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Japanese Ceramics and the Discourse of 'Tradition'

Article in Journal of Design History · January 1990

DOI: 10.1093/jdh/3.4.213

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Design History Society

Japanese Ceramics and the Discourse of 'Tradition'

Author(s): Brian Moeran
Source: Journal of Design History, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1990), pp. 213-225
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society
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 Brian Moeran

Japanese Ceramics and the Discourse

of 'Tradition'

Introduction kinds of myth-making practised by other modern

states in the West between 1870 and the outbreak of
It is often claimed that the Japanese indulge in the
the First World War. Thus, although it may not have
'worship of tradition' (dento suhai). Certainly, they
indulged in quite the same passion for public monu-
are extremely adept at manipulating the record of
ments as the Third Republic of France, it has, like the
their past and at consciously creating ideologies-
Second German Republic, made the most of reinter-
whether of imperial loyalty and filial piety, on the
preting its history and brought the Imperial family
one hand, or of traditional aesthetics, on the other.'
into the forefront of national consciousness. As in
However, the Japanese should not be seen as being
both Europe and the United States, it has developed
particularly unique in the practice of 'inventing'
in education the secular equivalent of the Church,
traditions. The British did a splendid job on their
and in its gakubatsu, or 'old boy networks', created a
monarchy between 1877 and the First World War,
new elite. By introducing such apparently 'tradi-
while the Scottish kilt, far from being a traditional
tional' martial arts as jtdo (invented by Kano Jigoro
Highland dress, was invented by an Englishman
in 1882), it has also provided a medium for national
after the Union of 1707!2
identification and factitious community.
As Hobsbawm points out,3 there is a curious
Art-in particular, ceramic art-has not escaped
paradox about modern nations like Britain and
this Japanese predilection for inventing traditions.
Japan: 'Modern nations and all their impedimenta
Mino, Karatsu and Bizen pottery styles were dis-
generally claim to be the opposite of novel, namely
covered by the potters Arakawa Toyozo, Nakazato
rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the opposite of
Muan and Kaneshige Toyo, respectively, in the
constructed, namely human communities so
1930s.6 Hamada Shoji, too, more or less invented
"natural" as to require no definition other than self-
Mashiko 'folk pottery' at the same time. These
assertion.' No wonder they became interested in the
idea of 'tradition' in the latter half of the nineteenth examples of ceramic art are picked out here for a
reason. Just as there are more or less traditionally
century. Precisely because of the rapid social
oriented societies, more or less traditionally oriented
changes under which their formation take place-
historical and stylistic periods in art, so are the
changes which undermine the social patterns for
different genres and forms of art distinguishable
which the 'old' traditions had been designed-
according to their inclination or disinclination to
modern nations have found themselves actively
stick to a traditional mode of expression.7 In the
participating in the 'invention' of traditions.
history of modern Japanese art, ceramics seems to
Such invented traditions may be formal or in-
me to be one such art form that has, for the most
formal, official or unofficial, political or social.4 They
are defined as: part, been bound by a concept of 'tradition'. I suspect
that the Japanese have made much of their ceramic
a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly 'art' precisely because pottery (and note the dif-
accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which ference in terminology) has not until very recently
seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by been seen as an art form in the West.8 They have
repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the
thus attributed to it a number of qualities that have
past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to served to make it different from Western arts and
establish continuity with a suitable historic past.
hence distinctly 'Japanese'. Just what these qualities
In many respects, although in some a 'late mean, however, and why they should be produced
developer', modern Japan has indulged in the same by the particular historical and social circumstances
Journal of Design History Vol. 3 No. 4 ? 199o The Design History Society 0952-4649/90 $3.00 213
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 i Japanese ceramics techniques.
_ Throwing: coil and throw
of modern stage
(kindai) and7.
contemporary (g
IShaping the upper half offorma thelarge jarof this paper.
subject matter

s .:..'??-;.?:
:,, :.:
.::::::: : : ~ The Einin Jar Affair

Let me start my discussion of art w

ceramic folklore.

