Kyoto-yaki – The Ceramics of a City, Not a Single Kiln

Anyone who tries to sort Japanese ceramics by rule gets along fine with most traditions: Bizen is fired unglazed in a wood-burning kiln, Hagi carries its fine network of crackle, Shino its thick, porous white. With Kyō-yaki, this approach fails. A brightly yellow tea bowl with painted blossoms, a reddish-brown sake cup with a golden branch, a paper-thin porcelain bowl with Chinese-inspired decoration – all three may rightly be called Kyoto ware. What connects them is neither a clay nor a glaze nor a firing method, but an address: the workshops on the eastern slope of the old capital, where for centuries the court, the great temples, and the tea masters made up Japan's most discerning clientele.

What Is Kyoto Ware?

Kyō-yaki (京焼), literally "fired in the capital," is the collective term for all ceramics and porcelain ware produced in the city of Kyoto. This makes it the only one of the major Japanese ceramic categories that is defined not by a process, but solely by its place of production. Historically, several independent kiln districts were grouped under this term: Awata-yaki in Awataguchi, Omuro-yaki near the temple Ninna-ji, as well as Yasaka-yaki, Mizoro-yaki, and finally Kiyomizu-yaki on the slopes below Kiyomizu-dera. There are no binding specifications regarding clay, glaze, or firing temperature – work is done with whatever the design requires. Since 1977, the craft has been recognized by the Japanese state as a traditional craft, under a dual name: Kyō-yaki · Kiyomizu-yaki.

A City That Has to Import Its Clay

A sober detail explains a surprising amount about this ceramics: Kyoto has no notable clay deposits of its own. Usable potter's clay has long been sourced from other regions of Japan and processed in the workshop into proprietary blends, often made from kaolin, kibushi clay, quartz, and feldspar. Where Bizen or Shigaraki owe their character to the material found right on their doorstep, Kyoto had to establish its standing by other means – through form, glaze chemistry, and decoration. That is precisely where the focus remains to this day: in the evenly thrown wall, in the cleanly cut kōdai (foot ring), in color that does not arise by chance from the fire but is applied with the brush. Anyone who wants to buy Kyoto ware therefore rarely acquires the work of chance, and almost always the work of a practiced hand.

The Kiln Districts on the City's Eastern Slope

Pottery had been made in the Kyoto basin since very early times, yet the districts that would give rise to the name Kyō-yaki did not emerge until around 1600. One of the earliest written mentions is considered to be an entry by the merchant and tea connoisseur Kamiya Sōtan from the year 1605, which speaks of tea utensils from the capital. In 1624, according to tradition, a potter who had migrated from Seto built a kiln in Awataguchi – this date is traditionally regarded as the beginning of Awata-yaki. Decisive was the spread of the noborigama (a chambered kiln built into a slope), which allowed for higher and more even temperatures. Awataguchi in the northeast, Otowa, and the quarter later called Gojōzaka on the ascent to Kiyomizu-dera thus became the city's three great kiln sites, complemented by smaller kilns at temples and villas.

Nonomura Ninsei and Color Over the Glaze

The turning point has a name: Nonomura Ninsei, active in the first half of the 17th century. In 1647 he built his kiln in Omuro, right outside the gates of Ninna-ji temple; his artist name combines the syllable "nin" from the temple's name with "sei" from his own. Ninsei was regarded as an exceptionally skilled thrower, but he became famous for something else: he transferred the colorful overglaze painting previously known mainly from porcelain onto thrown stoneware tea ceramics. On his cha-tsubo (tea leaf jars) and chaire (tea caddies) appear blossoms, landscapes, and gold accents in a density that no Japanese tea utensil had shown before. He found support from the influential tea master Kanamori Sōwa (1584–1658), who opened for him access to the courtly tea world of the capital.

Ogata Kenzan and the Vessel as Picture Surface

Ninsei's best-known student was Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743), the son of a wealthy Kyoto textile merchant family. In 1699 he set up his own kiln in the Narutaki area northwest of the city, and in 1712 he moved his workshop to the Nijō district. Kenzan was less interested in perfect form than in surface: he treated bowls, plates, and lidded boxes like paper, coating them with slip and painting grasses, plum branches, or verses in calligraphic script on top. Numerous pieces were created in collaboration with his older brother, the painter Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716), a leading figure of the Rinpa school – the brother painted, Kenzan fired and signed. This connection of painting, literature, and vessel remained formative for Kyoto ceramics. The Japanese register of traditional crafts names Ninsei and Kenzan together as the outstanding potters that Kyoto produced in the 17th century.

