Tamba-yaki – Eight Hundred Years of Fire, Ash, and Everyday Vessels

There is Japanese ceramics invented for the tea room, and there is ceramics that comes from the kitchen. Tamba ware belongs to the second kind. Over centuries, a narrow valley in Hyōgo Prefecture produced above all things that no one would have put on display: storage jars for grain, pots for pickled vegetables, grinding bowls, sake bottles. And precisely because these vessels were never meant to represent anything, they developed a surface that still attracts collectors today – applied not by human hand, but by the ash that drifts through the kiln for days on end.

What Is Tamba Ware?

Tamba ware (丹波焼), also written Tanba ware and officially designated Tamba-Tachikui ware (丹波立杭焼), is a Japanese stoneware made in the village of Tachikui in what is now Tamba-Sasayama, Hyōgo Prefecture. Its origins are dated to the end of the Heian period and the beginning of the Kamakura period, that is, to the late 12th century; the pottery village thus looks back on more than eight hundred years of nearly uninterrupted production. Characteristic is the yakishime, the unglazed high-fired stoneware: the iron-rich clay sinters densely at temperatures of around 1,250 to 1,300 degrees Celsius, without any glaze being applied. What nevertheless looks like a glaze on early pieces is shizen-yū – natural ash glaze, that is, melted wood ash that fuses with the body during firing. In 1978, Tamba ware was recognized by the Japanese state as a traditional craft.

One of the Six Ancient Kilns of Japan

Tamba ware is one of the Rokkoyō, the Six Ancient Kilns of Japan – those six ceramic centers that have produced continuously since the medieval period: Seto, Tokoname, Shigaraki, Bizen, Echizen, and Tamba itself. The term itself is younger than one might assume. It was coined only around 1948 by the ceramics historian Koyama Fujio, who wanted to highlight the native line of Japanese ceramics not derived from Chinese models. All six kilns share the fact that they initially fired coarse, unglazed stoneware for everyday use and only much later came to be regarded as craft art. Technically, Tamba ware is close to Shigaraki ware and Bizen ware, but differs clearly from both in color and formal vocabulary. In 2017, the Six Ancient Kilns were jointly designated as Japan Heritage (Nihon Isan).

The Beginnings in Tachikui

The early Tamba kilns were anagama (cave kilns): tunnels dug into the hillside with a roof of clay, in which wood was fired for days on end. What emerged there was what the surrounding villages needed – kame (large storage jars), tsubo (pots), and suribachi (grinding bowls). Tradition traces the kiln technology back to influences from the Tōkai region; what is documented is that excavations at the Sanbontōge-Kita kiln in 1977 brought to light pieces from the early Kamakura period. For roughly four hundred years, until the end of the Momoyama period, the anagama remained the only firing method used at the site. Older sources also call the ware of this early period Onohara-yaki, after one of the production sites of that time.

Ash Glaze – The Glaze No One Applies

The early Tamba vessels went into the kiln without any glaze at all. What shapes their surface is created only in the fire: the ash of the burned pinewood is carried by the airflow through the kiln chamber, settles on the shoulders and rims of the vessels, and there fuses with the iron in the clay into a glassy layer. In Japan, this natural ash deposit is called Shizen-yū; especially clear, greenish shimmering areas are called Bidoro – a word that traces back to the Portuguese vidro, "glass."

Because every piece stands differently in the kiln, the ash deposit never turns out the same way twice. The side facing the flame is usually darker and more densely covered than the side facing away, where the bare, reddish-brown clay body remains visible. This very contrast is, to this day, the feature that many people pay attention to who want to buy a Japanese vase whose surface was created in the fire rather than in a glaze bath.

From Anagama to Noborigama

The most decisive technical change came at the transition to the Edo period. Around 1611 – dating in the sources varies between the end of the Keichō era and the early 17th century – the semi-subterranean multi-chamber kiln of Korean design, the Noborigama, was introduced in Tachikui. Instead of a single long tube, it consists of several chambers arranged one behind the other, climbing up the hillside; the waste heat of each chamber preheats the next. This considerably shortened the firing time and made it possible to fire significantly larger quantities at once. Along with the new kiln, new glazes also came to the village: artificially prepared ash glazes made from wood ash, straw ash, and rice husk ash, later iron-bearing glazes and a red clay slip, to which the ware owes its warm red and purplish-brown tones. The Japanese register of traditional crafts describes the same transition: until the Momoyama period, Anagama were used in Tachikui, and afterward the chamber kilns still in use today.