Sometime soon after (or possibly du

before) the Pacific War, a Kamakura
1392) type of natural ash-glazed jar was
then buried somewhat conveniently rig
of a road that was built a few years late
even though bulldozer drivers are no
renowned for their alertness or interes
the gentleman digging this particular st
managed to 'discover' the jar and remov
earth, without damaging it in any way.
Some say that the jar was then passed
pottery dealer who just happened to
214 admiring
Brianthe view in a nearby field; o
It is at this point that the story gets really took a few years for the jar to come into
interesting. Koyama Fujio, renowned critic and at a collector. At any rate, the pot comm
that time the expert in traditional Japanese ceramics, tion because, to judge from two Chine
somehow got wind of the 'Einin jar's' existence. At scratched on its base, it had been made
the time, he was working for the Agency for Cultural period (1293-1298). And that, in the 195
Affairs and, once he had seen the pot, he said that it very rare object-so much so that the
should be designated an 'important cultural potter, Kato Tokuro, used it as the fron
property' (juyo bunkazai). It was also rumoured that ceramics dictionary, Toki Daijiten, publi
the jar was one of a pair, the other one of which had in which he wrote about the pot at som
been sold abroad, so that this was seen as an
extremely valuable example of Kamakura Period
pottery. Thus, in 1959, at Koyama's instigation, the
Einin jar was made into an important cultural
property.
Then the fireworks began. People in the Seto area,
where the pot had been discovered, were already
suggesting that the jar was a fake. But once it was
officially designated as an important cultural
property, Kato Tokuro, who was at the time on a
visit to Paris, called together one or two members of
the Japanese press and made a public announcement
that the Einin jar had been made by no other than
himself.
Imagine the chaos! The media then found that
they were onto even better a story than they had
anticipated because Tokuro's son, Okabe Mineo,
proceeded to contradict his father by claiming that it
was he, not Tokuro, who had made the pot in
question. Indeed, Mineo even went so far as to give
214 Brian Moeran

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demonstrations in a Tokyo department store, throw-
ing jars identical in shape to that which was causing
so much embarrassment and glee. A panel of
'experts' quickly decided that the pot was a fake and
Koyama was obliged to resign from his position in
the Agency for Cultural Affairs.
There is a double irony that turns this piece of
folklore into comic tragedy. Koyama Fujio had until
then been Kato Tokuro's closest friend. The Einin jar
affair put an end to that friendship. At the same
time, Mineo became so angry with his father that he
took his wife's name (Okabe) and, it is said, never
spoke to Tokuro again.
I have related this piece of folklore because it
seems to me to epitomize certain aspects of art which
the anthropologist should not ignore. In the first
place, we are presented with an 'art world'9 in which
artist, critic and merchant combine to establish a
'standard' of taste-based on concepts and conven-
tions of 'style', 'connoisseurship', 'authenticity', and
so on. This point is important in that, as I will later
show, different people in an art world have different
interpretations about how such a standard is created.
In other words, I shall argue that not only is there
unlikely to be agreement on what constitutes 'tradi-
tion', but different people will talk about 'tradition'
in different ways.
Secondly, the Einin jar affair reveals that the
creation of a standard does not depend on 'formal'
aesthetic properties alone. Clearly, whatever might
have been said in public, the designation of the Einin
jar as an 'important cultural property' had nothing to
do with form, line, body, texture or any other of
those aesthetic properties usually espoused by
aestheticians. After all, the jar still had the same
shape and decorative pattern before and after it was
officially seen either as a 'cultural property' or as a
'fake'. In this particular instance, the Einin jar affair
would seem to support the idea that in Japan objects
are mostly designated as important 'art' because
they just happen to be old-an aspect of tradition
warned against by Hauser.'0 More importantly, the
folklore related here reveals that 'art' is an amalgam
of at least three different kinds of value: 'aesthetic'
(biteki kachikan), 'commodity', (sholhin kachikanl), and
'social' (shakai kachlikan ).1
Thirdly, the Einin jar affair illustrates the way in
which, to be categorized as 'art', a material object
must be fitted into the known history of art in a
Japanese Ceramics and the Discourse of 'Tradition' 215
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particular culture. This history will in all likelihood
be called an 'artistic tradition', but the sociologist of
art would be better advised to see it as a particular
'way of seeing' that amounts to a 'visual ideology'.2
In this case, the visual ideology is one of 'Japanese-
ness', in which the notion of 'tradition' was inspired
by Japan's initial contact with the West from the
mid-nineteenth century and given further impetus
by its rapid 'Americanization' in the post-war
decades.
