Koishiwara-yaki — Traditional Industry Hall (Tōhō-mura)

photo by STA3816 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Pottery that began in 1682: in 1975 the first in Japan to be designated a traditional craft.

The Koishiwara district, in the village of Tōhō, has produced Koishiwara-yaki pottery since 1682, brought there by a potter from Imari who was called in by the third lord of the Kuroda domain. In 1975 it was the first pottery in Japan to receive the traditional craft designation (伝統的工芸品). In 1958 it won the Grand Prix at the World Crafts Exhibition in Brussels, an award that spread its fame across the country from the ’60s. The English potter Bernard Leach praised it as an example of ‘the beauty of use’ (用の美). Today the district has dozens of independent family kilns (the old shared kilns disappeared with the folk pottery boom); twice a year, in spring and autumn, the Mindō Mura Matsuri brings together about 50 Koishiwara and Takatori-yaki kilns in a market where they all sell at the same time.

ℹ️ The Traditional Industry Hall is open 9:00–17:00, closed on Tuesdays (source: toho-info.com, the official tourist site of the village of Tōhō). ⚠️ The individual kiln-workshops around it each have their own hours, mostly 9:00–17:00 but with closing days that differ from kiln to kiln; these have not been checked one by one.

Sources: toho-info.com · toho-info.com

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