Nakamura Takuo is a contemporary potter who has reinterpreted the Kutaniyaki style of his native Kanazawa, by expanding its traditional 5-color Kutani color palette. He has done this through the application of traditional low-fire, over-glaze enamels to reddish, rough-hewn, unglazed surfaces. In addition, Nakamura-san’s functional pieces give us exciting new ways in which to experience common utensils. For example, Nakamura-san’s multi-piece vases do not only provide places in which to put flowers, they also allow us to define the spaces they occupy by the way we arrange their various parts. As for his tea bowls and tea cups, because they fuse color with a wabi-sabi sensibility, they feel as at home in contemporary settings as they do in mud-walled tearooms.

On a recent stay at James Turrel’s House of Light in the northern city of Tokamachi, during a conversation with a Canadian artist about the viewing of art, Nakamura-san said, “Westerners look at objects from a single, direct perspective. Traditionally, Japanese look at objects from two perspectives: one direct and the other from a more neutral place, from another angle, as if viewing from outside the body. As a person who crafts objects, I look at them from still another perspective, asking myself how other people will see them.”

Nakamura-san is a 3rd generation potter, as are his older and younger brothers. His work is collected world-wide and is in the permanent collection of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is represented in the U.S., in Manhattan, by Joan B. Mirviss, Ltd. In addition to his work in ceramics, with architect Naito Hiroshi, he collaborated in the design of his three-story house located in an older neighborhood of Kanazawa, as well as River Retreat Garaku, a contemporary Japanese hot spring ryokan, near Toyama.

In Collaboration with Photographer, Helen Hasenfeld

© Photos by Helen Hasenfeld

Akiyama, located in a quiet, residential neighborhood in northern Kyoto, is a contemporary itamae restaurant that serves innovative Kyoto cuisine, prepared at a counter, in front of guests. A few years ago, Ibata Shotei-sensei introduced me to the just-opened restaurant and its chef, Akiyama, his calligraphy student. Chef Akiyama had come from the legendary Kitcho restaurant, probably the most famous kaiseki restaurant in Japan.

Everyday, for lunch and dinner seatings, Akiyama and his two assistants, in white chef pants, jackets, shirts and hats, and black neckties, stand behind the thick, gleaming, reddish-brown wooden counter.

SB: You opened a few years ago, and there is now quite a waiting list to get a reservation. You have been featured in magazines around Japan. Things are looking very promising for Akiyama!

AK: Although I am really relieved and happy, because I must continue to maintain this level of creativity and quality, I worry a lot. (laughing)

SB: Japanese food looks deceivingly simple to prepare.

AK: As a boy, I always liked making things, including preparing food. I went to culinary school after high school and then went to work at Kitcho. Some people think that we simply slice fish, and it’s ready. In a sense that may be true, but to make it all taste and look really good takes a lot of very detailed work.

SB: I’ve become spoiled eating here. It is like eating art.

AK: Like most people who apprentice at famous restaurants, I had a dream of some day having my own place. When I turned 30, after about 10 years at Kitcho, I began to think that I was ready. My wife and I were told that this house was going to be available. We all pitched in—painting, covering the walls with washi paper, creating the dining bar, building the garden.

SB: The place is really stunning–simple, natural materials, very little ornamentation and no clutter.

AK: Maybe, we err on the side of being too simple, too minimal. I think that a restaurant is like an ikebana arrangement. The food is the “flowers.” The room is the “container.”

Japanlivingarts.com: In Kaiseki, the presentation is as important as the food being served. First, to showcase each seasonally-changing creation, the right dish must be chosen for shape, color, texture and size, as well as how it balances with each of the other dishes used. Though it is ok to mix stoneware and porcelain, pieces must be sufficiently different from one another to provide contrast, while staying within the overall flow of the meal. Utensils made from wood, bamboo, lacquer, iron and glass may also be included. Next, the way the food is placed on/in each dish is an art, in itself. Finally, since all food preparation is done in front of the customers, the efficient, graceful, finely honed movements of the experienced “artist/ chef” are an important part of the dining experience. Unlike the entertainer chefs of Japanese teppan steak houses in the U.S., the itamae chef is a master of efficient, beautiful, yet minimal movements.

AK: A typical meal contains many courses. We change our lunch menu about once a month. Sometimes we change the dinner menu from one day to the next, but at other times we don’t change for a week. It really depends on what is available and delicious that day. The vegetables are very good in this area of Northern Kyoto, so I often buy directly from the farmers.
Because Kyo-cuisine is based on so many different ingredients, and those ingredients change with the seasons, creating different menus that appeal to both the eye and the palette is always interesting—but I’m a worrier.

