I have laundered my blankets, scrubbed my bathroom floors and windows and stocked up on dehumidifiers. It has rained for thirty-two of the past forty-eight hours in Akune. This could be a direct effect of typhoon number 2-rather than naming each storm that occurs, the Japanese have adopted a numbering system for the annual typhoon season-, the tropical storm that originated somewhere near the Philippines and is now dissipating somewhere of the east coast of Japan, or it could be the fact that the rainy season, at least in the south, has arrived roughly three weeks earlier than usual. Whatever the case may be, 梅雨, tsuyu, the three to four week-long rainstorm that is Japan’s aperitif to its boiling summers, is nothing new to this Seattle boy; I laugh in the face of rain; and yet I fear the extent of damage it can do to my helpless tatami mats.
A few weeks ago, before the rains set in, I attended the bi-monthly pottery class at Warabe ceramics studio (Warabe). Until this month, I had only been creating pieces using the power of my own two hands, a manual wheel and, of course, the guidance of my fabulous instructors, the sisters, Miki and Miwa. The first of this month’s classes was my big training day on the automatic pottery wheel with the Father of the family (henceforth referred to as Oto-san) and the Mother (Oka-san) at the main studio in Nagashima, the island just to the north of Akune. It had been a handful of years since I last sat at the wheel in Karen’s ceramics class. Rehashing the fond memories of my first days at the wheel, I took off to become a very wise master’s apprentice.
I would say coming back to throwing pottery was much like riding a bike, but I would rather not. Not for the reason that is a cliché. Rather the simple fact that one never gets too dirty when riding a bike and likewise one rarely sees a potter with more than a bandana on their head, let alone an aerodynamic helmet. The one thing that penetrated deep into the back of my conscience was the drone of the electric wheel, a monotone noise that, while white in nature, undeniably reassures one of the immediate task at the tips of one’s hands.
The first time I saw Oto-san at the Nagashima studio sometime last year I noticed immediately that his style of throwing pottery was different. It was, in fact, the same style that I witnessed upon my visit to the abandoned elementary school-turned residence of the potter Mr. Matsumoto in the first weeks of my stay in Akune. The style that I speak of is one that utilizes a relatively large portion of clay, for example two to three kilograms (volume-wise, about the size of a newborn baby), which is placed on the wheel all at once in order to make multiple pieces, possibly identical in shape and size. When I first started throwing pots at Summit K-12 (for life), the amount of clay we used was directly related to the size of our desired product. I found two huge benefits to Oto-san and many of his contemporaries’ approach: done in this way, an entire mornings work required only one round of kneading clay (the utmost important and taxing step of creating a piece of pottery should be done methodically and meticulously as it dictates the quality of the end product); and the fact that since all of one’s materials is at one’s fingertips, concentration could go unbroken, which makes the ever-sought-after groove much more easily achieved.
Oto-san’s piece is on the far right, needless-to-say.
After a refreshing lunch of Oto-san’s garden-fresh salad and lamb curry (the first lamb I have ever had in Japan). Much like his oldest daughter Miki, Oto-san cannot get through a day without a brief post-lunch nap. I left the Oto-san and his airline-grade blindfold in the studio and headed down to the lower lawn. It was just me, a sturdy bench in the shade and the vast ocean view. There, I took the better part of an hour to soak up the warmth of late spring and devour the book I was currently reading, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell (thanks Aunt Barbara, the book was awesome).
Kneading clay at the Akune studio, one week after my training in Nagashima
Trimming in Akune the next day
Throwing in Nagashima’s studio
Pieces from Nagashima
When I came back into the studio, Oto-san was crouched behind a counter carrying a huge ceramic vase while Oka-san feverishly worked on shaping and thinning its thick walls. With barely a word between them, the epitome of being in a groove, I recalled a Japanese expression I heard recently:
阿吽の呼吸, a-un no kokyu.
The expression is based on the names of the two guardian statues that are commonly seen at the entrance of Buddhist temples. Usually depicted as having an exquisitely muscular physique or as mystic dog-like figures, one stands with its mouth open pronouncing the first letter of the Sankrit alphabet “a” and the other closed, pronouncing the last letter, “um”. The two statues together create the word “aum”, or the more recognizable transliteration “om”. This single utterance is said to symbolize the full spectrum of all things in the universe. The last two characters in the idiom above, 呼吸 kokyu, mean breath. In laymen’s English it might suffice to say that this saying is equivalent to being on the same wavelength. The breath of 阿 (a) and 吽 (um) is thus an apt expression to convey the essence of harmony I found in Oto-san and Oka-san’s ongoing collaborative effort, both as skilled and experienced artist, teachers as well as guardians of their family.
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