I am just now completing a month-long whirlwind trip through Japan on two separate small group tours.  We visited Tomonomura, an ancient fishing village on the Japan sea and stayed in an old, restored house.  Miyajima, Japan’s iconic 1500-year old shrine on the shore of an island near Hiroshima was as beautiful as I remembered from my 1971 journey there.  White Himeji Castle was brilliant on a sunny day.  We saw potter friends and their latest works in Hagi and stayed at Tomoe Ryokan, which is one of my favorite inns.  Those of you who have visited Omoricho with me in the past remember it as a magical place.   Omoricho only seems to get better over time.  We visited Imbe town to see Bizen potter friends such as Wakimoto Hiroyuki-san.  In Echizen, we spent a long time at the Echizen Ceramics Museum before heading to Imadate, the Fukui paper making village.  The paper maker’s Shinto shrine is a masterwork of carpentry, set in a forest of cedars.  We spend two nights at a Zen commune on Noto Peninsula.  Noto is made up of hundreds of valleys, dotted with large, black-roof farmhouses surrounded by green rice paddies.  I think that it is the most beautiful rural landscape in Japan.  At the Zen commune, we were treated to organic, gourmet country-cuisine.  The wife of the priest gave us a workshop in indigo dying.

One day in Kanazawa was too short, but we had sufficient time for hiking along the river at Kamikochi in the snow-capped Japan Alps.  After several days hiking along the Edo-era Nakasendo Highway through woods and old wooden post towns, we arrived in Tokyo.  Last night we ate at Honmura-an’s recently re-opened Roppongi restaurant.  Third generation restauranteur Kobari Jun-san has transformed his family’s restaurant into Tokyo’s most innovative soba venue.  Jun-san ran his legendary Soho branch in Manhattan for 15 years before returning to his native Tokyo last year.

I plan to post details of the above trip with photos in the coming weeks.

For about a year, I have been participating in the quarterly meetings of a grass roots  group that is unofficially working to save some of Japan’s extraordinary textiles, on the verge of becoming extinct.   Started by yuzen-art Saito Hiroshi-san, the group is made up of about 25 people including a magazine publisher, dyers, designers, clothing makers, professors of textile arts and students.   Kyoto’s always innovative yet traditional Sou Sou clothing company is also very involved.

The group is currently working to bring forward awareness of wool muslin, a really versatile textile.  It is a light, soft to the touch and inexpensive cloth that breathes.  It is one of the best fabrics to dye because of the beautiful way it takes and shows color.  It has been made in Japan since the 1800’s,  but has recently been disappearing from the fashion world.  Now as a result of the efforts of this small but dedicated group, production levels are rising for the first time in decades.

The photos posted here show the yuzen-dyed work of Saito Hiroshi-san, utilitizing wool muslin.  Intoduction of his one-of-a-kind, hand painted muslin kimono is perfectly timed for the current upsurge in interest in kimonos, especially among young women.

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New CERAMICS TOUR–OCTOBER 2009

Though Japanese yards tend to be tiny, many houses display a wide variety of blooming plants throughout the year.  In addition to planting in the ground, flower-pot culture is also very popular here.