Let me start by quoting Kawamoto Goro himself. “If ceramicists are artists, then it is their duty to discover and create new beauty that has never been seen before. This is something that cannot be done lightly, but I want to call people who harbor such illusions ceramicists.”¹ I always look forward to the retrospectives focusing on middle-ranking to masterful ceramic artists that are held regularly at Musée Tomo. This is because if the ceramicist concerned has the essential qualities required in order to be called an artist, then these essential qualities will inevitably be expressed in their entire oeuvre, from their formative period to their final (or recent) years. This was the case with both Kakurezaki Ryuichi and Akiyama Yo. Here, I am talking not about a distinctive style (there are any number of distinctive ceramic artists who do things differently from other people), but about a level beyond the subjective choices of the artists. The essential qualities of a ceramic artist materialize as the intrinsic inevitability of their work, meaning it can only turn out the way it is. When one can read from a work its inevitability, then its maker can be called an artist.

Outside the Tokai region, the name Kawamoto Goro (1919–1986) will probably only ring a bell to those who are quite well acquainted with ceramics. Among recent endeavors, perhaps the exhibition “Passionate Beauty in Painted Ceramics” (2017) held at the Paramita Museum (Mie Prefecture) to mark the 30th anniversary of Kawamoto’s death was one of the motivations behind this show at Musée Tomo. The fact that 30 years after his death sufficient works by Kawamoto could be gathered together to realize a retrospective confirmed that he had not yet been forgotten. Devotees all around the country who had been supporting Kawamoto by buying his works were no doubt delighted that light was being shone on an artist who had long been consigned to oblivion.
Today, Kawamoto’s signature style is distorted, boxy forms made of white porcelain with a rough, matt finish and covered with extravagant sometsuke (underglaze blue) decorations. The reason this style is somewhat incomprehensible and does not translate into popularity is because, while the surface textures are distinctive and the craftsmanship of the vessels’ irregular, slab-built forms stands out, these alone are not exceptional enough to be able to typify Kawamoto’s ceramics (like, for example, the Miwa clan’s Oni-Hagi work or Ikeda Shogo’s painting), and also because the utagaki design that Kawamoto likes to use, while certainly distinctive, calls to mind the kappa character (designed by Shimizu Kon) used by the Japanese sake brewer Kizakura. To put it another way, Kawamoto’s ceramics consist of a combination of three elements: a matt texture, shaping without using a wheel and decorations oriented towards popular taste.
From looking through this exhibition, it is clear that Kawamoto arrived at this style after much meandering, including the abandonment of the style he had previously established. “I must set my sights on my own art that is neither earthenware nor porcelain.” However, this was not the path of ceramic sculptures in the manner of Joan Miro or Isamu Noguchi, for example. At the same time, Kawamoto was critical of Momoyama ceramics, and probably had in mind the likes of Kato Tokuro when he wrote, “Tradition is like a genetic element that all ceramics must carry, and is not solely the possession of traditionalists. Moreover, in this world, there are few attempts to develop or advance the genetic element of tradition, and in most cases the word ‘tradition’ is applied to traces of the form or appearance of tradition.”² According to these statements, Kawamoto’s ceramics are neither earthenware nor porcelain as typified by Jingdezhen, but rather “attempts to develop or advance the genetic element of tradition” of Seto/Mino (Ko-Seto, Momoyama ceramics). But what exactly does this mean?

Here, assuming that the lineage Kawamoto Goro-Koie Ryoji-Kato Tsubusa—a lineage of distorted forms—exists in the Chubu/Tokai region, let us summon Kato Tsubusa as an additional line. Kato’s ceramics represent Momoyama ceramics introduced into the world of porcelain, and also encourage us to reconsider the essence of Momoyama ceramics themselves. Kato produced the “Nii yon pa” series. “Nii yon pa,” or National Route 248, extends from Mino to Sanage via Seto, or in terms of old kilns from the Motoyashiki kiln site to the old Kurozasa kilns via the old Seto kilns. Here, Momoyama ceramics are viewed in terms of their continuity from Sanage Shirashi ware. This “continuity” is their shared origins in the Korean Peninsula.

　
As is commonly known, the Sanage kiln’s roots lie in Sue ware—which is to say in the Korean Peninsula—and while it later sought to produce something similar to Chinese celadon ware it fell just short of achieving this. The Motoyashiki climbing kilns also came from the Korean Peninsula via Karatsu, but the vector was the reverse in that Shino and Oribe ware were produced with the aim of differentiating them from karamono (lit. “Chinese things”). In the 1930s, when it became known that the superbly crafted Meiji ceramics that had once been sold to various powerful countries as ”Japanese” were in fact nothing but ceramics that were more Chinese-like than Chinese ceramics themselves, and the identity of Japanese ceramics as something different from China was once again called into question, people who went back to Momoyama ceramics to “discover” this identity did not bother to try to see that the distortion and beauty of imperfection they admired in those works were already present in Goryeo tea bowls. The “Nii yon pa” series suggests that at the core of the identity of Japanese ceramics formed in response to modernism existed the Korean Peninsula. In the Momoyama period, there was a shift with respect to tea bowls from karamono-centered aesthetics to the counter-aesthetics of wabi-sabi. However, the suggestion is that this was achieved by “grafting” Korean ceramics.
Ceramics that are neither earthenware nor Jingdezhen, the texture of porcelain, distorted forms and underglaze blue decorations—in short, this is the world of Joseon white porcelain. Kawamoto returned to the point of the above-mentioned grafting, or in other words to the core of the “identity” of Japanese ceramics, and on the basis of the complex “genetics” of history—including the history of modern ceramics since the Meiji period and Korea under Japanese rule, Ko-Karatsu and Ko-Seto and the apportionment of China and the Korean Peninsula within them—arrived at these three elements. Something that is purely neither Japan nor the Korean Peninsula nor China, but partly any of the three. The identity of ceramics is continually in a chimeric state. If one were to search for a precedent in the history of Eastern ceramics for Kawamoto’s work, it would probably be E-Karatsu or Tianqi porcelain. In the first example, Korean craftsmen produced Joseon blue-and-white porcelain using materials found in Japan, while in the second, Chinese craftsmen intentionally produced distorted forms and simple but well-turned decorations (like Gyeryongsan ware) for the Japanese market. Both show hints of a wabi-cha tea ceremony aesthetic, but this is because wabi-cha is also chimeric. Blowing away this wabi-cha aesthetic are Kawamoto’s orientation towards popular taste, his orgiastic decorations, and his cardboard box-like and corned beef can-like forms. His rebellious ceramics are none other than orgiastic ceramics, or in other words fusion ceramics.
　
——————————–

1. Kawamoto Goro, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Musée Tomo, 2003), 97.
2. Kawamoto Goro, “Gendai Nihon no tōgei: dai 8-kai Chūnichi kokusai tōgeiten ni yosete” [Contemporary Japanese ceramics: On the 8th Chunichi International Ceramics Exhibition], Chūnichi Shimbun evening edition, June 6, 1980.

—————————————————————-
Shimizu Minoru
Critic. Professor, Doshisha University.

“Kawamoto Goro” was held at Musée Tomo from April 22 to August 20, 2023.