Fourthly, the argument about who made the jar,
Tokuro or Mineo, is in many respects paradoxical,
since a 'traditional' art object like the Einin jar gains
much of its aura from the fact that it was made by an
'unknown' potter (a point developed at some length
by Yanagi Muneyoshi in his concept of mingei). The
striving for individual recognition by each of the
potters concerned underlines Hauser's point that
'the proper idea of the work of art as a cultural
structure rests fundamentally on the comprehension
that it is partly a living, partly a coagulated form,
that it is thus only partially the creation and property
of the individual who created it.'13 At the same time,
it points to a problem in Japanese society that the
notion of tradition is designed to mask: to what
extent should the individual submerge his interests
in those of the group to which he belongs?14
Tradition in a Japanese Pottery Village
As I said earlier, tradition can mean different things
to different people. For some, its use is imbued with
a sense of history (actual or invented); for others, it
has a certain nostalgia; for yet others, it is a measure-
ment of progress. Almost invariably it is a concept
that gains currency in the wake of change. I will now
examine the concept of tradition in a small Japanese
pottery community against the background of the
features outlined above: a pottery 'art world'; the
intermingling of 'aesthetic', 'commodity' and 'social'
values; a 'visual ideology' inherent in the concept of
folk craft (ningei); and social ideals of group and
individual in Japanese society.
Sarayama (Onta) is a small hamlet of fourteen
households situated in Oita Prefecture, Kyushu. My
argument will be that people living outside the
community have used the word 'tradition' to refer to
the pottery made there, while potters living in
Sarayama itself use it of the social organization of
their community. As I will discuss in greater detail at
the end of this paper, outsiders living in urban
complexes of the Kant6 and Kansai areas look to the
country for 'tradition' in an attempt to define their
'Japaneseness' vis-a-vis the western world. Potters
in Sarayama use the concept of 'tradition' to protect
their community from changes stemming from
contact with urban Japanese life. Thus both the
content and the purpose of the use of 'tradition' have
differed within each group. In neither case, however,
is the content of what is seen as 'traditional' actually
'traditional' at all.
The earliest mention of 'tradition' with reference
to Sarayama was made when Yanagi Muneyoshi
(1889-1961) 'discovered' the community and its
pottery in 1931. Yanagi-scholar, philosopher and
critic-was the first person in Japan to develop an
aesthetic ideal for what came to be known as mingei,
'folk crafts'.'5 From the mid-192os, he published a
number of essays in which he argued that beauty
was to be found not only in the 'higher' forms of art,
but also in ordinary, hand-made objects in everyday
use. He spent some time travelling round the
countryside in search of such objects, and of the
'unknown craftsmen' who made them, and it was on
one of these trips that he heard about and eventually
visited Sarayama (Onta).
Yanagi was even more vividly impressed with the
pottery and the people of the community than he
had been with other potteries (like Tamba, Koishi-
[. ??? .. . ... .. If:
..... .....
~' ''.~.Ei,.~..............
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.;. ~-:~,,~,
~
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?~4 4#:
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4r4t ~'
?-
..;? ,., ,1*.?,? .' . , ~ . L '-i~~~~ ~~::~?..
.....C :::- i~,~, :-~...~._..~..:..~.....~.,_~.
216 Brian
This content downloaded from 147.8.204.164 on Wed, 27 Apr 2016 06:50:40 UTC
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wara, or Fujina) that he had 'discovered'. As he
reported a couple of months later, Onta perfectly
fitted his folk craft ideal in that its pottery was
functional, made by ordinary unknown craftsmen
who worked in a centuries-old traditional manner.
Types of pottery, their shapes and glazes, had hardly
altered since the founding of the community in 1705.
Potters used methods of production that were 'close
to nature': clay was prepared with crushers (karausu)
powered by river water; glazes (uwagusuri) were
made with natural materials only; pots were fired co-
operatively in a wood-fire climbing kiln
(noborigama). Modern technology was entirely
ignored.'6
At the time Yanagi first used the word 'tradition'
of Onta, it is likely that many aspects of the hamlet's
pottery and social organization were in fact 'tradi-
tional'-in the sense that they had been handed
down from one generation to the next over a long
period of time. During the next fifty years, however,
things were to change considerably.
In the 1930s-and, indeed, until the mid-1960s-
all potter households in Sarayama were also engaged
in wet-rice agriculture; many of them worked at
carpentering, stone masonry or forestry as well.
Pottery was only made by older men in their spare
time, or when the weather was too bad for them to
go out and work in the fields or mountains. While
market demand was not sufficient to make full time
pottery financially worthwhile, production was also
2 View of wood drying and co-
operative kiln
.?
f r
':r'-, //~....
, . , ~ ,-~I . T.' i :~ :
;?4
Moeran

