The Japanese ceramics presented in this exhibition form a small collection that I have assembled over the past few years. Rather than the Imari and Kakiemon wares made for export, I have concentrated on those porcelains made for Japan’s domestic market. Given my own grounding in Japan’s popular visual arts, I have found in these porcelains the same sense of color, patterning, and daring compositions I have so admired in prints, coupled with the same attention to quality and detail. Like prints, these works were made in a highly competitive commercial environment for conspicuous display and for use as tableware in Japan’s kaiseki cuisine, which accompanied the tea ceremony. The discipline and high technical standards common to any Japanese artisanal industry during the Edo period ensured that these ceramics are of the finest quality.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Japan had a long-thriving tradition of high-quality handcrafted stoneware ceramics. Kaolin (porcelain clay) was discovered in the Arita area of the Hizen region in northern Kyushu, the southernmost large island of the Japanese archipelago. With this development, immigrant Korean potters soon arrived, bringing Japanese craftsmen new potting and kiln techniques that enabled them to manufacture porcelain, both white wares and wares with underglaze blue-and-white decoration. Soon these local wares were further enriched by enamel overglaze techniques introduced from China. High standards were ensured by the strict administration of the governing Nabeshima fiefdom, and within just a few decades Arita had become the hub not only of a burgeoning domestic market but also a booming export trade in porcelain.
Export porcelain produced in the Arita kilns came to be known as Imari ware, named after the nearby port from which they were shipped. The most common types of Imari produced and exported to Europe were typically underglaze blue-and-white wares and those decorated in blue enhanced with overglaze iron red and gold. The porcelain has a gritty texture on the bases, where it is not covered by glaze. These wares are not the focus of this exhibition.
Our knowledge of seventeenth-century Japanese porcelain has been filtered by the many Kakiemon and Imari pieces from Arita that were exported to Europe, as well as the copies made of them by Dutch, German, French, and English factories. Domestic Japanese porcelain production tells a rather different story. The development of porcelain occurred in concert with the great peace established by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616), the founder of modern Japan. This peace, after a century of war, quickly led to increased prosperity and literacy, and in turn to growing consumerism. Astute entrepreneurs commercialized all aspects of Japanese culture, developments that were reflected in a new, optimistic, and flamboyant hedonism. The spread of education stimulated a publishing boom. Imported and locally published illustrated books became widely available to artisans decorating porcelain, even in faraway Arita, which allowed them access to up-to-date botanical studies, textile patterns, and the like. In conjunction with newly imported enameling techniques and other innovations brought from China, they used these manuals to create exciting patterns and motifs. Porcelain manufacturers worked for a highly competitive and fashion-conscious elite of samurai overlords, wealthy temples, and successful merchants. To succeed, their wares had to have bold, innovative patterns, with eye-catching imagery that was unconstrained by the design requirements of the export markets. Little known in the West, these domestic wares often serve today as exemplars of the genius of traditional Japanese design.
Kokutani, or “old Kutani,” is Japan’s earliest enameled porcelain and is distinguished by bold, innovative designs, executed in rich colored enamels. No two designs are the same. Those which feature large areas of green enamel are known as aode (blue or green) Kokutani. The sensuous decoration of aode Kokutani was notably unlike the restrained, linear patterns on later seventeenth-century Nabeshima and Kakiemon wares. Kokutani ware flourished for only a short period in the mid-seventeenth century, just before these other wares were developed. Chinese potters from this area may have traveled to Japan in the 1650s and served as advisors at the Japanese kiln sites.
Kokutani wares were made mostly for domestic use but were also exported. Their lush designs proved especially popular in Southeast Asia, echoing perhaps the tropical vegetation of the region. Later, in the early nineteenth century, the designs were revived in the village of Kutani in the Kaga region of Ishikawa Prefecture, northeast of Kyoto.
Among the other types of domestic wares produced were wine bottles in the form of split bamboo tea-whisks (chasen-gata), often decorated with roundels or panels featuring autumn flowers and fruits, landscapes, and decorative motifs in red, embellished with loosely applied yellow and green enamels. These were made in large quantities and often have complex iron-red patterning on most of the body.
