Raku Kichizaemon XV, the fifteenth master of the Raku line, once described the interior of a tea bowl as “a microcosm of the universe in one’s palms.” It is difficult to disagree with this poetic statement. Not for nothing have Raku and Raku-style ceramics endured for the last four centuries — indeed, they are so beloved by tea practitioners that there is an expression that places Raku at the top of a hierarchy of ceramics for use in the tea room: 一楽二萩三唐津. First Raku, second Hagi, and finally Karatsu.
Raku ware refers to a type of pottery most often used in the form of tea bowls for tea ceremony. In contrast to most Japanese ceramic traditions, they are built entirely by hand, covered with a lead-based glaze, and fired to a (relatively) low temperature in a small (typically indoor) kiln — no large kilns, potter’s wheels, or vast quantities of clay. Operating on such a small scale meant that Raku workshops could be located in urban areas; and moreover, that it was relatively easy for anyone to start a workshop if they had access to the techniques involved.
One of the delights of a well-made tea bowl is how it fits in one’s hands, and for many tea practitioners, Raku bowls are the most pleasurable to hold out of all types of ceramics. Much of this can be ascribed to the hand-built nature of Raku bowls: the potter is actively shaping the piece with their own hands, and is acutely aware of its weight and texture, and how it will feel in the hands of the final user. Also, firing at low temperature means less vitrification, so the final piece conducts heat less efficiently. A tea bowl filled with hot liquid feels warm and comforting, rather than scalding.
The mytho-historical origins of Raku ware
The oft-repeated narrative of the Raku tradition’s origins is as follows. In the late sixteenth century, there was once a ceramic-tile maker named Tanaka Chōjirō, whose tremendous talent was discovered by the fabled tea master Sen no Rikyū (1522–91) while he was working on warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Jurakudai palace in Kyoto. (Stories have varied in the past in their details. Some suggest that he was Korean. The official Raku narrative writes that the techniques were brought over from China by Ameya, Chōjirō’s father.) Rikyū tasked Chōjirō with inventing a new style of tea bowls to suit his rustic tea gatherings. The matte black and matte red tea bowls that Chōjirō produced on Rikyū’s suggestion became the cornerstone of the Raku tradition. (They were known as “ima-yaki” rather than Raku at first.) Since then, the Raku tradition has been passed down from father to son, a proud, uninterrupted lineage that has lasted four centuries.
Where does “Raku” come from? Another oft-repeated story is that this was the character inscribed on the gold seal that Chōjirō received from Toyotomi HIdeyoshi as an endorsement of his pottery, so it was adopted as the family name. Other versions of the story say that the seal read “first in the realm” (tenka ichi), and yet others also note that Hideyoshi, whose aesthetic tastes ran towards the lavish and ostentatious, in fact disliked Chōjirō’s tea bowls. The official story suggests that “Raku” was abbreviated from “Jurakudai,” since the Raku home was “nearby the Jurakudai Palace.”
However, as art historian Morgan Pitelka observes, this is a “carefully crafted facade.” History is rarely ever this linear or simple, and beautiful things do not survive in a vacuum. This is precisely what is so fascinating about the history of Raku ware — it is an excellent example of how people attempt to shape their own stories and histories; how tradition is not static but created, constantly changing with the passage of time through the actions of the actors involved.
The remainder of this essay draws heavily on 21st century scholarship on Raku ceramics. For a more thorough introduction to the story of Raku ware as well as evidence for the arguments made below, I suggest reading Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons, and Tea Practitioners in Japan.
Raku ware as a product of immigrant artisans
Did Chōjirō, the mythical father of Raku ware, exist? There was indeed a potter named Chōjirō working in Kyoto in the late sixteenth century. There exists a beautifully-made lion-shaped roof tile with the signature of one Chōjirō and the date of its execution (spring 1574). However, it does not then follow that he necessarily made tea bowls for Rikyū. None of the tea master’s many letters (or writings attributed to him) mention Chōjirō, which would be surprising if the momentous meeting between them had in fact taken place. Existing evidence is (thus far) unable to prove that the two had ever met at all.
