Page 121 - Korean Buncheong Ceramics, Samsung Museum Collection (great book)

revivaLS in edo Japan: a new direction

When the daimyos who had participated in Hideyoshi’s invasions of the peninsula returned to their
home domains in Kyushu and the westernmost part of Honshu with the captured Korean potters,
they set up ceramic manufacturing operations that would individually and as a group make their
mark in the wider history of Edo-period ceramics. One of the most interesting aspects of the move-
ment of potters across geographical and cultural borders was that the physical transfer of people
did not result in the replication of their earlier works. Based on the invasion routes the daimyos
took through the Korean peninsula, we can surmise that the potters they brought back had been
employed at the kilns of the southern provinces, in particular the Gyeongsang region. By the end of
the sixteenth century buncheong had ceased to be made in Korea; the regional kilns were now
producing mostly simple glazed stoneware (without white-slip decoration) and low-grade porcelain
that, technically speaking, is closer to stoneware. Once in Japan, the transplanted potters adjusted to
their new environments, working with different raw materials and, most importantly, responding to
different demands. In varying degrees, the potters of Karatsu, Takatori, Agano, Satsuma, and Hagi
in the seventeenth century assimilated and transformed some of the basic technological and
stylistic vocabulary of nonbuncheong Korean regional stoneware. They adopted new trends popular
in other major domestic ceramic industries, such as the avant-garde style of Oribe ware from
Mino and the elegant stoneware of Kyoto, and looked to the styles of tea wares produced in Korea
(including at the Busan kilns) for export to Japan.
Intriguingly, from the first half of the seventeenth century on, there were pockets of revivals of
buncheong decorative modes, initially only at the Hizen kilns (Karatsu ware); the fashion spread
to other regions over the course of the Edo period, to other kilns operated by Korean potters as well
as to those with no direct ties to Korean makers. The following section will examine ways in which
three distinct genres of stoneware from Kyushu — Takeo Karatsu, Utsutsugawa, and Yatsushiro —
incorporated and transformed the techniques and styles of white-slip decoration, especially inlay,
stamp-patterning, and brushed application, from their antecedents in early buncheong. In addition,
the section will explore how those idioms were revived by potters in Kyoto.

Takeo karaTsu
Karatsu ware, made in the old Hizen Province in northwest Kyushu (primarily today’s Saga Prefec-
ture), started as a small-scale, local production in the Kishidake area in the 1580s and quickly
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developed into a major and celebrated ceramic. Its fame as tea ware dovetailed with the rise
of the wabi chanoyu and the incorporation of domestic ceramics into tea gatherings during
the Momoyama period (1568–1615) (see fig. 3.6). Karatsu is also the best-known Japanese ceramic

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