The Potter's Wheel That Turns to the Left

Together with the Noborigama, a second innovation reached Tachikui that is still regarded as a hallmark of the region today: the Keri-rokuro, a foot-kicked potter's wheel that turns counterclockwise. In almost all of Japan the wheel turns clockwise – Tachikui is one of the few exceptions. For the potter this means a different hand position and a different point of pressure, and therefore also a different course of the fine throwing lines on the vessel wall. Anyone who knows what to look for can read this peculiarity on many Tamba pieces. The workshops of the village have passed down the leftward rotation over generations, even though modern wheels have long since been able to run in both directions. Japan's register of traditional crafts lists this "Kerokuro" specifically as a left-turning potter's wheel unique to this region of origin.

Kobori Enshū and the Tea Utensils from Tamba

With the chamber kiln and the new glazes, Tamba came into the focus of tea culture for the first time. It has been passed down that the tea master and daimyō Kobori Enshū (1579–1647) influenced production in Tachikui during the early Edo period; under his guidance, Chaire (tea powder containers), Mizusashi (fresh water containers), and Chawan (tea bowls) were created that became known as Enshū-Tamba and were held in high regard by the tea practitioners of the time. How close this contact actually was can no longer be verified in detail today – the attribution belongs to the established tradition of the place. What is certain is that from then on Tachikui maintained a second, distinctly finer product line alongside the coarse everyday tableware. The Japanese register of traditional crafts records it the same way: at first mainly jugs and pots were produced, then in the Edo period, under the guidance of Kobori Enshū, numerous masterpieces of tea utensils.

Sake Bottles by the Thousands

In the 18th century, Tachikui became a village of sake bottles. Tokkuri – the bulging bottles from which sake is poured – reached their greatest diversity here; more than fifty different types have been documented, from the small tabletop vessel to the large transport bottle. A special form were the Kayoi-Tokkuri, loan bottles with the sake merchant's name burned in, which the customer would bring back for refilling; they remained in use from the late Edo period into the 1930s. Toward the end of the Edo period, the Shiro-Tamba also emerged as a white-glazed variant, which stands out strikingly against the dark, ash-covered stoneware of the early period. Anyone wishing to buy Japanese sake cups today thus encounters, within this tradition, vessels that accompanied sake not as a luxury, but as part of everyday life.

Clay from the Area Around the Village

The material for Tamba-yaki still comes today from an area of about fifteen kilometers around Tachikui. What is used above all is Yotsuji clay, obtained in the mountains, and Benten black clay, a material dug from rice fields. Both are iron-rich, coarse, and not very pliable – a clay that cannot be coaxed into thin-walled elegance but demands strong, sturdy forms. Firing is traditionally done in a Noborigama or Anagama at 1,250 to 1,300 degrees Celsius over several days. The Haikaburi that results, literally the "ash covering," is the reason why two pieces from the same firing can look completely different: position in the kiln, flame path, and amount of ash determine the color and texture of each individual vessel.

The Mingei Movement Discovers the Ordinary

In the early 20th century, Tamba ware came into the view of a movement that sought beauty in the unpretentious of all things: Mingei, the Japanese folk craft movement. Its founder, the philosopher Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961), valued in the Tamba vessels exactly what they had never intended to be – art. Their beauty, he was convinced, arose unintentionally, out of use and the thousandfold repeated hand movements of nameless craftsmen. The potters Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966) and Hamada Shōji (1894–1978), as well as the Englishman Bernard Leach (1887–1979), were likewise inspired by Tamba's forms and decorative techniques. Over the course of the 20th century, this new appreciation shifted the village's focus: from a producer of storage vessels, it gradually became a place for tableware, flower vases, and tea utensils.

Tachikui Today: About Sixty Workshops on a Hillside

Anyone traveling to Tachikui today will find a village with around sixty active workshops, many of them in family hands for generations, but increasingly also run by young ceramicists who have moved there from elsewhere. On the hillside stands the noborigama of Kami-Tachikui, built in 1895: 47 meters long, nine chambers, the oldest surviving chambered kiln in the region and protected as a tangible folk cultural property of Hyōgo Prefecture. After an extensive restoration in 2014 and 2015, it is fired again – about once a year, with wood, over several days.

Perhaps this is precisely the essence of this tradition: a kiln site that in eight hundred years has never clung to a style, but rather to a clay, a fire, and a landscape. A guinomi from Tamba feels rougher than it looks; the ash crust on the wall feels almost like stone, while the rim at the mouth rests surprisingly soft against the lips. At densho.de you will find handcrafted one-of-a-kind pieces from Japan that bear this signature. Anyone who wants to buy Japanese ceramics whose surface was formed in the fire rather than in the mold will find pieces here on which the path of the ash can still be traced.

Sources and Literature

Traditional Crafts Aoyama Square (Japanese register of traditional crafts): TAMBA TACHIKUI Yaki (Pottery), kougeihin.jp.

Japan Heritage consortium of the six pottery towns: The Six Ancient Kilns – About us, en.sixancientkilns.jp.

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