There are so many ceramic styles in Japan that many of them seem to blur into each other. But Bizen stoneware stands out, easily recognised even by the untrained eye. One first registers its distinctive colouring: shades ranging from deepest umber and chestnut, brightening to russet and persimmon, vermilion and warm ivory. Then, the patterns come to the forefront. Calligraphic streaks of scarlet on a cream body, wisps of white and gunmetal grey where the ash has fallen and the kiln fire has been starved of oxygen. These are heightened by the texture of the vessels themselves. Photographs can barely convey these qualities; perhaps more so than other conventionally attractive ceramic styles, Bizen ware is the sort of pottery that makes more sense in the flesh.
The origins of Bizen ware
Bizen ware is made in the village of Inbe (Imbe), in the southeastern part of Okayama Prefecture. The area shares similar geographical characteristics to other successful kilns. Its mountains provide rich clay deposits as well as wood for fuel from the forests, while its location at the intersection of three major rivers, and proximity to the Seto Inland Sea, ensured that the village’s output could be easily traded and distributed to other parts of Japan.
What we know as Bizen ware today is actually closer to a style that developed around the late sixteenth century. Like most ceramic traditions, Bizen stoneware underwent stylistic evolution throughout its lifetime. Early Bizen ware produced up to the end of the twelfth century has a gray-black colouring like that of Sue pottery, thanks to Korean potters settling in various parts of Japan during the fifth and sixth centuries. This also makes it one of the oldest, continuous ceramic traditions in Japan.
From the thirteenth century onwards, Bizen ware took on earthier, rougher aspects. Potters tended to be farmers first and potters second, which was reflected in the strongly utilitarian types of vessels that were produced, notably jars and containers of various sizes and shapes for storage and culinary uses. Large kame used to produce sake in this region were a particular Bizen specialty. Its mortars were also famously strong and durable, apparently so sturdy that they remained whole even when hurled by an angry cook. Bizen ware was traded and sold across the country; excavations of various sites in Kyoto show that it was used in the marketplaces, sold as containers in and of themselves, but also used to hold merchandise.
The impact of tea culture on Bizen ware
I have addressed the impact of tea culture and consumption as it pertained to Shigaraki ware during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries elsewhere; there are significant overlaps here with how Bizen ware fared during the same period. Tea drinking spread to all classes of society, and growing demand for tea meant a corresponding need for storage jars. Bizen-made jars were initially used for lower-quality teas, while the best teas were exclusively stored in imported Chinese ceramics. Regular shoppers in the Kyoto marketplace could purchase containers from Seto, Shigaraki, Bizen, or Tamba; a diary belonging to an unnamed monk from around this time notes that tea jars from Bizen and Shigaraki were used for “late pickings, hikuzu, [and other inferior teas].” After the decade-long Ōnin Wars (1467–77), Bizen-made containers along with their Shigaraki counterparts were pressed into service at the highest levels of society in a bid to replace the Chinese treasures lost to the war.
Where the fate of Bizen ware diverges somewhat from that of Shigaraki is how it came to be so beloved by tea practitioners. Until the late fifteenth century, tea utensils had been dominated by imported Chinese ware, which had (or so it was perceived) the finesse and pedigree that domestic Japanese-made utensils lacked. However, tea master Murata Jukō was slowly transforming the way tea gatherings were held, having introduced to his peers a new form of tea drinking based on the concept of wabi-suki — an aesthetic that emphasised simplicity, humility, and appreciation of the experience in the moment.
In a letter to his foremost disciple around the end of the fifteenth century, Jukō explores some of his ideas surrounding the wabi-cha tea ceremony, namely the need to “dissolve the boundaries between native and foreign,” and how proper appreciation of the “chilled and withered” qualities of Bizen and Shigaraki ware (comparable, he says, to the finest renga verse) requires a deep experience in using Chinese ceramics in the traditional manner. Put another way, Bizen and Shigaraki “found wares” were not for beginners — they were for those who had attained some measure of skill and aesthetic appreciation on the path of tea.
Bizen and Shigaraki wares were not unconditionally embraced in the tea room at the start; they only ever played supporting roles as tea-leaf jars or freshwater jars (mizusashi) in the wabi-cha tea ceremony as it was practiced during the sixteenth century. But it was a start. It certainly changed what Bizen kilns produced.
In 1582, the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi — who governed Bizen Province at the time — became a patron to six of the best potter families from Inbe, tasking them with making tea utensils. It was also around the late sixteenth century that potters began incorporating iron-rich clay into their creations, resulting in the reddish-brown Bizen ware that we are familiar with today. Following this, the 1590s to around 1620 in saw a flourishing of Bizen ware, with artist-potters creating pieces to the specifications of their patrons, usually tea practitioners or urban merchants (or both). These pieces were boldly sculpted, in vivid contrast to the light, elegant, and refined ceramics that would come into favour after this period.
