| NOTA |
(★)(The Timeless Art of a Japanese Village)(At Tamba and the other ´Six Ancient Kiln´ of Japan, a distinctively Japanese expression in ceramics began to emerge some six hundred years ago. The vigorous, earthy forms made in these old pottery communities are revered as an important part of the nation´s heritage, but they are little known in the West. When the great Western collections of Oriental art were formed, the rougher wares of the feudal period were overlooked ; today they can be properly seen only in Japan. The purpose of this study is to present in depth the wares of a single area, Tamba, and to trace the history of the kilns at Tachikui, the last pottery village of the Tamba region. The traditions of Tamba pottery, which reach back to the early Kamakura period, are still very much alive at Tachikui. A study of pottery making at this village furnishes important clues to the understanding of Japanese pottery in general and also reveals much about the nature of pottery as a universal art intimately associated with fundamental human needs. The potters at Tachikui are a link with the past. Such persisting threads of artistic tradition are rare even in Japan and are probably destined to disappear soon. Tachikui is important as the last expression of a long, indigenous development. [from ´PREFACE´] ／The pottery of Tamba is not a very large part of Japanese ceramics as a whole. In fact, many accounts of Japanese pottery barely mention it. It is not one of the more glamorous kinds of pottery, and few examples of it are to be seen in collections or in museums outside of Japan. Nevertheless, it is one of those expressions in clay which is peculiarly Japanese and one which has had an unusually long history. It was little influenced by and had little influence on other types of pottery. Tamba grew directly out of the social fabric ; it was the product of farmers who were close to the basic essentials of existence. It had, therefore, a directness, an honesty, a suitability to purpose and lack of self-consciousness, which have been the mark of the best pottery everywhere. The cultural factors that were built into old Japanese pottery have for the most part disappeared. Events of the past century caused drastic changes in Japan and swept away most of those anonymous generating forces which gently brought into being the quiet wares of the tea ceremony, the kitchen, and the barnyard. How can we put ourselves into communication with something so remote, yet something which moves us deeply and directly as we touch the walls of a clay jar? Fortunately Tamba has lived on almost as a fossilized pottery industry to the present day. Cut off from the modern world by geography and economics, it has changed relatively little, and its craftsmen have continued to work much as they did in former times. Through its contemporary state as seen in the pottery village of Tachikui, an insight may be gained into the foundations of one of the central Japanese arts. With Tachikui as a reference, Tamba pottery can be studied not as a group of dead objects in a museum case, but rather as the vital signs of life-force in a community. Later, when I visited the village of Tachikui, I realized that Japanese pottery, at least the kind known as Tamba, cannot be thought of as an art in the usual sense of that word, i.e., symbol-laden objects created by strongly individualistic, master technicians --objects that tend to find a final home in the display cases of the museum. Nor can this pottery be thought of as mere utensils evolved solely to fulfill mundane functions and limited to that status. Rather it is something uncommon to us, something for which we actually have no word. It is a product of the hand which is both functional and spiritual, inextricably bound up with daily life and with aspiration and dream as well. [from ´INTRODUCTION´]／) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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