3 Unpacking kiln chamber after firing
limited by technical aspects of clay, glaze and wood
acquisition and preparation.
As in most rural communities at that time, all
households were linked in various kinds of labour
co-operation (temnagaeshli). On the agricultural side,
households pooled their labour for such activities as
transplanting and harvesting rice, for growing crops
on mountain land that had been cleared of timber
and for cutting grass for and thatching the hamlet's
house roofs. Potters also co-operated with one
another in the acquisition and preparation of ball and
slip clays (nendo and shirotsuchii), feldspar (choseki
[akadani]) and iron oxide (tetsu [sabi]) for glazes,
and, occasionally, wood for firing their co-operative
kiln (kyodogana).
In the 195os, however, co-operation amongst
potter households began to break down as a result of
Japanese Ceramics and the Discourse of 'Tradition' 217
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improved communications, on the one hand, and an
increase in market demand, on the other. New roads
to the hamlet made it possible for potters to order
their wood from local lumber yards in the neigh-
bouring town of Hita. They could now drive across
country to get their supplies of slip clay or feldspar
and iron oxide for glazes. Eventually they were able
to hire a bulldozer to dig their rough stoneware clay.
Tasks that had needed some 150 man-days per
household in the 1950s were, by 1972, being com-
pleted in less than fifty days a years. Labour co-
operation among households in the hamlet had
almost entirely ceased.
Moreover, demand for folk craft pottery from the
mid-195os meant that potters were having to devote
more and more time to wheel-work in order to fill
orders. As a result, agricultural tasks came to be
carried out by women of the household, while the
men-father and son-worked full time at the wheel,
except during the really busy farming seasons. By
the mid-196os, potters were able to give up agricul-
ture entirely, encouraged to do so by the increasing
demand for their work and by the government's rice
curtailment policy (gentan seisaku). With the potters'
decision to specialize, labour co-operation continued
only among the remaining four non-potting house-
holds.
Such changes in social organization undoubtedly
affected community solidarity, which was further
weakened by the break-up of the co-operative kiln.
Until after the end of the Pacific War, the kiln had
worked according to a system of chamber (fukuro)
rotation and kiln space was equally distributed
among all those participating in a firing. As a result,
potter households not only used the same amount of
materials, but made and marketed more or less the
same number of pots. The co-operative kiln, there-
fore, gave rise both to mutual co-operation and to
financial equality within the hamlet. With the
increase in market demand, however, several potters
found it more profitable to build and fire their own
kilns (kojingamna). Freedom from the constraints of
the co-operative kiln has led to considerable
economic individuation among potter households,
which are themselves for the most part very much
better off than the remaining non-potting house-
holds in the community. There is thus no longer
financial equality among households in Sarayama.
The community as a social group has also been
threatened by certain marketing practices. One of they have received considerable attention from the
these is retail pricing. Wholesale buyers set their media and at one stage ended up acting as spokes-
retail prices according to current market conditions men for the whole community. However, as the
and the quality of the pots that they are trying to sell. hamlet has 'traditionally' been run according to an
Although all potters sell at a standard wholesale age-grade seniority system, elder potters resent the
price, shop owners charge varying retail prices. But way in which their authority has been encroached
when a buyer differentiates the quality of one pot upon in this way by outside forces.
from another by pricing it higher or lower, he is in The community has also been divided along a
fact distinguishing between the quality of the potters different axis, between households which make
who made those pots. That the buyer is aware of this pottery and those which do not. While some of the
may be seen in the fact that he often tries to promote resentment between these two groups derives from
an individual potter's name, rather than sell his work unequal income differentials, much of it has been
under the label of 'Onta pottery' (ontayaki). What he exacerbated by the public appreciation of pottery.
does not realize, however, is that, according to prin- Both the media and folk craft organizations pay
ciples of social organization within the hamlet of particular attention to the potters as a group (and
Sarayama, all individuals should be treated as equal ignore non-potting households), unaware that such
if the hamlet is to function effectively. Individual attention may upset the principles on which the
talent, therefore, is only acceptable in so far as it hamlet as a whole is organized.
reflects upon, and does not, upset, the community as Because community solidarity has been threat-
a whole. Thus, by promoting the names of certain ened by the division between potting and non-
individual potters and by pricing their works higher, potting households, on the one hand, and between
buyers have in fact been upsetting the traditional elder and younger potters, on the other, two
solidarity of the potters' community. concepts have frequently been referred to by
The same problem occurred when some of the residents of Sarayama. One of these is mukashi, 'the
younger potters decided to participate in pottery past', and concerns the community as a whole. The
exhibitions. Encouraged by the folk craft organiza- other is dento, 'tradition', and affects potters in
tions (Nihon mingei ky6kai, Nihon mingei ky6dan) to particular. By calling on the past, people living in
contribute as individuals to annual exhibitions in Onta have tried to unite all households in the com-
Tokyo and Osaka, one or two potters have in the munity and stem resentment between potting and
past been awarded major national prizes. As a result, non-potting households. Potters, for their part, have