As Louise Allison Cort notes in Shigaraki: Potter’s Valley, this unprecedented “inversion of taste” that this represented had “an extraordinarily invigorating effect on connoisseurship throughout the whole of the sixteenth century.” Crucially, by celebrating the qualities of Bizen and Shigaraki in their practice, Jukō and his peers established a fundamental and enduring tenet of Japanese ceramic taste. To this day, wabi, or a subdued, austere beauty, remains a core component of what we consider “Japanese” aesthetics today.
The characteristics of Bizen ware
What did tea practitioners see in Bizen ware, and what was the appeal of this rough, unglazed, unpainted stoneware? So far, I have touched upon the allure of its colours and patterns. Bizen ware is left unglazed because of its clay. Around three types of clay — iron-rich tatsuchi, sandy yamatsuchi, and kurotsuchi — are mixed together for Bizen ware; the high proportion of organic matter in kurotsuchi makes the clay’s surface less receptive to glazing. But one factor more than any other defines Bizen ware — fire.
The clay used for Bizen ware is less resistant to fire compared to others, and unable to withstand sudden, rapid changes in temperature. As such, wares are slowly fired in a multi-chambered climbing kiln or tunnel kiln over a long period of time, anywhere from ten to fourteen days, even up to twenty. The temperature must be slowly increased over eight days or so, until it reaches the final temperature of around 1200 to 1300℃. This is the typical process, but exceptions exist. For example, Mori Togama built a huge, single-chambered, 50-metre-long kiln (an ōgama) in 1972, and fired his first load of pieces for 55 days; loading the kiln alone took 30 days.
Firing Bizen ware is a laborious process, and is only undertaken once or twice a year. Every fifteen to twenty minutes, without pause, the potter must feed the flames with firewood, usually red pine, a practice that some consider wasteful. Fire does not account for sleep, so the potters do this in shifts through day and night. The last step is to throw charcoal into the kiln. When the firing is complete, the kiln is left to slowly cool, which can take around six days depending on the initial firing process. Finally, the vessels can be removed.
The art of yōhen, or kiln effects
Conditions inside the kiln determine the finish of the vessels. Less firewood means oxidising flames that turn the vessels reddish-brown. Random charcoal ash deposits may land on the vessels and adhere to their surface in distinctive patterns. Potters can attempt to create the conditions for their desired effects, but there is always an element of serendipity to each firing, which in Bizen ware is referred to as yōhen — literally, kiln changes. Indeed, this unpredictability is core to the allure of Bizen, aligning perfectly with the acceptance (and celebration) of transience and imperfection that characterises wabi-sabi aesthetics.
Kiln effects were originally happy accidents, but around the late sixteenth century (the late Momoyama period to the beginning of the Edo period), Bizen potters began deliberately inducing these effects that were so prized by their tea patrons, creating 'landscapes' (keshiki) on the surface of each piece. As true then as it is now, the line between beautiful happenstance and overly-contrived patterns is a difficult one to walk. Some of the main effects one can achieve in Bizen ware are as follows.
Goma, or sesame, is a glaze-like finish that resembles speckles of sesame seeds, caused by wood ash melting on the surface of the vessels. Depending on the intensity and duration of the firing, the colours range from yellow-beige to amber.
Sangiri is where a vessel is partially buried in sand, leaving some areas exposed. The ash that falls on the exposed area retards oxidation; the carbon from the ash reacts with the iron in the clay, resulting in shades that range from white and blue to dark grey and black.
Hidasuki, which can also be translated as ‘fire cords,’ is an especially distinctive kiln effect where scarlet lines appear to have been painted on the surface of the vessel. Early potters wrapped rice straw around the vessels to separate them from each other. Alkalines in the straw react with the iron in the clay to form red, brown, and cinnabar burn marks. Potters can vary the lines and marks based on how they wrap the vessels; using bunches of beaten straw can also result in a softer, more blurry set of markings in a range of scarlet hues.
Botamochi, so named for the rice cake covered with red bean paste, takes the form of round, reddish areas without ash having fallen on them. Balls of refractory clay (high temperature-resistant clay) or small cups are placed on the vessels on top of rice chaff, to prevent the clay from sticking.
Ao-bizen, or blue Bizen, is a comparatively rare blue finish that comes from reduction firing — i.e., having reduced the amount of oxygen in the kiln — and covered in rice straw. It can also result from having salt added; salt-glazed blue bizen is called shokuen-ao. (Fun fact: Hamada Shōji is said to have been the first person to introduce the salt-glazing technique to Japan from Europe.) The blues range from light blue to a deep grey-blue.