Although a frequently changing menu affords opportunities for experimentation and creativity, it is very hard work. I begin at 7 or 8 in the morning and finish at about 10 or 11 at night. I do have a little bit of time off between lunch and dinner, but I’m usually so concerned about getting things ready for dinner that I don’t rest very much.

My training with the second generation proprietor of Kitcho was very valuable. I’m really indebted to him for his guidance. He didn’t always tell me that everything I made was delicious. I can remember each of the times he gave me a good course correction.

Of course, even though I want to present my own distinctive flavor, since I did train at Kitcho for many years, I have brought the Kitcho sensibility with me to a certain extent. My food might be known as having a Kitcho influence. This makes me very happy and flattered to have people recognize me in that way. It is also a tribute to Kitcho.

Some people may think they, themselves, can do anything they want in life, but after working to put this business together, it became very clear to me that I couldn’t have done anything without the work and support of my staff and my family. All together, we make this possible.

Since this interview, Akiyama has been awarded one star by Michelin.

The sukiya aesthetic that we admire in restaurants and ryokan and much of Japanese residential architecture, is most easily found in mud walls and bamboo fences. It was the great tea masters of the Momoyama period in the late 16th century, most notably Sen no Rikyu, who were so taken by the natural warmth and subtle beauty of humble farmhouses, that they elevated those textures and colors to one of the highest levels of Japanese society – the tearoom.

One never tires of sukiya colors. Best seen when the sky is overcast, or by the moonlight or candlelight, they nourish us quietly and deeply.

On Awaji Island, just south of the city of Kobe, can be found a round Shingon Buddhist Temple constructed beneath a lotus pond. Ando reinterprets age-old Chinese influenced Buddhist architecture by dividing the site into the asymmetrical, above ground entry and below ground sanctuary. The extensive entry area, composed of obliquely positioned, poured-in-place concrete walls, ends at the entrance staircase. The effect is a dramatic transition from the outside mundane world to the solemn, inner one, below the ground. This dimly lit, vermillion-colored underground sanctuary seats very few people, allowing for intimacy.

Says Gunter Nitschke in his book, From Shinto to Ando, Studies in Architectural Anthropology in Japan, “In contrast to the vastness of the open sky reflected in the pond, the interior of the hall under the convex ceiling (the bottom of the pond) is kept enclosed and dim. Natural light comes through a light room from due west.

At sunset, the reddish décor of the sanctuary is brilliantly deepened, heightening the suggestions that one is in the womb.

January, 2010, began with a whirlwind of activities. A few days after joining tens of thousands of people celebrating New Years Day at various Buddhist temples and Shinto Shrines, I began touring with a group of architects and artists. We visited all three Imperial villas in town: Katsura, Shugaku-in and Sento Gosho. We interviewed several Buddhist priests and drove out to see both I,M.Pei’s Miho Museum and the stunning Sagawa Museum of Art in neighboring Shiga Prefecture, with a gallery built under the large pond with dark, roughhewn, wooden walls and floors, and minimal lighting focused on raku teaware by master potter, Raku Kichizaemon IV. Yesterday, we spend the day in Osaka and Hyogo, seeing masterpiece architectural sites designed by world-renowned Ando Tadao, including the mystical Temple of Water–an esoteric Buddhist Temple built under the ground beneath a lotus pond. Today, we spent the morning at Daitokuji Monastery and the afternoon at the solo show of ceramic Artist, Takemoto Ikuo (http://www.japanlivingarts.com/?p=476). Photos will follow soon.

The work of a potter has traditionally been considered to be better suited for strong bodied men. Recently, however, the number of Japanese female ceramic artists has been steadily growing, with more entering the field by way of art universities than through apprenticeships. Sakurai Yasuko is one of the new wave of highly innovative female artists now grabbing a well deserved spotlight, both nationally and internationally. She was recently featured in the highly acclaimed exhibition Soaring Voices, currently touring the U.S., that surveys the work of 25 of Japan’s top female ceramic artists.

Born and raised in Kyoto, the 40 year-old artist worked at L’ENAD de Limogesa as an Artist in Residence supported by scholarship of the French Government in the late 1990’s. Her work is shown at the Joan B. Mirviss Ltd. gallery in New York. Sakurai-san focuses on white porcelain, creating both functional and non-functional pieces. Writes Mirviss of Sakurai-san’s work: “These dramatic objects engage the viewer by juxtaposing light and shadow, and challenging the perception of interior and exterior spaces. Sakurai’s stark white porcelain forms capture the simple beauty of light and shadow.”