... 4 Potter household packing pots in straw

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?c . .. ,.... -: ~..~.~,,~..: .. .......:, ,..........,.::::;:.
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218 Brian Moeran

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referred to tradition in an attempt to standardize
their work and market a readily recognizable product
known as Onta pottery, thereby counteracting the
promotion of individual talent by outsiders. Both
concepts-of the past and of tradition-have
involved a direct or indirect assumption that the way
in which things used to be done was best.
The time span of 'the past' differs to some extent
from one individual to another,17 but for the most
part it is applied to the period preceding the social
come to be decorative rather than purely functional,
changes outlined here. When talking to outsiders, all
4"i
villagers tend to hark back to the way in which they J'

used to lead their lives, to the hard times they had

when there was not enough money with which to
of s .. .mall Still the fa....ct
buy food or clothes, to the exhaustion they felt after traditional. Tradition' in this sense therefore, may
working long hours from dawn to dusk in the fields

. . . . . . 1. -
or mountains.1 The old way of life has been viewed
with a certain nostalgia, for villagers know now that
the 'good old days' of 'community life' have gone
forever. Mukashi is thus called upon, firstly to
remind fellow residents not only of how things used
to be in Sarayama, but of how they should still be,
and secondly to present a united front by the hamlet
against the outside world.
The concept of 'tradition' has been used both by
those living in Sarayama and by those living outside 5 Large lidded jar. Brown translucent glaze over slip with green
it. The potters' adoption of the term is comparatively overglaze
recent, and has served two main functions. First, it
has been used as a means of countering problems of cup tea bowl or flower vase in their lives does not
talent and individualism that have resulted from the
marketing of Onta pottery. Because individual stylis-
tic talent is a permanent threat to the working of the
community as a whole,19 potters actively discourage craft movement
movement.Potters
Pottershave
havebeen
beenpraised
praisedbecause
because
one another from experimenting too much with clay they continue to make 'traditional' old-style pots for
textures, glazes and designs. There is thus a remark- rural farmhouses-large water container (mizugamne),
able uniformity about Onta pottery that is not to be lidded jars for miso bean-paste and pickled
found in other folk potteries such as Tamba, vegetables (rakkyo tsubo), and pouring vessels for soy
Mashiko or Koishiwara. Secondly, 'tradition' has sauce and home brewed wines (unsuke). In fact,
been called upon precisely because the community is however, such pots no longer serve the functions for
in many ways no longer traditional. Now that the which they
which they were
wereoriginally
originallymade.
madeBecause
Becausethey
they have
have
social organization of the hamlet has fallen into dis- come to be decorative rather than purely functional,
array, it has become vital for potters to maintain a traditional' Onta pots have changed in shape. They
'traditional'
'tradition' in pottery, since this serves to reinforce a also constitute a very small percentage of a potter's
rapidly fading community consciousness. The con- total production, which now consists almost entirely
cept of a 'tradition' in pottery has helped provide the of small pots for urban domestic use. Still, the fact
whole community with an identity distinct from the that forty years ago potters had never made a coffee
outside world. cup, tea bowl or flower vase in their lives, does not
The idea of Onta pottery's 'tradition' has also been seem to deter outsiders' views of Onta pottery as
used by the media and those connected with the folk 'traditional'. 'Tradition' in this sense, therefore, may
Japanese Ceramics and the Discourse of 'Tradition' 219

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 6 Rice bowls slipped with trans-

. . . . . . .... ? .... ........

m ? i

'"--. .
':.i~ '

be thought to refer not to the actual pottery itself so

much as to techniques of pottery making-in parti-
..... ...
cular to those that do not rely on modern technology
and remain 'close to nature'.
So far as the potters are concerned, being 'close to
nature' has meant continued usage of the karausu
-zi clay crushers. As I have pointed out in my mono-
*
graph on Sarayama, the fact that Onta potters use a
local clay, which is rock hard and hence must be
powdered before use at the wheel, has given rise to a
household system which allows only one son to
remain at home to work with his father. Moreover,
the method of preparing clay has limited the number
A AW-1
of households in Sarayama that have been able to
take up pottery production. In other words, a 'tradi-
tional' technique of preparing clay is transferred in
potters' minds to a 'traditional' kind of social
la
organization.
At the same time, pottery is frequently the idiom
in which social change is expressed. For example,
when a potter is accused of not making a tradition-
ally shaped teacup, he is really being accused of
stepping out of line from the rest of the pottery
7 Large soy sauce container
households and attempting to go things alone.
Again, a potter will explain that the potter's 'charac-
ter' will remain in a pot if he uses a kick-wheel (kero-
kuro), but that it will be lost should he decide to
throw on an electric wheel. What is actually meant is
that, by continuing to use a kick-wheel, a potter is
7 Large soy sauce container affirming the existence of his community, which
220 Brian Moeran

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 would fall into total disarray should machinery be
imported and each household start competitive pro-
duction (as in the neighbouring pottery village of
Koishiwara). Another potter says that if you start
studying really hard, you end up changing the
shapes of pottery entirely. He was referring to a par-
ticular problem of coffee cup handles that were
either too small or made the cup warp at the lip, and
the potters concerned said that in the end one would
have to buy a new mould (kata) from Arita. But once
you bought one mould, you would buy others for
other pots-pitcher handles, teapot spouts, or flower
vase grips, and so on-and in this way ontayaki

" a ', " ;:.:. . , . : : .<

:_ .........
would 'disintegrate'.
Thus changes in methods of production almost
invariably-in the eyes of the potters-lead to social
changes that affect the organization of their com-
munity. The adoption of moulds would lead to the
purchase of machinery for clay preparation, to the

- ----"' -
building of new types of kilns, and to the employ-
ment of apprentices or professional workmen. Ulti-
Crri . .. c.ly o ta mately, not only the community but the household
system itself would be threatened. If a glut of Onta
pots were brought about by overproduction, potters

*--. ' : .. - , i. .B H4 would have to sell their individual names or under-

cut one another in as many ways as possible in order
to make a living. Sarayama as a community would
no longer exist-at least, not in the sense in which
8 Carrying clay from the drying yard to karausu clay pounders 'community' has hitherto been used. Potters thus

.......... 9 Set of clay pounders

i~~~---~-
. ;,l- .........

