The inaugural exhibition at Kosaku Kanechika’s newly opened space in the Toda Building in Kyobashi featured new works in the “El Capitan” series by Miwa Kyusetsu XIII (b. 1951). In the early 21st century, the worlds of ceramics and contemporary art rapidly began to merge as simultaneously, in different locations around the world, artists at the leading edge of contemporary art turned their hands to “ceramics”—arguably the oldest art form in human history. This trend has also extended to Japanese modern ceramics and traditional ceramics, and one after another, ceramic artists who have until now presented their work mainly at ceramics galleries and art galleries in department stores are realizing new debuts in the contemporary art world, on the basis of completely new gazes and values. Kosaku Kanechika has already raised Kuwata Takuro to international stardom, but their choice as their next ceramic artist of not an avant-garde practitioner (Yagi Kazuo and Koie Ryoji among the deceased, and Akiyama Yo and Nakashima Harumi among those still active), but of the head of a Hagi ware goyogama, or former domain-run kiln for tea ceramics during the Edo period, someone smack in the center of tradition, is a bold and ambitious decision.
Miwa Kazuhiko (as he was known before assuming the family name of Miwa Kyusetsu) studied on the West Coast of the US in the mid 1970s, and after returning to Japan made his debut with a bold installation piece at a 1984 group exhibition at the Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum (“Contemporary Ceramic Art II—What Can Be Seen in Large Ceramic Works Now”), so he is not completely unconnected to contemporary art. However, unlike his predecessor (Miwa Ryosaku, now Ryukisho), who attracted attention with ceramic objects dealing with such subjects as women and eros, Kazuhiko appears to have pursued traditional tea ceramics, and his succession as head of the goyogama associated with the famous Mohri clan is also perhaps evidence of this.
However, something I have thought for some time now is that in contrast to Kyusetsu XII’s objects, which have been regarded as “contemporary art-like” within the Japanese ceramics world, but are in fact too simplistic both as objects and as gender expression to be considered contemporary art and should be seen instead as a variety of traditional ceramics, Kazuhiko’s works, which on the face of it seem related to traditional Hagi ware tea ceramics, are in fact connected to contemporary art while retaining the former’s essence. ¹

Come the 21st century, the results of archaeological excavations of old kiln sites amassed since the late 1980s breathed new life into a world of old ceramics hitherto supported by old documentary records and antiques connoisseurs, leading to a new understanding of old ceramics in China, Korea and Japan. With this, a new form of contemporary expression only possible in ceramics is emerging from within traditional ceramics. Let us call this ceramic “fundamentalism.” This fundamentalism involves exploring the fundamentals (raw materials and firing methods) of centuries-old ceramics and, assuming that there is no difference in soil distribution over just a few hundred years and that the physiochemical phenomena that occur inside a kiln are the same, newly creating old ceramics of centuries ago. What distinguishes this from so-called “reproduction” is that unlike reproduction, which entails reproducing the appearance of old ceramics after several centuries (as long as the outward appearance is reproduced, the raw materials or methods do not matter), or in other words giving birth to an elderly person who is 400 years old from the outset, fundamentalism entails going back 400 years and making new old ceramics (?). Fundamentalism is also different from archaeological recreation (recreations of Ru ware, for example, made in the vicinity of the original kiln sites in China). Recreation is literally creating something again, so things that have not been transmitted from generation to generation or excavated cannot be made. However, because fundamentalism is new creation in accordance with the fundamentals of old ceramics, it is not subject to such restrictions (although one could probably say that their fundamentals end up restricting expression to a considerable degree).
Miwa Kazuhiko is not, however, part of the same lineage as such fundamentalists as Ko-Bizen’s Mori Togaku (b. 1937), Kiseto’s Hara Kenji (b. 1947), Ko-Karatsu’s Kajihara Yasumoto (b. 1962) and Shoki-Imari’s Toyomasu Kazuo (b. 1963). As mentioned above, fundamentalism is new expression that overturns by means of fundamentals the superficial beauty that old documentary records and antiques connoisseurs have to date defined as “Ko-Bizen,” “Ko-Karatsu,” “Momoyama ware” and so on. In the case of Hagi ware, however, the family line of the brothers Ri Shakko and Ri Kei who were forcibly relocated to Japan upon Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of the Korean peninsula still continues today as the Saka Koraizaemon goyogama. This is also the case with the Miwa kiln, and so Hagi ware, whose original fundamentals have continued uninterrupted, has no need for “fundamentalism.” ²

Accordingly, we must detect the essence of the works of Miwa Kazuhiko/ Kyusetsu XIII somewhere other than the fundamentals of old ceramics. Let us call this “sensibility with respect not to appearance, but to apparition.” Marcel Duchamp famously declared that appearance and apparition are exact opposites. Duchamp maintained that artists should pursue not appearance, or outward beauty, but apparition, or the principle that makes beauty appear. Ceramics tend to rely on surface effects (beautiful color glazes, the texture of fired surfaces, touch, painting, decoration, etc.). However, just as Tomimoto Kenkichi stressed the phrase “a struggle of lines” with respect to the pottery wheel, the essence of ceramics lies in invisible, abstract lines (contour lines). It is because there are forms prescribed by lines that beautiful appearances emerge.

In the case of the Miwa kiln, for example, there is Kyusetsu-jiro (a milky white glaze devised by Kyusetsu X and perfected by Kyusetsu XI). An all-round glaze passed down from generation to generation it has become a signature glaze widely admired for its appearance. However, it is precisely because it is underpinned by strong forms that would be effective even without it that the white of this glaze comes alive. Strong forms make the beauty of the gleaming Kyusetsu-jiro appear from the work as a whole, the artist’s sensibility directed not at the beautiful coating but above all at making this beauty appear.

With the new “El Capitan” works, using as models Oni Hagi tea bowls with split-cross foot rings formed by hollowing out lump of clays, Miwa Kazuhiko has created forms reminiscent of steep cliffs by pushing a cuboid wood post (?) against the vessels and scraping away the resultant protruding parts. Very large works were displayed in the main gallery, while tea bowl-sized works were displayed in a side room, though I was unable to sense a difference in dynamism between the large and small pieces. Irrespective of their size, the forms of the “El Capitan” works succeed in giving a sense of the unfathomable vitality of the earth’s orogenic movements that “make” the titular mass of rock “appear” without reproducing the “appearance” of the granite monolith in the Yosemite Valley, famously depicted in the old photographs of Carleton Watkins, for example. Among the works were more abstract pieces in which instead of the Kyusetsu-jiro glaze that is suggestive of snow-covered mountains, bronze or silver glazes were used, and while all are “El Capitan,” no two are alike.
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1. If I were to cite one more leading figure from the traditional ceramics world who gives such an impression it would be Kaneshige Sozan (Kaneshige Toyo’s younger brother). I apologize for the ambiguous term, but I sense from his works a talent that can only be called a “formative sense.”

2. That said, there is a difference between old Hagi and Hagi ware today that cannot be ignored. Recently, while participating in a tea ceremony with a tea master well-known as a collector of old ceramics, a wonderful old Hagi kohiki amamori tea bowl appeared. In the same way that Asuka- or Hakuho-period Buddhist statues look foreign and exotic, despite it having been made in Hagi, the features of this tea bowl were without doubt Korean, something unlikely seen in other Japanese kilns of Korean origin.

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Shimizu Minoru
Critic. Professor, Doshisha University
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Miwa Kyusetsu XIII “El Capitan” was held at KOSAKU KANECHIKA from November 2 through December 14, 2024.