A short walk from the chaos of Naha’s Kokusai-dori (International Street), the asphalt turns to cobbled limestone underfoot, a visual cue that one has entered Tsuboya Yachimun Dori, the main street through Okinawa’s yachimun (pottery) district. Here, pedestrians and window shoppers leisurely mill past decorative tiled walls and along sidewalks embedded with colorful pieces of glazed wares. Along one of the district’s narrow, serpentine alleys, called “sujiguwa” in the Uchinā Yamato-guchi dialect, the climbing kiln of the iconic Arakaki Family Residence, a potter’s house active until 1974, rises like an earthen palace from its humble surroundings. Inside, the womb-like kiln has long been sealed shut, but the ceramic tradition it once sustained is very much alive today.
It was by design that the area became a hub of industry, bringing together various ceramic techniques from the region. In 1660, Shuri Castle, the center of politics, diplomacy, and culture of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, burned to the ground, and a vast quantity of roof tiles were needed for the rebuilding effort. The rulers of the kingdom decided to consolidate the island’s pottery industry in 1682, resettling all the potters in Tsuboya near the Asato River to ease the sourcing of clay and other materials and to better facilitate the shipping of finished products.
The surrounding city of Naha was devastated in World War II by heavy American bombing, but miraculously, Tsuboya was spared. Surviving artisans returned immediately to their studios and wood-fired kilns to produce the needed objects for daily life. But as the city’s population boomed, the smoke from these traditional kilns made wood-fired yachimun production untenable. By the 1970s, artisans wanting to preserve their traditional methods relocated to the Yomitan area to the north, creating Yachimun no Sato (Yachimun Village), while the remaining workshops in Tsuboya converted to the gas and electric-fired kilns still in use today.
Guide Junichi Takano of Okinawa Slow Tour says that the street and surrounding village, which was thoughtfully planned out using the principles of feng shui, began to take on its current form in 1982. A vibrant center of yachimun culture and technique, the village is now fueled by collectives of multigenerational shokunin (artisan) families committed to preserving and evolving one of Okinawa’s most revered crafts.
About halfway down the meandering mainstreet sits the flagship store of one such pottery family: Ikutoen, a renowned producer of traditional Tsuboya-yaki (Tsuboya ware) with a 300-year history and six shops in the area. The keystone of the operation is sixth-generation master potter Tadashi Takaesu, a certified traditional craftsman of Okinawa whose ornately designed creations fill the store’s shelves, their arabesque motifs and imagery of fish and sea creatures bearing his distinctive line-carving techniques. Shisa (lion) figurines, made in the unique style of previous owner and fifth-generation yachimun master Ikuo Takaesu, keep silent watch from the shelves as they, too, await purchase.
“Everyone at Ikutoen has a senmon (specialty),” says Ikutoen’s sales manager, Hikarui Takaesu. “We are divided into three categories: those who manufacture, meaning the shokunin and kiln staff themselves; those who sell; and those who think of new and innovative ways to market and promote our products to the public.”
According to Wakana Takaesu, directing manager of Ikutoen, the days of solitary craftsmanship are in the past. Today, sales and marketing are an essential part of the business. “Shokunin used to be exclusively creators—they didn’t really market themselves,” she says. “Now we know we need to have people here dedicated to communicating the difficulty and wonder of making yachimun to customers. It was a big but necessary change.”
A large part of Ikutoen’s initiative to share the art of yachimun with the public is by way of instruction at its nearby Tsuboya Pottery Yachimun Hands-on Dojo, a red-tiled wooden building nestled amid lush greenery along the yachimun pottery promenade. Inside, fans circulate the humid air as the day’s makers arrive, comprised of a mix of all experience levels, ranging from tourists seeking a do-it-yourself keepsake to aspiring shokunin looking to dedicate themselves to the craft long term. White towels yellowed by clay hang from racks above the many potter’s wheels, where students create everything from simple shisa figurines to more elaborate pieces that are kilned alongside those of the masters.
The yachimun dojo’s supervisor, Sayuri Takayasu, believes that people’s personalities reveal themselves in the things they create. “You can often see it in the face of the first shisa they make or how they carve their lines into the clay,” he says. “Everyone’s style is unique to them.”
The steps involved in creating a vessel are few, but still it’s a craft that takes a lifetime to master. The finicky elements of earth, temperature, humidity, and time make yachimun an exercise in patience and perseverance for even the most skilled practitioner.
The process begins with rokurohiki, or throwing clay on a potter’s wheel. Once the item is shaped as desired, a handmade wooden tool called a tonbō, named for its resemblance to a dragonfly, is used to ensure consistent dimensions. The kezuri shavings that pile up on the tools are collected to be formed back into workable clay. Later, members of the studio will gather around the mountain of shavings and rehydrate the ribbons of clay, mixing in water like one might fold an egg into flour to make pasta. They then stomp on the slurry, like wine makers in a vat, marching in a circle to reshape it into usable material.
Perhaps the most consequential step in the process of crafting a piece of yachimun is senbori, carving decorative patterns into the hard clay. One mistake and the piece can’t be sold, in which case it’s used for practice. It is said that these failed pieces thus give more than they take, going on to support tōgeika (ceramicists) in their journey to master the form.
Stroll along the winding paths near the Ikutoen yachimun dojo and you’ll find an artisan in every other window, hard at work in some stage of the pottery-making process. In the window of the Kobashigawa Seitojou Niougama studio sits 67-year-old Sachio Ikeno, a late-bloomer in yachimun pottery, having started training at age 47 after a career as a “salaryman.” “My brother-in-law was the master tōgeika here,” Ikeno says, recounting the sense of familial commitment that led to his mid-life reinvention as a yachimun tōgeika. “When he was diagnosed with cancer, I decided to try to carry on the practice myself. I swore to him I would try my best, and I have.” He works as he talks, harrowingly moving large trays of cups and bowls onto higher shelves and transporting the massive head of a shisa sculpture from one end of the studio to the other.
Kobashigawa Seitojou Niougama is best known for resurrecting and recreating the akae technique, a style that uses a traditional red pigment said to have been lost and rediscovered by the Kobashigawa family. This precious material knowledge is what motivates Ikeno to keep going, even on days when he would rather take a break.
“We have this wonderful culture thanks to all those generations who came before us and kept these traditions alive,” Ikeno says. “I feel only kansha (appreciation) each day for the gifts they left, and I hope to pass on what I can to the next generation, as best I can.”
