of natural porcelain and pottery clays. Most of Japan's mountains are made up of granite rock and this granite in the natural course of erosion becomes disintegrated and is washed down the mountain-side to form immense deposits of natural kaolin. While the potters of other lands must bring various clays and ingredients for porcelains from different places and mix them, the Japanese potter finds his materials ready to his hand in many places. It is these deposits of natural pottery clays that dictated the location of the earliest kilns. In Japan clay-materials for ceramics presented no problem but the matter of fuel with which to fire the kilns has been a major problem, often necessitating the removal of kilns as the supply of fire wood was exhausted. This fact tends to cause confusion to the European student of Japanese ceramics for as he delves into the history of individual kilns he will find one kiln with its master potter and workmen recorded at more than one kiln site.
Because these kaolin deposits are found at the foot of or on the lower slopes of mountains many Japanese kiln names have some form of the word for "valley" in their composition; as for instance the well-known Kutani which is written with characters meaning "nine valleys." For this reason also Japanese kilns are clustered in groups rather widely separated from one another, and the many kilns of such groups will produce pretty much the same type of ceramic wares, due to the common use of one type of clay materials.
Ceramic making in Japan has always been a group-project. The clay deposits were free to any potter of the district and the kilns were usually under the direct authority of the feudal lord. During the Tokugawa period, the beginning of which exactly coincides with the first crude efforts to make porcelain pottery and porcelain making was an art, not a business. If the kiln, were small it was a family affair with no outside help, if large it was a neighbourhood affair. The firing of the finished wares was done at community kilns. The potters worked primarily not for money, but for love of their craft. The more skilfull potters made wares which their feudal lord gave as presents to his friends and superiors, the less skilfull made the thins that were necessary to the daily life of the potters and their neighbours. This was under the old form of feudalism where the lord was responsible for the livelihood of his men. Later some of the feudal lords kept only one kiln for their own use and encouraged potters at other kilns in their district to make articles for sale. Then after 1868, when Japan became modernized, the kilns became the property of the potters employed in them and the clay deposits went under the joint ownership of the potters. The preparation, that is the excavation and packaging, of ceramic clays is now in the hands of commercial companies and the clays which were once used only by the potters of the neighbourhood are now bought and sold all over the country like any other commercial product.
In the early history of ceramics each group of kilns guarded their trade secrets very strictly. Potters did not openly go from one kiln to another and there are recorded cases where a potter of one location who sold or divulged the secrets of his group to a potter of another group of kilns was punished with death.
Later when such rules and regulations had somewhat relaxed, artist designers went from one district to another, as Ninsei, Oribe and Enshu. Such men made their homes in Kyoto but their influence was felt in many widely separated kilns.
Kyoto is the center of a group of kilns although there are no clay materials to be found there. Kyoto potters use clays brought from great distances. They are attracted to Kyoto because it is the cultural and artistic center of the country. None of the kilns are large, often the master himself is the only worker; and quite unlike the kilns grouped around a kaolin deposit, they are individually owned. Kyoto wares are not difficult to distinguish because they are usually compounded of several clays and carefully and exceedingly well made. Also it was the potters of Kyoto who first signed or sealed their productions.
Kilns
It is thought that pre-historic Japanese pottery was fired in an open fire on the surface of the ground. Historically the oldest kilns are known as cave kilns (ana gama) and may be an adaptation of the primitive charcoal burner's kiln. They were holes dug into the slope "of a hill, or rather open pits dug in the hill-side and covered with a rounded earthen roof. The pit was filled with pottery and covered with earth leaving two openings, that at the lower end was used as a fire box for heating the kiln, the hole at the upper end served as a chimney through which the smoke escaped. Kilns of this type are in use to this day for the production of small quantities of pottery for local use and are now known as oh gama (large kilns). In the days before modern transportation methods were known it was necessary for the Japanese potter to move his kiln from place to place as he exhausted, not his clay supply, but his wood supply, because he found it easier to take his materials to a source of fuel than to bring fuel to his clay deposits; or again groups of potters migrated en masse to a new location in search of fuel.
Showing method of packing and firing pottery kilns. At the top; the nobori gania, below; an oh gama.
The ana gama or cave type kilns were wasteful of fuel and in this connection there is a story which is doubly interesting, first for its bearing on the historical development of ceramic kilns and secondly for the light it sheds upon the importance of the ceramic industry in Japan. During the time of Ogimachi Tenno, who reigned from 1557 to 1586, a certain Kato Kagenobu was a master potter at Kujiri of the Seto group of kilns. He was so jealous of his own secrets of pottery making that he built a fence about his kiln to keep visitors out. Yet when he learned that the type of kiln in use at Seto, the old cave type kiln (ana gama), had been superceeded by an improved form elsewhere, he left Seto and journeyed to Kyushu to learn how to build such kilns. On this visit he evidently learned more than just how to build an improved type of kiln for on his return to Seto he began to make glazed wares. He made articles glazed with a thick soft white glaze which he presented to Emperor Ogimachi. These things so pleased the Emperor that he granted Kagenobu the title of Governor of Chikugo and raised him to Fifth Court Rank. It is well to keep in mind that this was the time of greatest popularity for the cult of cha no yu (ceremonial serving of tea) which so occupied the time and attention of the intelligentia of that day and for the proper performance of which pottery articles were so necessary.
The new type of kiln of which Kagenobu learned was the nobori gama (or climbing kilns). It consisted of series of four or five ana gama set one above the other up the slope of a hill and connected. Fire was built in a fire box attached to the lowest kiln and the smoke and some heat found its way up through the kilns and eventually out at a hole in the upper end of the topmost kiln. To fire a batch of pottery all the chambers were filled with articles of various sizes. Fire was applied to the lowest only and after the things in that chamber had been fired sufficiently that chamber was closed off. Meanwhile, the second chamber had become heated to a certain extent; this was then fired just as if it were an independent kiln and when the articles in it were baked this chamber was closed off and the third chamber was in its turn fired. This continued on to the end of the series. It is said that at times as many as fifty chambers were connected and fired in this manner. Undoubtedly this method constituted a great saving of fuel. These kilns in series are thought to have been influenced by the Korean type of kilns which were built in a series on flat ground. According to some scholars they are simply a development of the primitive ana gama, and it is certain that the two types existed simultaneously during the Momoyama Period (1574-1602). The kilns at first known as cave kilns (ana gama) came to be called old kilns (ko gama) or round kilns (maru gama) when built in series up the slope of a hill, large kilns (oh gama) when built singly.
The Korean kilns-in-series were called split-bamboo type kilns (wari take gama) and were introduced first at Karatsu. Thus we have ko gama, maru gama, and wari take gama all meaning kilns built in series and to these must be added the name nobori gama, when built on a hill, and finally because of a fancied resemblance to baby crabs on a skewer, "baby crab kilns" (kani ko gama).
Since the re-opening of Japan to international intercourse the development of Japanese ceramics has kept pace with developments elsewhere in the world. Beginning with Dr. A. Wagner, a German chemical expert who came here