Okuda Eisen and the Path to Porcelain

Until the 18th century, the kilns of Kyoto worked almost exclusively in stoneware. This changed with Okuda Eisen (1753–1811), who in the second half of the century was the first in Kyoto to succeed in producing porcelain; in doing so, he took his inspiration from Chinese models of the Ming period. From his circle emerged a generation that secured the city's reputation far beyond Japan: Aoki Mokubei (1767–1833), Nin'ami Dōhachi (1783–1855), and Kinkōdō Kamesuke, along with Kiyomizu Rokubei I (1738–1799), who ran his workshop at Gojōzaka, and Eiraku Hozen (1795–1854), famous for Kinrande (porcelain with gold decoration on a colored ground). They did not merely copy Chinese and Korean models but reinterpreted them – and later carried their knowledge to other regions of Japan as well. The Japanese register of traditional crafts lists the same sequence: Eisen is said to have succeeded in firing porcelain in the 19th century, after which masters such as Mokubei, Hozen, and Ninnami dominated the field.

Kiyomizu ware – the name that remained

Why is it that today one usually speaks of Kyō ware and Kiyomizu ware in the same breath? Kiyomizu ware originally designated only the ware from the area around Gojōzaka, the steep lane leading up to Kiyomizu-dera temple. During the Meiji period, the kilns there grew together with those of the neighboring district, while the other Kyoto kiln sites gradually declined. Awata ware, for instance, turned entirely to export after 1868, selling richly gilded ware to Europe and America, but lost its market in the 20th century. What remained was the name Kiyomizu ware, which thereby became almost synonymous with Kyoto ceramics as a whole. Strictly speaking, Kiyomizu ware is thus a subset of Kyō ware – in today's usage, however, the two terms are mostly used interchangeably.

Why Proximity to the Court Was Decisive

For over a thousand years, Kyoto was the residence of the Tennō, seat of the great temples, and center of tea culture. For the potters, this meant a clientele accustomed to making comparisons: anyone who wanted to sell here stood alongside lacquerware, brocades, paintings, and imported Chinese porcelain. What was ordered were not mass quantities but individual pieces for a specific occasion, a specific tea gathering, a specific season. This pattern of commissions explains the peculiarities of the genre better than any technique: small production numbers, a high degree of effort per object, a pronounced awareness of seasonal motifs – and the custom of marking practically every piece with a potter's mark or seal and delivering it in an inscribed wooden box. In Kyoto, ceramics were never anonymous.

Diversity as the True Hallmark

Trying to recognize Kyō-yaki by its surface alone leads nowhere. In the workshops of the city one finds rich yellow and deep blue overglaze colors just as often as plain ash glazes, fine crackle, white slip, gold painting, or unglazed areas at the foot. Experts therefore like to describe Kyō-yaki as a fusion of all techniques: Chinese, Korean, and Japanese influences were absorbed, tested, and carried forward with a distinctive hand. The true hallmark lies one level deeper – in the care taken. A thinly drawn, perfectly round rim, a glaze that ends exactly on the intended line, a decoration that takes the curvature of the vessel into account. Anyone who wants to buy a Japanese tea bowl and comes across a piece of Kyoto workmanship usually notices this first in the rim, not in the color.

From the Smoke of the Climbing Kilns to Yamashina

The kilns at Gojōzaka stood in the middle of a densely built residential district, and the smoke from the Noborigama became a problem in the 20th century. Starting in the 1960s, many workshops relocated their production to a purpose-built workshop district in the Yamashina neighborhood, beyond Mount Otowa, which is still called Kiyomizu-yaki-Danchi today; further workshops settled in the Sumiyama area in Uji. With the enactment of the Kyoto Prefecture environmental protection ordinance in 1971, operation of the last climbing kilns came to a halt. Today, firing is mostly done with gas and electricity – but the process has remained a craft one: small batches, often in nine stages, from clay preparation through the initial firing, underglaze painting, and glaze firing to the final overglaze firing. The path from Gojōzaka to Yamashina relocated Kyoto ceramics; it did not industrialize them.

A Piece of the Capital in Your Hand

Pick up a Kyoto tea bowl, and you feel the weight first: lighter than it looks, because the wall has been cleanly trimmed. Then the rim, which sits smoothly against the lip. And only after that does the eye fall on the decoration – the blossom placed exactly where the bowl tapers toward the foot, or the character that picks up a keyword from a poem. At densho.de you will find handcrafted Chawan (tea bowls), Guinomi (sake cups) and Tokkuri (sake bottles) from Japanese workshops, each piece individually sourced from Japan and delivered in its signed wooden box. Anyone wishing to buy Kyoto ware should look less for a style than for the piece that convinces their own hand – just as buyers in the old capital have done for four hundred years.

Sources and Literature

Traditional Crafts Aoyama Square (Japanese register of traditional crafts): KYO-KIYOMIZU Yaki (Ceramics), kougeihin.jp.

Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere: Vessels of Influence. China and the Birth of Porcelain in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Bristol Classical Press, London 2012.

Richard L. Wilson: Inside Japanese Ceramics. A Primer of Materials, Techniques, and Traditions. Weatherhill, New York 1995.