Patronage and its loss: Bizen ware in the Edo and Meiji periods
Like most art forms around the world, Bizen ware was able to thrive and survive during the Edo period thanks to clan patronage. The potters of Inbe received protection and encouragement from the Ikeda clan, being tasked with making fine tea utensils for the clan’s use, but also as presentation ware for the court and shogunate. Some of these were artist-potters who turned out inventive, animated, and finely sculpted renderings of animals, mythical creatures, and divinities, either as decorative items or on more useful pottery forms such as basins and vases. It is around the 17th century that Bizen acquired a reputation for these wares.
In 1636, Lord Ikeda designated two master craftspeople as “go-saikunin,” which would likely be similar to “Living National Treasure” today. This recognition of skilled Bizen artisans helped keep the craft alive, but also led to a certain stagnation in the aesthetic qualities of Bizen ware towards the end of the Edo period.
Demand for utilitarian Bizen ware such as sake bottles, storage jars, mortars, and seed jars remained strong throughout. Bizen’s first multi-chambered climbing kiln was (supposedly) built in 1831, and was used until around 1940 or 1941. The administrators of the Okayama domain oversaw the supplies of raw materials, and took care of the distribution of the final products.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ushered in a new era of turmoil and financial crisis for the Bizen potters. The Ikeda clan were no longer their patrons, and the potters were scarcely equipped to compete with the flood of industrially-produced porcelain on the market. Some workshops switched to producing drainpipes and bottles for beer and sake, but this, too, proved futile. There was but one market niche left to them — producing ornamental objects (saikumono) for the emerging bourgeoisie.
Bizen ware might well have faded into relative obscurity had it not been for Kaneshige Tōyō, who revived the lost techniques of the austere late sixteenth-century Bizen ware in the 1930s as part of what is known as the “Momoyama revival moment.” This earned him the designation of Living National Treasure in 1956, a first for any potter from Bizen. Bizen ware was officially designated a traditional Japanese craft by the government in 1982.
Bizen ware in the modern age
Bizen ware remains one of the most beloved ceramic styles among collectors and enthusiasts; moreover, Bizen has more Living National Treasures than any other ceramic style. One of them, Fujiwara Yu is quoted in a 1995 book review published in an American ceramics newsletter as an “addict” with a “passion for Bizen ware,” suggesting that no other pottery than Bizen “drives man to such a degree of madness.” Ceramics specialist Robert Yellin cites Bizen as his “first love” in the ceramic world. I suspect that not only the earthy beauty of the wares themselves, but also the romance inherent in wood-firing, the excitement of never knowing what might emerge from the kiln at the end; all of this accounts for the unusual — dare I say, fiery — fervour these wares seem to inspire in its fans, especially ceramic artists who travel from around the world to learn from Bizen potters.
Whether it is at the Bizen Pottery Festival held in October, the Bizen Ceramic Museum, or one of the dozens of shops and galleries that line the streets of Bizen, the allure of Bizen ware is best experienced in the flesh — more so than any other ceramic style. There is every possibility that you, too, might develop the same passion for Bizen ware.
Written by Florentyna Leow
Sources and further reading
Cort, Louise Allison. Shigaraki: Potter’s Valley. New York: Weatherhill. 2000.
Crueger, Anneliese., Crueger, Wulf., Ito, Saeko. Modern Japanese Ceramics: Pathways of Innovation & Tradition. United States: Lark Books, 2007.
Durston, Diane. Japan Crafts Sourcebook: A Guide to Today's Traditional Handmade Objects. Japan: Kodansha International, 1996.
Ford, Barbara Brennan., Impey, Oliver R.. Japanese Art from the Gerry Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. United States: The Museum, 1989.
Gorham, Hazel H.. Japanese & Oriental Ceramic. United States: Tuttle Publishing, 2012.
Hauge, Victor., Hauge, Takako. Folk Traditions in Japanese Art. Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International, 1978
Yellin, Robert. “The Kilns & Art of Mori Togaku.” In: Daruma Magazine, Issue 19, 1998. http://www.e-yakimono.net/html/isezaki-jun-bizen-04-jt.html Accessed 6 March 2025
Beyond the legacy : anniversary acquisitions for the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery by Lawton, Thomas, 1931-; Lentz, Thomas W; Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution); Freer Gallery of Art
Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Japan Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition. United Kingdom: University of Washington Press, 2007.
Turning Point: Oribe and the Arts of Sixteenth-century Japan. United Kingdom: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003.
Yakimono: 4000 Years of Japanese Ceramics. United States: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2005.