Recent scholarship by Japanese archaeologists posits that the techniques for low-temperature, lead-glazed ceramics made during the sixteenth century are directly related to that of the three-colour style (sancai) ceramics produced in Fujian, China, around the same time. This has been acknowledged on the official Raku website. There were certainly Chinese immigrant craftspeople living and working in Kyoto during this period, and according to archaeological evidence, there were several kilns in Kyoto producing low-temperature, lead-glazed ceramics.
In other words, it is most likely that Raku ceramics were developed in a lively, diverse urban market, from the interactions and exchanges between Chinese immigrant potters and tea-ceramic consumers.
Family affair, or the birth of a legend
The story of Chōjirō meeting Rikyū first appeared in a 1687 gazetteer, where the putative founder of Raku is described as a Korean potter. In the 1694 publication Diverse Domestic and Foreign Utensils (Wakan shodōgu), Chōjirō is described as a “tōjin,” or a Chinese person, which hews more closely to the official genealogy written by Kichizaemon IV in 1688. Public records, gazetteers, guide books to Kyoto, connoisseurship catalogues, and other documents from the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries repeat and reinforce this narrative, which suggests that it was public knowledge by this point. In this sense, whether Chōjirō had really met Rikyū or not was less important than the effect brought about by the almost mythological story circulating in the public imagination. The story was, and is, an important anchor in the Raku lineage, one that crystallised the connection between Raku and the esteemed Rikyū.
The 1688 genealogy of the Raku house, a private memorandum written by Kichizaemon IV (Ichinyū) and his adopted son (Sonyū), is fascinating in that it is a clear attempt to set out an official narrative for the family. It was written in the years after the family kiln faced competition from rival tea-ceramic kilns, as well as two new kilns outside of Kyoto producing low-temperature, lead-glazed wares, set up by former members of the Raku workshop.
One of these new kilns had been started by none other than Ichinyu’s illegitimate son, Yahei, whom he had fathered with a woman from Tanamizu village. (She remains unnamed, and is listed simply as “woman” in the present-day family chart on the official Raku website.) Ichinyu did not designate Yahei his heir, but instead adopted a son from a wealthy silk merchant family, who took on the mantle of Kichizaemon V.
We can only speculate as to how Yahei felt about this situation, or indeed what the gossip in town was like, but the fact remains that he left Kyoto in his late teens to set up shop in his mother’s village under the name Ichigen. Not only did he make Raku wares, he also used the official Raku seal on his creations, which as a direct blood descendant he was arguably entitled to do.
The 1688 genealogy written by Ichinyū emphasises the direct line and excises Yahei from the family chart. It implied that there could only be one Kichizaemon at any given time, and he had to have been chosen by the previous holder of the title. Other texts published over the subsequent few centuries largely reiterate this vision of Raku history, and as a whole reinforced the idea that the Raku family were the legitimate producers of low-temperature, lead-glazed ware. The rebranding was a success.
Today, the official Raku family chart on their website lists Yahei as head of the ‘branch’ Tanamizu kiln — a seeming aberration in an otherwise continuous lineage — while in the page describing successive generations of the Raku family, he is filed under “Raku-related people.” Whether this will change with further scholarship remains to be seen.
How Raku ware survived through during the Edo period
Patronage was key to Raku’s survival over the centuries. In the early to mid-seventeenth century, for example, the Raku potters weathered economic difficulties thanks to the patronage of the Hon’ami and Ogata families, both of whom were wealthy members of Kyoto’s elite.
One of them, Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558-1637), was an amateur maker of Raku-style tea bowls, and made many of them in collaboration with Kichizaemon II’s workshop, either for his own use or as gifts. It seems that he would shape and carve them, but left glazing to the professionals. He is among the most well-known of the Raku clientele who also made their own ceramics; in general, it was not uncommon for customers to try making bowls in the workshop for their own pleasure.