With the demise of the Chinese Ming Dynasty in 1644, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) struggled to meet the European demand for high quality Chinese porcelain, and when Japanese prototypes proved to be suitable, official trade was initiated in 1650. Among the Arita potters, the Kakiemon family gained renown for the quality of their color enamels and artistic designs. Kakiemon porcelain was celebrated for its palette of overglaze enamels on a distinctive milky-white background known in Japan as nigoshide. For European consumers, Kakiemon-style wares were considered luxury goods. It was a different class of porcelain that was of better quality and with stronger aesthetic appeal. European collectors were particularly enamored of Kakiemon products and copied them at Meissen in Saxony, Chantilly in France, and Chelsea in England. While Kakiemon production was predominantly an export market, figurines and tableware were also available for domestic use, as is evidenced by excavations of daimyo dwellings in Edo and Kyoto.
Unlike other Hizen wares, as these ceramics are now known, Nabeshima porcelain, which appeared around 1650, was made only for the domestic market. At first these were made in irregular shapes and decorated with absorbing motifs for the meal that was served during the tea ceremony. Soon, however, the shapes and designs were formalized, and the dishes were produced in three basic sizes; the two smaller ones in sets of twenty or thirty, with a single larger serving dish to match. With occasional variants, these were decorated in three ways: underglaze blue and white; underglaze blue and white with celadon glaze; and underglaze blue and colored enamels. Great efforts were expended on quality control, and many dishes were fired and discarded as substandard. The designs were outlined in underglaze blue and then repainted in overglaze colored enamels and iron red, in an imitation of Chinese doucai (joined colors) wares first developed in the fifteenth century. The dishes were for presentation to the Tokugawa shogunate, or official use of the Nabeshima daimyo and their retainers, and could not be bought and sold during the Edo period (1615−1867). To complement the dishes, sets of smaller tableware such as cups and mukōzuke (serving dishes) were also made, as were various types of display objects.
Sebastian Izzard, September 2025
Hizen ware, aode-Kokutani type; porcelain with overglaze enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1650
14½ in. (36.5 cm) diameter
Hizen ware, Kokutani type; porcelain with overglaze colored enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), mid-17th century
12 in. (30.5 cm) high
Hizen ware, Kokutani type; porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze colored enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1660
7½ in. (19.4 cm) high; 6½ in. (16.5 cm) diameter
Published: Hayashiya Seizō, et al. Nihon no tōji (Encyclopedia of Japanese Ceramics), vol. 11, Kokutani. Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha,
1975, no. 173.
Hizen ware, early Nabeshima (Matsugatani) type; porcelain with overglaze colored enamels on a pale blue ground
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1645
4¾ x 6⅛ in. (12.2 x 15.7 cm)
Hizen ware, early Nabeshima (Matsugatani) type; porcelain with overglaze colored enamels on a bright yellow ground
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1650−60
5⅝ in. (14.3 cm) diameter
Hizen ware, early Nabeshima type; porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze colored enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1650–60
7⅝ in. (19.3 cm) diameter
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type; porcelain with underglaze blue design extending onto the everted rim; reverse with underglaze blue scrolling-camellia design; raised ring foot with underglaze blue lappet pattern
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1680
5⅞ in. (15 cm) diameter
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type; porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze colored enamels; the reverse with underglaze blue scrolling peony and a comb pattern circling the raised foot.
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1680
5¾ in. (14.7 cm) diameter
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type; porcelain with underglaze blue, overglaze iron red, and colored enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615–1868), Hōei/Shōtoku eras, 1704−16
Each 8 in. (20.3 cm) diameter approx.
Provenance: James Alexander Scrymser (1839−1918), acquired in Japan in either 1898 or 1899, and thence by descent
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type; porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze colored enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), 17th century
2⅝ in. (6.7 cm) high
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type: porcelain with underglaze blue and colored enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1670
2½in. (6.5 cm) high; 2⅜in. (6 cm) diameter
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type: porcelain with celadon glaze
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), Genroku era (1688–1704)
3⅞ in. (9.8 cm) high
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type: porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze colored enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1670
2⅜ x 2⅛ x 1⅝ in. (6 x 5.5 x 4.2 cm) high
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type; porcelain with underglaze blue decoration
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), Genroku era (1688–1704)
Each 2⅛ in. (5.5 cm) high
Hizen ware, Nabeshima type; porcelain with underglaze blue and celadon
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), ca. 1680–1700
12⅞ in. (32.8 cm) diameter
Hizen ware, Nangawara kilns; porcelain with underglaze blue, iron brown, and overglaze colored enamels
Japan, Edo period, Genroku era (1688–1704)
9⅝ in. (24.5 cm) diameter
Hizen ware, Kakiemon type; porcelain with overglaze colored enamels
Japan, Edo period (1615−1868), 1680s
11⅝ in. (29.5 cm) high