Part 14 (1/2)
Zen Ceramic Art
_ Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity.
_ John Keats, _Ode on a Grecian Urn
s.h.i.+no tea bowl
Raku tea bowl
_ALTHOUGH j.a.pAN had been a nation of potters almost from prehistoric times, it was only after the rise of Zen influence and a popular interest in the tea ceremony that ceramics was raised from craft to high art. The great age of j.a.panese ceramics occurred several hundred years after the heroic periods of Chinese ceramic art in the T'ang and Sung dynasties, but, as in other cases, the j.a.panese eventually equaled and in some ways surpa.s.sed their mainland teachers.
The Stone Age Jomon tribes in j.a.pan created some of the richest figurine art of any of the world's prehistoric peoples. These Jomon figurines, fired at low temperatures and rarely over six or eight inches in height, are a cla.s.sic puzzle to anthropologists and art historians, for they sometimes seem Polynesian, sometimes pre- Columbian, and sometimes pure abstraction in the modern sense of the term. Indeed, certain Jomon figurines could pa.s.s as works of Pica.s.so or Miro. At times the features of the body were rendered recognizably, but usually they were totally stylized and integrated into the figure as part of some larger interest in material and pure form. It was a n.o.ble beginning for what would be a permanent j.a.panese interest in the look and feel of natural clay.
When the Jomon were displaced around the third century B.C. by the Yayoi, their beautiful figurine art disappeared, and for several centuries j.a.pan produced mainly pedestrian crocks and drinking vessels.
The few figurines created retained little of the sophisticated Jomon abstraction. Around the turn of the fourth century A.D., however, Yayoi potters found their metier, and began the famous _haniwa _figurines, hollow-eyed statuettes in soft brown clay which were used to decorate aristocratic tombs, and simple but elegant vases and water pots in low- fired brown clay, which often were dyed with cinnabar and which give evidence of being thrown on some form of primitive wheel.
This domestic ware was in such demand that a cla.s.s of professional potters came into being--inevitably leading to a gradual falling off of the individualistic character of the pots, as craftsmen began to ma.s.s- produce what had previously been a personal art form. The Korean Buddhist culture which reached j.a.pan in the fifth and sixth centuries brought the j.a.panese new techniques for high-firing their stoneware pots, introducing a process whereby ashes from the kiln were allowed to adhere to the surface of a piece to produce a natural glaze. These new high-temperature pots had a hard surface texture and an ashen- gray color, while the existing native wares of low-fired porous clays retained their natural brown hues.
Typically the average j.a.panese preferred the natural-colored, soft clay vessels, and so the two types of pottery continued to be produced side by side for several hundred years, with the aristocracy choosing the hard-surfaced mainland-style gray works
and the common people continuing to use the simpler, underrated brown vessels, which were often fas.h.i.+oned by hand. The importance of this instinctive j.a.panese reaction for the later acceptance of Zen-inspired ceramic art cannot be over-stressed. Not only did the j.a.panese love of natural clay make them reject glazes for centuries after they had learned the necessary techniques, they also seem to have had little spontaneous interest in decorating their pots or using high-firing or mechanized techniques for their production, perhaps because the technology came between man and object, distancing the potter too far from his handiwork. j.a.panese potters cherished their regional individuality, and they continued to express their personal sensibilities in their work, so there were a multiplicity of rural kilns and a wide variety of styles.
The pa.s.sion for Chinese culture during the Nara period of the eighth century led to a brief fling with Tang Chinese-style three-color glazed wares among the imitative j.a.panese aristocracy; but these seem to have been too much at odds with native instincts, for they were soon forgotten. After the government moved to Kyoto and launched the Heian era, both the indigenous pottery techniques--the low-fired, brown, porous pots for the common people and the high-fired, gray, polished bowls for the aristocracy--continued to thrive side by side. However, technical advances in the high-firing kilns brought about subtle changes in the mock-glazes of the aristocratic wares. It was discovered that if they were fired in an atmosphere where there was abundant oxygen, the fused particles of fueled ash on the surface would turn amber, whereas if oxygen was excluded from the kiln, the surface ash would fuse to a pastel green. Thus by varying the baking process, Heian potters could produce a variety of light colors, creating a pottery considerably more delicate than had been possible before. Aside from this refined technique for firing, however, the j.a.panese steadfastly refused to change their traditional methods of making pots.
For this reason, j.a.panese ceramics were deliberately kept at a technically primitive stage until the early part of the thirteenth century while the Chinese were making considerable advances in the art.
During the years from the ninth to the thirteenth century, while the j.a.panese isolated themselves from the mainland, the Sung Chinese were learning of new glazes far more subtle and refined than those employed during the T'ang. In the early years of the thirteenth century, when j.a.panese monks journeyed to China to study the new faith of Zen, they were dazzled by the sophisticated new Chinese wares they encountered.
Through the offices of Zen a second revolution in j.a.panese ceramics occurred.