... ,' .. ..I

J .... ...... .. .

*-.....~:..

Japanese Ceramics and the Discourse of 'Tradition' 221

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make use of 'tradition', not because they are particu-
larly attached to the pottery they make so much as
because they greatly value the community of Saray-
ama as a whole.
Traditional Arts and Crafts and Japanese Society
I have tried to show how, in the context of a par-
ticular art world, the concept of tradition is subject to
a number of different interpretations depending on
who is talking about what. Outsiders talk about Onta
pottery and its techniques when they refer to 'tradi-
tion'; the potters themselves use the concept of
'tradition' to uphold their social structure. In this
respect, we should realize that 'tradition' can never
be singular. We are talking about plural traditions.
Further to this point, we should also note that we
gain little understanding of matters if we isolate
either 'tradition' or 'traditions' from other aesthetic
concepts used to describe 'traditional' arts and crafts.
I have already shown how 'the past' (nmukashi) is
very much a part of the concept of tradition in the
context of the community of Sarayama. I would now
like to examine other concepts (such as mingei, slhizeni
[nature] and tezukuri [hand-madel) frequently used
by critics, the media and general public to describe
what they see as 'traditional' Japanese crafts. The
question I ask is not that of the art critic: 'what is
good traditional craft?' Rather, it is that of the
anthropologist, who asks: 'what is traditional art or
craft that is good for whom, accepted by what sort of
people, and on the basis of what criteria?'
First, let us turn to folk craft, or mingei. It has been
argued that folk arts and crafts tend to emphasize
their community, which distinguishes them from the
arts of other local or national communities.20 Earlier,
I pointed out how pottery for the potters of Saray-
ama could be an idiom in which community social
relations were discussed, and how the concept of
tradition served to give both Onta pottery and the
community of Sarayama their special distinctive-
ness. This situation is by no means unique to this
particular Japanese pottery community, but is found
in a number of other societies facing the same sort of
pressures that have affected Sarayama's social
organization.2'
At the same time, Graburn has noted that what he
calls 'tourist' or 'airport' arts also externally define
an ethnic boundary with the outside world.22
222 Brian
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Clearly, the example of Onta's potters is not con-
cerned with ethnic, but with local group, identity.
But I would argue that mningei does serve an 'ethnic'
function at the national level. Yanagi often empha-
sized that his concept of mingei was uniquely
Japanese,23 and he was concerned that local tradi-
tional crafts were dying out because of the Japanese
people's demand for western products. At the same
time, we should realize that his concept of minlgei
reflects a number of Confucian principles which
were expounded, in a different context, by Japan's
nationalist leaders during the 1920s and 1930s.24 In
other words, Yanagi's idea of minlgei was very much
a product of history. It is perhaps not surprising to
find, therefore, that minigei first became popular in
the 1950s, when Japan was going through one of its
more fervent periods of Americanization.
All of this suggests that, just as Onta potters have
made use of the idea of tradition to protect their com-
munity from many of the outside influences up-
setting their social organization, so the Japanese as a
whole have gone back to their traditional arts in
order to preserve a national identity in the face of
cultural innovations from the West. The fact that the
Japanese government now bestows such titles as
Important Intangible Cultural Property (juiyo nukei
bunkazai), Traditional Craftwork (dent6 k6gei), or
Award of Cultural Merit (bunka kuinsh6) on indi-
vidual craftsmen or craft communities is an indica-
tion of the importance attached by the authorities to
the creation and maintenance of a specifically
Japanese image, which sets Japan apart from other
highly industrialized Western nations.
The next thing to note is that the concept of a
traditional 'folk' art or craft that emerged in Europe
in the nineteenth century was a means of identifying
the arts and crafts of a lower class, which was gener-
ally rural and non-literate and followed local tradi-
tions. These folk arts were seen to be communal by
nature and in direct contrast to the urban, literate,
upper class, fine arts, an attitude typified in Japan by
Yanagi Muneyoshi.25 We should recognize, then,
that traditional arts and crafts are at first generally
appreciated as such by people living in the 'outside'
world, and not by their producers. Moreover, there
appear to be certain dichotomies in the life styles of
those who make and those who appreciate this kind
of art-dichotomies like natural/industralized, rural/
urban, handmade/machine-made, and individual/
Moeran
anonymous that are an inseparable part of the
aesthetic vocabulary of 'tradition'.
There is a tendency in Japanese aesthetics for
people to regard an object as an 'art' rather than
'craft' form, if its producer remains 'close to nature'
