Nobuaki Kasuya, who trained at an Okinawan pottery called “Yachimun,” began to make Kohiki pottery after returning to Tokyo, and then moved to the Boso Peninsula, where he continues to produce unique-looking pottery in a traditional wood-fired kiln called “Anagama. While his style has broadened, “nature” and “life” are always at the core of his work.
From Okinawa to Tokyo and Boso Peninsula
The southern part of the Boso Peninsula. The city of Kamogawa, facing the Pacific Ocean, is known for its seafood and marine recreation, but inland, surrounded by peaks, are the satoyama mountains represented by “Oyama Senmaidaida,” selected as one of the 100 best terraced rice paddies in Japan. Mr. Kasuya is a potter in a remote area of the satoyama, surrounded by mountain greenery and sparsely populated with people.
In 2019, Mr. Kasuya moved to Kamogawa City from Hino City, Tokyo. He produces elegant-looking vessels made by a technique called “kohiki,” in which the base clay is coated with white mud and then glazed and fired, and at the same time, he continues to produce vessels with richly varied expressions using a traditional wood-fired kiln. Mr. Kasuya’s roots are rooted in the local climate and lifestyle. It is in Okinawa.
Visit with Mr. Shinman Yamada, Master of Okinawan Yachimun
Mr. Kasuya completed his graduate studies in Japanese painting at Tokyo University of the Arts. Immediately after his marriage, he and his wife Natsuko embarked on a world tour. Okinawa, their starting point, became their first base.
After their world tour, Mr. Kasuya visited the Yomitan Kiln in Yomitan Village, which is home to the Yachimun pottery kiln. There, he happened to see a sign that read “Yamada, Wanted Men. In fact, “Yamada” refers to Mr. Yamada Shinman, one of Okinawa’s most famous yachimun (Okinawan traditional ceramics) makers. Mr. Kasuya immediately visited Mr. Shinman and spent six years training with him.
As lifestyles change, so do vessels
After returning to Tokyo, he began to make pottery mainly in the kohiki style, which had always been his favorite. One of the charms of Mr. Kasuya’s Kohiki vessels is the tranquility and warm texture of the clay, but they are quite different from the traditional yachimun of Okinawa, which are characterized by their solidity and sturdiness and painted patterns, and Sometsuke and Sansai, which are characterized by their patterns. I think the type of vessel you make depends on where you live,” he says. In Okinawa, there are many lively dishes such as bitter melon stir-fry. I think that the dishes that are most suited for such dishes are Okinawan Sometsuke or Sansai.
At the time, his wife Natsuko ran a bakery under the name “Bread and Utensils yukkaya” (now only available by mail order), and making dishes to go with the bread was part of Mr. Kasuya’s daily life. Making tableware that is rooted in daily life is something he learned in Okinawa. This is something he learned in Okinawa, and he has not changed his approach. Even after moving to Kamogawa, he continues to make Kohiki vessels in an electric kiln that can also be filled with gas. He says, “If I only use electricity, the white surface becomes smooth and lacking in expression,” so he puts gas in the kiln to limit the supply of oxygen to achieve a “reduction firing. In this way, a unique texture is created.
On the other hand, the Noborigama kiln was used during the Okinawan period. Mr. Kasuya’s desire for a wood-fired kiln has remained, but it is difficult to set up a wood-fired kiln in a residential area in Tokyo. He kept searching for a new place where he could fire a wood-fired kiln, and finally found it in the mountains of the Boso Peninsula.
Look at nature, explore it, and surrender to it.
The cellar kiln beside the studio was built by Mr. Kasuya himself. A cellar kiln has a longer history than a climbing kiln. A cellar kiln has only one firing chamber inside the kiln where vessels are placed. The climbing kiln was developed to have multiple firing chambers so that a large number of vessels could be fired efficiently. During firing, the kiln is kept burning for three days and three nights.
The naturalness of the cellar kiln and firewood
Mr. Kasuya chose to use a cellar kiln instead of a climbing kiln because he “wanted to create vessels with complex expressions. In a cellar kiln, the vessels are covered with a large amount of wood ash, which melts over time at high temperatures, producing vessels with unique expressions. The firing environment, which leaves more to chance than in a climbing kiln, produces vessels with textures that exceed expectations.
For Mr. Kasuya, the firewood used in the kiln also enhances the charm of the cellar kiln. The firewood I use the most is yerba matebashi,” he says. It has quite a lot of firepower,” explains Kasuya. The yerba matebayashi is a common evergreen broad-leaved tree in Minami-Boso that was planted in the past as a support for seaweed cultivation and as a material for making charcoal. The bright yellow-green fresh greenery of the yerba matebayashi in spring is a sight unique to the Boso Peninsula.
While the yerba matebayashi is used as the main material, the color of the vessel after firing changes depending on the type of tree, so pine trees, cherry trees, and tabunoki trees are used in combination from time to time. He says that the more zelkova he uses, the more interesting the color will be, with a milky appearance. No matter which combination of colors he mixes, they naturally fuse together in the cellar kiln. The beauty of the colors isn’t unnatural. It is the pleasure of using firewood, and it is also the pleasure of the cellar kiln, to see changes beyond what I had imagined.
He also actively uses rough and coarse textured clay as potter’s clay, saying, “It is better to have a little bit of a rough texture than to have too much cleanliness.
I want to continue to explore the colors of nature.
Using both a cellar kiln and an electric kiln, Mr. Kasuya mainly produces dishes and mugs for daily use. In addition to wholesaling his work to galleries, in recent years he has been exhibiting at the Niwanowa Art & Craft Fair Ciba, the largest craft fair in Chiba Prefecture, deepening his relationship with the users and recipients of his work.
Mr. Kasuya is now strongly interested in color. I used to do Japanese-style painting, so I have always been very interested in color. By color, I mean natural colors. In Japanese painting, the colors are like those of mineral pigments, but when I use a cellar kiln, I can get natural tints that are close to those colors. I would like to try firing with more different types of firewood,” he says. He is also trying his hand at overglaze painting.
During his time in Okinawa, Mr. Kasuya was repeatedly told by his master, Mr. Shinman Yamada, to “watch nature carefully. He was repeatedly told by his master, Mr. Shinman Yamada, when he was in Okinawa: “Look carefully at nature and make your work. The lifestyle he leads in the satoyama mountains of the Boso Peninsula enhances his sensitivity to nature. Mr. Kasuya creates vessels that are rooted in the local climate with the user’s daily life in mind. When his never-ending inquisitiveness resonates with nature and daily life in a new way, his vessels are sure to undergo changes beyond imagination.