Whereas I closely follow the work of established ceramics artists here in Japan, it is especially exciting to meet a young, talented person who is in the process of becoming recognized.  I met highly talented ceramic artist, Ogawa Nobuyuki, a few years ago, at the art gallery at Takashimaya in Kyoto.  Japanese department store art galleries are prestigious venues for artist solo shows.  While the inside gallery is used for named artists, Ogawa-san’s stunning work was displayed in the outer gallery that is set aside for solo shows of young, up-and-coming artists.  During that visit, my friends bought several pieces and we asked him if we could visit his studio.

On a visit later that year to Ogawa-san’s studio, I got to see the amazing breadth of his work.  Though he comes from a multi-generational family of potters working in traditional Kyoto-style porcelain, Ogawa-san’s work is both delicate and bold and very original.  His bowls sit on tiny bases and seem to float above the table.  His meticulous, repeated firings produce multi-surfaced pieces such as rich celadon with a black, rough-textured underside, or eggshell white porcelain striped with highly innovative bands of beaded, silver or gold contrasting with a rough textured underside with a raised, geometric pattern of bumps.

His cutting edge, paper thin, asymmetrical tea bowls and sake flasks are particularly exciting.  It is amazing how well his highly refined works blend so beautifully when placed together with rough-hewn stoneware on our dinner table.

Tucked away on a narrow street in one of Tokyo’s oldest and most interesting neighborhoods is the studio of Nihonga artist, Allan West. Allan and I met a few years ago, when we were fellow lecturers for an international conference in Kyoto.

Nihonga is a fascinating medium with strong roots in traditional Japanese painting and some western influence. Its development into a modern Japanese art form came about shortly after Japan opened up to the world following nearly 250 years of self-imposed isolation, in the 1800s, through the influence of art critics, such as Okakura Tenshin and Ernest Fenollosa. At a time of extraordinary fascination with western art by the Japanese, the concept of Nihonga was brought forward as a way of focusing attention on overshadowed traditional Japanese art. However, Nihonga was different from pre-modern Japanese painting in the breadth of the subjects portrayed. It also combined previously separate styles of Japanese painting, such as Kano and Rimpa, and incorporated western perspective, among other techniques.

Allan West discovered Nihonga during graduate school at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts, located just around the corner from what is now his studio. After receiving an MFA in Japanese painting, he set up his studio in Japan, and has worked here, ever since. Allan’s innovative Nihonga is shown and collected throughout the world.

In Collaboration with Photographer, Helen Hasenfeld

© Photos by Helen Hasenfeld

Hase Hoju is thought by many Buddhist leaders in Japan to be one of the great statue carvers of our time, both restoring existing statues as well as creating new ones. He was born and raised near Nagoya, in Toyota City, famous for auto manufacturing. “There were almost no Buddhist Temples and almost no statues,” Hase-san recalls. “When I was in the sixth grade at the age of 12, I visited Kyoto’s Sanjusangendo repository of 12th and 13th century Buddhist statuary on a school excursion, and was touched and moved by the beauty and intensity of what I saw there. Especially when I saw the life-sized statues of the 28 attendant deities of the Kannon Boddhisatva, I felt a deep and extraordinary connection. It was because of that visit that I soon after decided to become a Buddhist statue carver. Even at the age of 12, I knew that I would not be a carver without also being a priest who was educated in Buddhism. So, rather than following the path of the lay craftsman, I chose the path of the priest.”

On his own at age 12, Hase-san began to carve statues. Then, at 15, he decided to go to high school far from home in the ancient Shingon Buddhist town of Koya-san, in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture. Though there are many scores of temples and statue treasures in the town as well as hundreds of priests, there were actually no Buddhist carvers working there from whom he could learn.

“Later, I went to a Shingon Buddhist seminary college in Kyoto before beginning my apprenticeship with a master Buddhist carver. I stayed with him for three years. It was much shorter than the usual apprenticeship time, but I already had received a commission to carve a statue and could not proceed with it while apprenticed to someone else. So I quit my apprenticeship and have been independent ever since.

“For me, the process of creating a statue begins when an image first comes slowly together in my mind. After making a sketch, I carve a wooden scale model. By using an engineering protractor, I am able to transfer the correct proportions of up to five times the size of the model, to the actual full sized statue. If, however, I use the protractor to make a statue that is more than 5 times the size of the model, the size of the head inevitably looks too large for the body.”