and does not use modern machinery. Such people
have an image of traditional craftsmen working
alone in undisturbed peace, at one with their natural
surroundings. As a result, they are totally unaware
of the fact that, to the rural craftsmen, nature is not
something to be contemplated aesthetically in a
detached manner. Rather, it is the environment in
which he has to survive; it provides the materials
with which he works; it is 'the source of his success
and of his fears'.26
Clearly, people idealize nature only when they are
not directly involved with it in a struggle for
survival. In other words, it would seem that the
aesthetic ideal which associates the quality of tradi-
tional arts and crafts with closeness to nature derives
primarily from urbanization,27 which itself usually-
though not necessarily-depends on industrializa-
tion. In Japan, however, the nostalgia for a return to
nature arising from urbanism may be seen not only
in modern (i.e. 'traditional') folk crafts, but in the
painting and poetry practised by an urbanized
aristocracy during the Nara (645-794) and Heian
(794-1185) periods. It may also be found in the
aesthetic philosophy of Zen Buddhism, which came
into its own with the construction of the castle towns
in the sixteenth century, emphasizing simplicity and
quietism during one of the most lavish and turbulent
periods of Japanese history. Given the way in which
English landscape painting reached its peak with
Turner and Constable just at the time the country-
side was being polluted with the smoke and dirt of
the first industrial towns,28 it might be fair to suggest
that the destruction of nature, which has hitherto
accompanied urbanization and-since the eigh-
teenth century-industrialization, has given rise to
an aesthetic theory which focuses on nature and the
countryside as the epitome of 'beauty'.
In many respects, Japanese who buy traditional
folk arts and crafts use the concept of 'nature'-
perhaps unconsciously-as a means of measuring
just how far their (predominantly urban) culture has
progressed.29 A large majority of visitors to
Sarayama, for example, believed not only that the
potters there made good pots because they used
Japanese Ceramics and the Discourse of 'Tradition' 223
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natural materials and means of production, but that
potters ought to continue to rely on nature and not
yield to economic considerations. The moral tone
found in Yanagi's concept of nature, and adopted by
present folk craft leaders, therefore, would appear to
extend to a large section of the Japanese public. Not
only potters in Sarayama, but traditional craftsmen
elsewhere, work in a way in which almost the whole
of Japanese society once worked. Now that Japanese
industry has made such advances, people like to look
back and see how far they have progressed. They
want traditional craftsmen to stay as they are, so that
they can measure their own and the nation's
prosperity. In exchange, they are prepared to accord
them the honour of acclaiming their work as 'art'.
'Tradition' is here made the equivalent of 'purity'.
Another point related to the concept of 'tradition'
concerns the way in which handmade goods are
usually extolled by those living in highly industrial-
ized societies. Machine-made goods generally serve
their purpose extremely well; they are functional,
efficient and cheap. But their low price makes them
available to everyone in society. Hence, their con-
sumption is not-to use Veblen's terms-'honorific'
so much as 'common'. Handmade goods, on the
other hand, are not produced with such efficiency;
they cannot compete in either quality or quantity
with machine-made goods. Yet, precisely because of
this, they are seen by some to be 'more serviceable
for the purpose of pecuniary respectability; hence
the marks of hand labour come to be honorific, and
the goods which exhibit these marks take rank as of a
higher grade than the corresponding machine
product'.30
The notion of 'honorific consumption' affects
aesthetic taste in two ways. On the one hand, people
place value on the quantitative aspects of handwork.
Because handmade things are not generally pro-
duced in large numbers, they are comparatively
expensive. In this respect, Veblen argued that people
tended to judge a thing's beauty by the amount of
money they had to spend on its acquisition.
Certainly, the data that I have collected on ceramic
art in Japan reinforce the suggestion that people
sometimes regard traditional arts and crafts as
beautiful because they are expensive, while at other
times they do not think them beautiful unless they
are expensive. On the other hand, people are
attracted by what they see as the qualitative aspect of
handwork. They decry as 'unaesthetic' any form of
mechanization, any new technological device that
might interfere with the 'beauty' of hand labour31
and so detract from 'tradition'. Moreover, precisely
because most forms of art are in fact handmade,
anything that is handmade-or made by some other
form of obsolete technology32-may well be seen as
'art'.
My final point concerns the relation between
individual and-what I shall call, for want of a better
word-'community' in contemporary industrialized
societies. Purists like Yanagi have been at pains to
stress that individuality is irrelevant to the apprecia-