Even more integral to Raku’s long-term survival was the patronage of Sen Sōtan (1578-1658), the grandson of Rikyū, and that of his family and the Omotesenke tea school’s followers over the subsequent centuries. Over time, the Raku family became closely affiliated with the Sen household and its followers, and through them, also became recipients of Kii Tokugawa patronage. In addition to purchasing and commissioning wares from the Raku family (sometimes on behalf of the Kii Tokugawa), the Sen tea masters became amateur ceramicists who made their own tea bowls, while the Raku potters became tea practitioners. The relationship between the two is explicitly spelled out in a letter from Kakukakusai, the sixth-generation head of the Omotesenke school, to Sonyū, where he reminds the young Kichizaemon V that the good fortune of the Raku house is entirely thanks to the Sen family’s patronage.
As the number of Sen tea practitioners grew, so did demand for Raku ware. However, there was a limit to how much they could produce, since Raku ware is by definition a small-scale operation. Raku-style ware had to come from elsewhere.
By 1800, literacy rates were high — outside of the educated samurai class, around 50% to 60% of the merchant and peasant class were literate. Print culture thrived, and ordinary people were able to access information on all manner of subjects from cooking and travel to science and philosophy. Naturally, the Raku workshop was mentioned in guidebooks, connoisseurial guides, and copybooks.
Among the books published in the eighteenth century was an unauthorised technical guide, Collected Raku Ceramic Secrets (1736), that enabled hobbyists and professional potters around Japan to reproduce their own Raku ware. So it was that over the course of the eighteenth century, many kilns across Japan, small and large, began producing low-temperature, lead-glazed ceramics in the same style. These imitators did not threaten the Raku house, whose position with the Sen school was secure; rather, the popularity of Raku-style ware only enhanced the reputation of the genuine article.
Most samurai in the eighteenth and nineteenth were tea practitioners with an interest in ceramics, so the Raku potters were often called upon to assist domainal lords with constructing garden kilns and supervising ceramic production. Raku Tannyū (1795–1854), for example, conducted eight workshops at the Kii Tokugawa’s garden kiln between 1819 and 1844. He was compensated with cash (an unspecified amount), lodging and board. These visits were unlikely to have been financially profitable, but the opportunity to network with the elite and accumulate prestige would probably have made these efforts worthwhile.[1]
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 led to the abolishing of the feudal class system, and along with it, the collapse of domainal lord patronage of tea schools and the Raku workshop in the 1870s. Fortunately, tea culture, along with the Raku workshop, would survive later in the Meiji period thanks to new patrons, the emerging bourgeoisie who replaced the domainal lords. Wealthy industrialist tea practitioners and art collectors, many of whom were from wealthy merchant families prior to the Restoration, began collecting tea utensils, Japanese art, and ceramics again.
Raku reclaims its narrative in the late twentieth century
How tea schools reinvented themselves after the Meiji period deserves another essay entirely. Suffice to say that they did survive, and the Raku family, and Raku-style ceramics as a whole, also managed to survive the vicissitudes of the twentieth century. After his return from fighting in the war, Kichizaemon XIV (posthumously known as Raku Kakunyū) succeeded his father, and built up the Raku workshop to become one of the most influential tea-ceramic kilns in Japan.
The spread of Raku ceramic techniques to an international audience after World War II strengthened the family’s reputation, but also complicated the perception of what Raku is. American potters in the 1960s appropriated the term “raku” to describe an approach to making ceramics, with Paul Soldner describing it as “pottery made within a mental framework of expectation, the discovery of things not sought.” The resulting pottery was (and is) highly experimental in nature, a stark contrast to the tea ceramics that had until then been the mainstay of the Raku tradition within Japan. This made it clear how far Raku had “strayed” from its origins. Some kind of corrective was required.
