color of the artifacts only on, give the role of the eye. However, gold was used on a very large scale at the Kutani kilns, and was accompanied by fine, brightly colored designs depicting the Kutani kiln's decorative techniques, including red, gold, green, and silver. After entering the Meiji era, the potter Kutani Shozo's colorful Jinlan handmade porcelain became increasingly famous. At the same time, a large number of Japanese Kutani-yaki porcelain began to be exported to European countries. Kutani-yaki silver-colored works. The shimmering silver foil luster under the glaze is the essence of the Kutani-yaki silver color technique. A black ink base is applied to the entire piece, and then it is colored with patterns of light green and light cherry. A heavy aesthetic interest is revealed in the soft silver coloring on the geometric patterns.

The paintings of Kutani-yaki are rich in content. There are flowers, birds, landscapes, scenery, etc.; there are fish motifs, cranes, deities and other auspicious subjects; there are also figures and children; and there are also motifs of pines, bamboos, plums, chrysanthemums, and so on. There are also potters who are y influenced by Chinese culture, such as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove in ancient China, and depict Chinese-style patterns. Many painting artists are skillful and sophisticated in their painting techniques, and their paintings are meticulously and meticulously drawn.

And on the subject of ancient simplicity we can go back to Ganryuu, the originator of the Japanese tea ceremony. Gan Rikyu developed Murata Jukou's so-called "Wakan" realm - a combination of perfect "kan" and incomplete rough beauty "wakan" - to achieve a new level of simplicity in the tea ceremony. He developed Murata Jukou's so-called "Wakan" realm - a combination of perfect "Han" and incomplete rough beauty "Wo" - and achieved pure Japanese simplicity - "harmony, respect, purity, and silence". The aesthetics he promoted were also simple and ancient with a Zen flavor, and the Koryo tea bowls we mentioned earlier are one of them. The kilns corresponding to this time are Seto and Mino.

They were the centers of the kiln industry in the Middle Ages of Japan, and were the only kilns that fired glazed pottery during this period of history. From the late Kamakura period to the Ichimachi period, the tea culture flourished, and the so-called "Tang products" imported from China were highly prized. Against this backdrop, from the 14th century onward, the Seto kilns began to produce large quantities of tea ware, such as tempe tea bowls (black-glazed tea bowls) and tea jars, modeled after Chinese ceramics (more on this later). In the 15th century, the center of production of Seto glazed pottery shifted to the Higashi Mino area in Gifu Prefecture. From the late Muromachi period onward, the Mino kilns, which had been imitating Chinese ceramics, changed abruptly and began to produce their own unique products, represented by Seto black and yellow Seto. The former is a semi-cylindrical tea bowl characterized by a black glaze. The latter is characterized by a yellow glaze and sometimes a green glaze called "gallium". The color of the glaze is reflected in the distinctive clay, which is matched with the upright shape, giving it a unique look. The background for the creation of these wares is still the rise and popularity of the tea culture and the love and admiration for Tang dynasty wares. At that time, in places like Kyoto, the tea culture was prevalent among the urban class, and the need for tea utensils increased. It was also at this time that ceramics imported from the Korean Peninsula, such as the so-called "Koryo tea bowls," became very popular and influenced Japanese Japanese tea sets.

After the "Koryo Tea Bowl," another pottery kiln with a rustic style was located in Karatsu.

Tangjin pottery was produced during the Tensho period (1573-1592 AD), which is inferred from a relic with an inscription dated 1592 and the results of archaeological excavations in various places. During the Bunroku and Keicho periods (1592 to 1614), many Korean potters moved from the Korean Peninsula to the Bizen area around Saga and Nagasaki Prefectures, stimulating the local pottery industry. At the same time, the kiln, which had never been used in Japan before, began to spread to Mino and other areas and throughout Japan. With this technological background, Karatsu's products began to be distributed in large quantities in Japan, and it became a famous ceramics production area. The appearance of the products reflects the influence from the Korean Peninsula and Mino. High-quality products were mostly tea ceremony utensils, including products modeled after Goryeo tea bowls, as well as water purification jars, vases, and small plates. Later, the general tableware produced here also surpassed that of Mino and took over the domestic market. Typical products included painted pottery with rusty flowers under the glaze and "Ekitsu" with a feldspar glaze. Since then, Karatsu has evolved into a synonym for ceramics in Western Japan.

The beginning of Japanese porcelain was not the result of indigenous self-evolution, at that time, China's porcelain culture was already very mature, the Japanese equivalent of this grafting developed, a good example is the development of Japanese celadon porcelain. 1624 years after the importation of Chinese celadon porcelain into Japan, the Ivory celadon appeared in the works of the Ming dynasty celadon porcelain imitation, Japan's first successful firing of the The first successful firing of blue and white porcelain in Japan was called "Ivory blue and white porcelain". The shape and decoration of the blue and white flat pot with two ears in the collection of the Toguri Art Museum is an exact imitation of the Yongle blue and white flat pot. At the same time, Ivory blue and white porcelain was influenced by the Ming dynasty's Tianqi blue and white porcelain and the so-called "auspicious" wares, and there was a tendency for Ivory blue and white porcelain to have a simple, sparse pattern or to be decorated all over the body. At that time, blue and white porcelain still developed a lot of self-characterization in Japan rapidly, for example, common Japanese blue and red porcelain like to use blue and red together, and usually the whole body of the object is decorated with floral patterns, and more dense. This style is not typical in China.

In fact, in the lower level of antique trading we commonly find a Japanese porcelain is, looks similar to the style of a famous kiln in China, but you feel that this similarity there is a twisted force, then you turn to look at the inscription underneath, it is likely that you see a few Chinese characters written in a crooked. The degree of crookedness can be known that this is not written by Chinese people. This is likely to be on the Japanese imitation of the Chinese kiln porcelain. When the Chinese porcelain in the form of trade and gifts imported into Japan, immediately aroused the Japanese classes of the pursuit. But demand exceeds supply, so with the commodity nature of the imitation products began to flood the Japanese porcelain market. There is a view that: "in the late 17th century, Japan's imitation of Chinese porcelain trend is getting more and more intense. From the point of view of the current heirlooms, the scope of its imitation of the heirlooms, from the Song dynasty Longquan, black glaze porcelain, from the Ming dynasty five colors, blue and white porcelain and Dehua kiln. Which with deceptive forgeries is really shocking, in order to achieve the purpose, to induce the trust of the buyer, they are often fired in Japan itself such wares, and then brought to China by merchants, in China itself, customized suitable for boxes, jars, plates, bowls, and other small pieces of artifacts in the brocade box ......"

Coming to China to learn the art of porcelain would have been the dream of generations of Japanese potters at that time. The successful ones among them were mostly like Kato Shiro and Gora Taifu. One of the Kato Shiro in the early Kamakura period, came to China's Zhejiang Tianmu Mountain to learn to make black-glazed porcelain technology, after returning to Japan, copied a lot of black-glazed porcelain, Japanese ceramics industry called "Seto Tianmu". By the 14th century, Seto Yaki had become a kiln that was capable of making imitations. The blue and white porcelain with the mark of "Gora Taifu Xiangrui zuo" was made by Gora Taifu, who came to China in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty to learn porcelain making techniques.

Source: China Luxury Net:

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