tion of traditional crafts which should be made by
and for ordinary people.33 Paradoxically, nowadays
many people see an expression of the craftsman's
individuality in the imperfection of his work, thereby
upholding Veblen's argument, and my informants
were all agreed that handmade, but not machine-
made, objects expressed their maker's character.
There is thus a strong association in most Japanese
people's minds between handicrafts, imperfection,
and individuality, on the one hand, and mechaniza-
tion, perfection, and impersonality, on the other.
But the idea of individuality once again connotes
the concept of 'art'. It would seem that the individual
craftsman is praised in contemporary 'first world'
cultures because industrialization has given rise to
what the majority see as an impersonal and anony-
mous social environment. When people are obliged
to live in large-scale urbanized societies, they begin
to realize, perhaps for the first time, the meaning of
anonymity. It is then that there is a tendency for the
individual craftsman to be publicly proclaimed as
'artist'. Given the apparent nature of 'tradition' as
something 'handed down' from one generation to
the next and hence 'non individualistic', the irony of
this tendency will be appreciated. Tradition, which
starts out by defining a set of practices closely con-
nected with craft, ends up being used in praise of art.
This, perhaps, is the 'tragedy' of contemporary
Japanese ceramics.
BRIAN MOERAN
University of London
Notes
1 See, for example, C. Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths,
Princeton University Press, 1985; and Y. Ozaki,
224 Brian
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'Obeimanyuki' (1888-90), Ozaki Yukio Zenslhu, vol. 3,
Heibonsha, 1926.
2 See papers by Cannadine and Trevor-Roper in
E. Hobsbawm, and T. Ranger, (eds.), The Invention of
Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
3 'Introduction: inventing traditions', in Hobsbawm and
Ranger, op. cit., 1983, p. 14.
4 Hobsbawm, E. 'Mass producing traditions: Europe
1870-1914', in Hobsbawm and Ranger, op. cit.,
pp. 263-4.
5 Hobsbawm, op. cit., 1983, p. 1.
6 See B. Moeran, 'The art world of contemporary
Japanese ceramics', Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 13,
no. 1, pp. 27-50.
7 A. Hauser, The Sociology of Art, Routledge and Kegan
Paul 1982, p. 150.
8 It was the development of the ritual of the tea
ceremony (clhanoyu) in the late sixteenth century which
can be said to be primarily responsible for pottery
coming to be seen as 'ceramic art' in Japan.
9 H. Becker, Art Worlds, University of California Press,
1982.
10 Hauser, op. cit., p. 148.
I Moeran, op. cit.
12 J. Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin/BBC, 1972;
N. Hadjinicolaou, Art History and the Class Struggle,
Pluto Press, 1978, pp. 95-102.
13 Hauser, op. cit., p. 136.
14 Informed opinion suggests that it was Mineo who
made the Einin jar, since he was probably making all
pots that came out of his father's kiln from soon after
the war. But Mineo was instructed by his father, of
course, and it was Tokuro who usually signed all
pots-a common practice in many Japanese potteries.
This was common practice in Renaissance Europe as
well, of course, but it is a contradiction so far as our
modern western views of 'art' are concerned.
15 A more detailed discussion of the historical background
and ideals of the Japanese folk craft movement can be
found in I. Kumakura, 'A tocsin for our times: the
minigei undo', Japan Interpretation, vol. 12, 1979, pp.
445-8, and B. Moeran, Lost Innocence: folk craft potters of
Onta, Japan, University of California Press, 1984, pp.
9-27. The data on which this section of the paper is
based come from the latter monograph on Onta
potters.
16 M. Yanagi, 'Hita no Sarayama', Kogei, vol. 9, 1931,
pp. 1-11.
17 See Moeran, Lost Innocence, pp. 232-3.
18 See R. Dore, Shinohata, Allen Lane, 1978, p. 65;
B. Moeran, Okubo Diary: portrait of a Japanese valley,
Stanford University Press, 1985, pp. 39-42.
19 Onta potters-and only potters-can all recognize one
Moeran
 another's work and tell fairly easily who has made 26 Tomars, op. cit., p. 390.
what pot. 27 Ibid., p. 391.
20 See N. Graburn, 'Introduction: fourth world arts', in 28 R. Mukerjee, The Social Function of Art, Hind Kitabs,
his edited Ethnic and Tourist Arts, California University 1948, pp. 210-11.
Press, 1976, p. 4; A. Tomars, Introduction to the Sociology 29 See Graburn, op. cit., pp. 13-14.
of Art, Mexico City, 1940, p. 55. 30 T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Allen and
21 See papers by J. Brody, (p. 76) and R. Gill, (p. 113) in Unwin, 1925, p. 159.
Graburn, op. cit. 31 Tomars, op. cit., pp. 200-1.
22 Graburn op. cit., p. 5. 32 M. McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of
23 I myself have been at pains to show (in Lost Innocence Man, McGraw Hill, 1964, p. ix.
and elsewhere) that Yanagi's minigei aesthetics owe 33 This ideal has in many respects helped support the dual
much more than is generally admitted to the influence myth that the Japanese people are group-oriented and
of William Morris. almost entirely middle class.
24 See Moeran, Lost Innocence, pp. 24-5.
25 See Tomars 1940, p. 46; M. Yanagi, Kogei 11o michi,
Selected Works, vol. 1, Nihon Mingeikan, 1955.

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