The instrument for this second revolution (according to tradition) was the priest Dogen, founder of j.a.panese Soto Zen, who on one of his trips to China was accompanied by a j.a.panese potter known as Tos.h.i.+ro. Tos.h.i.+ro stayed in China for six years, studying the Sung techniques of glazing, and on his return he opened a kiln at Seto, where he began copying Sung glazed wares. Although he has been called the father of modem j.a.panese ceramics, his attempts to duplicate the highly praised Sung products were not entirely successful. Furthermore, the wares he did produce, decorative and thick-glazed, found no acceptance except among the aristocracy and priesthood, both of whom favored Seto wares for the new pastime of drinking Chinese tea. But while the Zen aesthetes and tea drinkers amused themselves with Seto's fake Sung celadons, the commoners continued to use unglazed stoneware.
All this changed dramatically around the middle of the sixteenth century with the rise of an urban middle cla.s.s and the sudden popularity of the Zen tea ceremony among this new bourgeoisie. Zen, which had brought Chinese glazes to j.a.pan in the thirteenth century, sparked the emergence of a brilliant era of glazed ceramic art in the sixteenth. No longer content with primitive stoneware or reproductions of Chinese vessels, the potters of j.a.pan finally developed native styles at once uniquely j.a.panese and as sophisticated as any the world has seen. It was another triumph for Zen culture. Rural kilns with long traditions of stoneware water vessels converted to the production of tea-ceremony wares, and throughout the land the search was on for colored glazes. The craze reached such heights that the shogun generals n.o.bunaga and Hideyos.h.i.+ rewarded their successful military commanders not with decorations but with some particularly coveted tea-ceremony utensils.
Although ceramic tea caddies and water jars were required for the ceremony, the real emphasis was on the drinking bowl, for this was the piece that was handled and admired at close range. A proper bowl, in addition to being beautiful, had to be large enough and deep enough to allow sufficient tea for three or four drinkers to be whisked; it had no handle and consequently had to be of a light, porous, nonconducting clay with a thick, rough glaze to act as a further insulator and to permit safe handling between drinkers; the rim had to be thick and tilted slightly inward, to provide the partic.i.p.ants with a pleasant sensation while drinking and to minimize dripping. In other words, these bowls were as functionally specialized in their own way as a brandy snifter or a champagne gla.s.s of today.
A number of styles of tea bowl developed during the sixteenth century, reflecting the artistic visions of various regional potters and the different clays available. What these bowls had in common, beyond their essential functional characteristics, was an adherence to the specialized dictates of Zen aesthetic theory. Equally important, they were a tribute to the historic j.a.panese reverence for natural clay.
Even though they were glazed, portions of the underlying clay texture were often allowed to show through, and the overall impression was that the glaze was used to emphasize the texture of the underlying clay, not disguise it. The colors of the glazes were natural and organic, not hard and artificial.
The social unrest preceding the rise of n.o.bunaga caused a number of potters to leave the Seto area, site of the fake Sung production, and resettle in the province of Mino, where three basic styles of tea bowl eventually came to prominence. First there was the Chinese-style tea vessel, which had been the mainstay of the older Seto kilns. Yellow glazes, once the monopoly of Seto, were also used at Mino, but different clays, combined with advancing technical competence and a new willingness to experiment, produced a new ”Seto” ware that was a rich yellow and considerably more j.a.panese than Chinese. Second there was a new, thoroughly Zen-style bowl developed by the Mino potters. It was broader-based than the Chinese style, with virtually straight sides, and it was covered with a thick, creamy off-white glaze. Warm and endearing in appearance, with a flowing sensuous texture inviting to the touch, it became known as s.h.i.+no.
Some say s.h.i.+no bowls were named after a celebrated master of the tea ceremony, while others maintain the term was taken from the j.a.panese word for white, _s.h.i.+ro_. Whatever the case, this was the first glazed ware of truly native origins; and it marked the beginning of a new j.a.panese att.i.tude toward pottery. No longer inhibited by reverence for Chinese prototypes, the makers of s.h.i.+no let their spontaneity run wild.
The new white glaze was deliberately applied in a haphazard manner, often covering only part of the bowl or being allowed to drip and run.
Sometimes part of the glaze was wiped off after it had been applied, leaving thin spots where the brown under-clay could show through after the firing. Or bubbles, b.u.ms, and soot were allowed to remain in the glaze as it was fired. Sometimes the white glaze was bathed in a darker coating in which incisions were made to allow the white to show through. At other times, sketchy designs, seemingly thrown down with a half-dry brush, were scribbled on the white bowls so that they appeared to be covered with Zen graffiti. Throughout all these innovations, the potters seemed to want to produce works as rough, coa.r.s.e, and unsophisticated as possible. Before long they had a gray glaze as well, and finally they produced a s.h.i.+ny black glaze whose precise formulation remains one of the unsolved mysteries of Momoyama art.