a kitchen, they will still cook certain dishes over the irori—especially nabemono (pot stews).
In winter, the irori is as cheering to the Japanese as the pub fireplace is to the British. The first time I saw a genuine irori was at a homely minshuku (family-owned inn) in Takayama; the couple running it insisted that guests should sit around it after dinner. There's no denying the irori's congeniality; conversation lasted into the wee hours and the hangover in the morning was dire!
On the verge of total extinction 20 years ago, the irori has been making something of a comeback thanks to a heightened awareness of the importance of preserving the past in Japan. They are no longer much of a rarity in traditional style inns and restaurants; and among Japanese who are able to afford a second home in the countryside, the irori is the height of chic.
Hibachi
火鉢
portable charcoal braziers
When you visit Japan's historic buildings, in many cases what you are seeing is either a replica of or a construction much later than the original, which transpires to have burned down during its long history—even several times. To be sure, the cause lay often in war and natural disaster or, occasionally, arson too. Whichever, these buildings were made of wood. The flames spread frequently from one to the next, which was often less than one metre (3 ft) away. In former times fires regularly burned down entire Japanese cities. When a blaze started in a home, it originated frequently in the kitchen or in careless use of the ro—a small sunken fireplace found often in the rooms of inns. The ro was used mainly for heating bedclothes, which were draped over a wooden frame above it, but accidents occurred when the fabric touched the embers.
Though only nominally safer, a much more popular and widespread alternative was the hibachi, a portable charcoal brazier. "Around the hibachi," observed one foreign visitor in 1907, "circulates not only the domestic but also the social life of Japan. All warm themselves at it; tea is brewed by means of it; guests are entertained, chess played, politics discussed beside it; secrets are told across it, and love made over it."
Of Chinese origin, hibachi were in use in Japan for well over a millennium. Round ones were often made of iron or bronze with handles, or ceramic (typically of thick, blue and white patterned porcelain) or cut into the bole of a tree. The section of trunk could be turned and smoothed to show the grain, then polished and perhaps carved with a decorative design or lacquered. Smoothed and polished, gnarled and irregularly shaped boles were popular too. Wooden hibachi were always fitted with a metal lining, usually of copper. Made of wood, the square or oblong hibachi incorporated a copper lining flush with the sides; sometimes it was just an open box into which a round hibachi was placed. The finest hibachi were often cabinets around 70 cm (2 ft 4 in) across and incorporating drawers for smoking requisites.
To prepare a hibachi, the fine ash within had to be raked up into a regular cone, the pieces of burning charcoal (brought from the kitchen or from a pan heated outdoors) were placed in the top. A sizeable piece of charcoal could burn for many hours. Although it was smokeless, the possibility of toxic fumes prompted people to carry the hibachi from the bedroom before retiring. The rake and tongs for handling charcoal were kept in the hibachi along with such items as an iron stand for a kettle; a grid was often placed over the stand to grill food. It was customary to place a hibachi—however simple—before each guest, along with a rectangular wooden tabako-bon (tobacco box) (see pages 72-73) which contained a miniature hibachi and a cylindrical wooden spittoon.
Capable of warming a room adequately, the hibachi was a vital household item and often an heirloom. Old hibachi have had antiquarian value for a very long time in Japan where, although no longer used, they still do today. When in use they were greatly cherished. Edward Morse noticed that one would often observe a Japanese person absent-mindedly gazing into the embers and something more: "A sentiment prompts many families to keep the hibachi burning continually; I was told that in one family in Tokyo the fire had been kept alive continuously for over two hundred years."
Satsuma-yaki
The Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi's two attempts to invade Korea in 1592 and 1598 were dismal failures. But, taken with ceramics they discovered along the campaign trail, some of his generals came up with a brilliant idea for turning adversity into an asset. Rather than burden themselves with crates full of plundered pottery, they kidnapped the potters. Being regional governors, they saw ceramic production as a means of filling the provincial coffers. Although they were virtual prisoners, the Koreans nonetheless enjoyed a fairly exalted position in Kyushu. Small wonder. They were instrumental in inventing and propagating pottery techniques which made the ware from the Kyushu towns of Arita and Imari world famous in the next century.
Shimazu Yoshihisa, another of Hideyoshi's generals and lord of the Kyushu province of Satsuma (now Kagoshima), brought Korean potters back to his fiefdom too. Displaying the delicacy of porcelain, their particular specialty was a cream-coloured glaze covered with minute crackling. Despite its early popularity, the ware fell out of fashion and the Satsuma potteries declined. By the mid 19th century 'Old Satsuma' ware had become very rare and was much sought by collectors. Today there are precious few pieces outside of museums.
A different animal altogether, the newer form of Satsuma seen on these pages proved immensely popular in Europe. It was born of provincial governor Shimazu Shigehide's efforts to revive the flagging local pottery industry at the beginning of the 19th century, when he dispatched his potters around various centres in Japan in search of new techniques. They returned with the techniques of polychrome painting, learned in Kyoto's Kinkōzan pottery.
In 1827 Shigehide sent another potter to Kyoto to learn kinran—a 17th century method for applying gold to enhance red and white patterns—imitating polychrome kinran textile designs of Chinese origin adopted in Japan for centuries. Adapting what he learned to what he already knew, he and the other Satsuma potters produced a lavishly ornate hybrid. Although called Satsuma ware, it was produced only in Kyoto for some time. The finest craftsmen of the genre was a Kyotoite, Nin'ami Dōhachi, who specialized in white Satsuma decorated in the nishiki style which, like kinran, was inspired from textiles. Nin'ami opened the first exclusive Satsuma pottery in his own city—far indeed from the real Satsuma.
Hoping to take control of what they deemed should have been produced in their own kilns, the Satsuma governors sent another potter to Kyoto, who came back to launch the Naeshirogawa style which, comprising more colours, was (if such a thing were possible) even more ornate. Considered by many as the definitive Satsuma style, the ware not only faced competition from namesakes in Kyoto, but also spawned a rash of cheap imitators in pottery centres all over the country. Requiring minute precision, detailed designing and painterly skills, Satsuma ware is the product of extraordinary skill. Made almost exclusively for export, it appealed to the baroque and bombastic tastes of European courts. The work and paintings can be really exquisite, but in many cases the beauty of the objects is demeaned by sheer decorative over-kill. Praise was lavished on Satsuma ware at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867; it perfectly fitted the times. Good pieces fetch high prices today, though most look as though they were designed solely for the ponderous and ostentatious Victorian drawing-room.