In 1997, Kichizaemon XV (1949–) organised the travelling international exhibition, “Raku: A Dynasty of Japanese Ceramicists.” The exhibition catalogue included writings on Raku ceramic production and the late-sixteenth century context for the emergence of Raku ceramics, but also biographies of each potter in the Raku lineage. Conspicuously absent were discussions on other Raku kilns, competitors, patrons, or otherwise. The title of the exhibition, too, implicitly places the Raku family at the top of this tradition; everyone else making Raku, it suggests, is not part of this dynasty. It is hard not to see parallels between the catalogue and the 1688 Memorandum — both appear to be attempts to reclaim control of the Raku family narrative, irrespective of socio-historical realities.
These efforts continue into the 21st century. To pick one example, a quote from the essay “Chōjirō and Raku Tea Bowls,” published in the 2016 exhibition catalogue for an exhibition of Kasimir Malevich drawings and Raku Kichizaemon XV Jikinyū tea bowls held at Annely Juda Fine Art between 12 May and 9 July 2022:
“Jikinyū has long been at pains to convey to non-Japanese audiences the proper meaning of Raku in terms of it being the name of a family dynasty that has been making Raku tea bowls continuously for nearly 450 years. Raku does not mean ‘raku’ in its usual Japanese senses of ‘easy’ or ‘enjoyable’. Furthermore, it signifies much more than what is implied by the now widespread non-Japanese use of the term to mean a way of making ceramics using a firing method ultimately derived from Japanese Raku practice that was introduced to the West by the British potter Bernard Leach in 1940 whereby earthenware pots are removed from a kiln and rapidly cooled in the outside atmosphere.”
Through the story of Raku ware, we can see that history, craft, and tradition are not static narratives, but actively shaped and creatively disrupted time and again. The tensions between official narrative and unsanctioned practice, the Raku family wares versus Raku-style ceramics produced by non-family potters, the attempts to define what is and is not ‘authentic’ Raku ware — all these elements are and continue to be part of the shifting landscape of the Raku tradition. How it continues to evolve remains to be seen.
[1] Not much has changed. One only has to look at the experiences enabling private access to top craftspeople offered by Japan luxury travel agencies; wealthy patrons continue to be an integral part of the survival of traditional crafts.
Written by Florentyna Leow. Any errors are my own.
Sources and further reading
Crueger, Anneliese., Crueger, Wulf., Ito, Saeko. Modern Japanese Ceramics: Pathways of Innovation & Tradition. United States: Lark Books, 2007.
Pitelka, Morgan. Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons, and Tea Practitioners in Japan. Germany: University of Hawaii Press, 2005.
Pitelka, Morgan. “Raku Ceramics as a Metaphor for Tradition: Handmade Culture and the Dilemma of Modern Connoisseurship.” In: Traditional Japanese Arts and Crafts in the 21st Century: Reconsidering the Future from an International Perspective: 167-175. https://nichibun.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/2669/files/kosh_027__179__167_175__179_187.pdf
Pitelka, Morgan. “Defining Raku Ceramics: Translations, Elisions, Evolutions”, Ars Orientalis 53: 9. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4986. 2023.
“History-Birth of Raku Ware.” RAKU WARE. Accessed 12 March 2025. https://www.raku-yaki.or.jp/e/history/index.html
“History-Roots of Raku Ware.” RAKU WARE. Accessed 12 March 2025. https://www.raku-yaki.or.jp/e/history/roots.html
“History-Origin of the name Raku.” RAKU WARE. Accessed 12 March 2025. https://www.raku-yaki.or.jp/e/history/essense.html
“History-Raku family tree.” RAKU WARE. Accessed 12 March 2025. https://www.raku-yaki.or.jp/e/history/genealogy.html
“History-Raku successive generations.” RAKU WARE. Accessed 12 March 2025. https://www.raku-yaki.or.jp/e/history/genealogy.html
“Kasimir Malevich x Raku Kichizaemon XV.” Annely Juda Fine Art. Accessed 12 March 2025. https://www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk/usr/library/documents/main/raku-cat.pdf