Most statues are made from hinoki cypress. The body of the statue is actually composed of a number of pieces of wood that have been bonded together, then, hollowed out. This technique dates back almost 1000 years and not only makes statues lighter and easier to handle, but prevents them from splitting, as do those carved from solid pieces of wood. After carving is complete the statue can be covered with a gauze-like cloth, lacquered and finally covered in gold leaf. Other statues are left in their natural color whereas still others are painted in a wide range of colors.

“You didn’t ask why I went to Orisa. I’ve actually traveled to India many times for research on ancient statuary at museums and archeological sites. I am very interested in the earliest period of Buddhist statues. I have recently edited my photos and data of my trips to Orisa and compiled them into a book. I eventually want to recreate the original statues of Buddha. Though most of them have been destroyed, by piecing together the remains from that time, I have already been able to reconstruct statues of that period. My dream is to do this, possibly using a kind of cement. Also, I would like to continue to repair some of the poorly restored statues in Indian museums.”

A SLIDE SHOW of HASE-SAN and his WORK

There are a few places in the world that are truly enchanting. One such place is a town of just 500 people that has touched my life and the lives of many people I have taken there. It is a town near the Sea of Japan in Shimane Prefecture, in a long narrow valley, tucked between forested hills. Omori-cho has a sweetness that continues to call us back for, yet, another visit.

According to the person who most helped inspire the town’s restoration, Matsuba Tomi-san, “this used to be a place that no one ever visited.” She moved here thirty years ago with her husband Daikichi. A new mother at the time, she began to make baby clothes for her own children. Neighbors and friends liked what she did and requests for her work increased. Eventually, Daikichi began selling her work to retail stores, and the Gungendo Company was born. Over the past 30 years, the Matsubas and the growing Gungendo family have restored the eyesore of a town into a superb combination of esthetics and consciousness. Also, by supporting local farmers, mom & pop spinners, dyers and weavers, Gungendo has almost single-handedly saved them from bankruptcy due to the influx of cheap imports. With the resulting fabrics, they have created a line of adult clothing of extraordinary quality and distinctively Japanese design in addition to fine home accessories. (My favorite item is their shifu sheets, woven with cotton and spun washi paper.)

Rather than sell their products in well located boutiques in the hottest shopping districts of Tokyo and Kyoto, they have chosen to place their shops off the hyper-consumer path. They are not just selling clothes and household goods– they are selling a life-style that values natural materials, human relationships and revitalized rural aesthetics. Rather than restoring an old town into a random set of cold, museum-like buildings, they have brought an old town up-to-date. Gungendo and the Matsubas are to clothes and home accessories what Chez Panisse and the Slow Food Movement’s Alice Waters are to food.

The wooden, thatch and paper town is at once old and traditional and, at the same time, modern and comfortable. Old fashioned architectural elements have been revitalized and unobtrusively combined with modern conveniences.

Years ago, when Gungendo built their new company offices there, the shiny white prefabricated building looked out of place amongst the soft, mud, wood and bamboo walls and fences of its neighbors. So, they covered the new building with old barn siding and it immediately blended with the old minka farmhouse they had previously moved and restored next door.   The thatched house became a place for company staff to eat lunch and take breaks. The concrete drainage ditch next door was naturalistically lined with river stones and was transformed back into a “real” stream again.

The master construction person responsible for much of the restoration work in town is Kajitani-san. He has repaired and built waddle and daub walls, installed windows, paved walkways with old ceramic roof tiles or kiln bricks, put in electrical wiring and plumbing, unobtrusively and aesthetically created modern toilet rooms and baths in 250 year old houses. He is as comfortable working with bamboo as he is bringing old discarded barn doors and furniture back to life in a way that compliments living in the 21st century.

Nowadays, when Tomi-san is not reintroducing old Japanese textile patterns into next year’s clothing line at Gungedno, she can be found cooking a wonderful “slow food” meal on the 150-year old wood stove at Abeke House. With fish from the local seacoast and vegetables from kitchen gardens throughout the neighborhood, she has thoroughly delighted the palettes of all of the guests I have brought to Omori-cho over the years. One vegetarian herbalist from L.A. surprised his fellow travelers by deciding on-the-spot to eat a beef dish that Tomi-san prepared. He said, “I gladly make an exception to my vegetarian diet with food prepared with this much love.”

The restoration of 250-year old Abeke House was one of Tomi-san and Daikichi-san’s pet projects. It cost about $1,000,000 to transform an abandoned and completely dilapidated old house into an Architectural-Digest-Quality house that sleeps 12 people. It was a very long and very tedious project, but the result was a dream house fit for an enchanted town. A visit each year to Abeke House, Gungendo Company, the people, the food and the aesthetic of Omori-cho feels like coming home.