Design of plum on the tokkuri - a favorite of Katō who was designated a LNT in 2010.

Kato Kozo approaches slowly, solemnly, as if every movement matters. He opens the gate, greets me, and leads me onto the wooded rural property that he calls home in his native town of Tajimi, a major ceramics center, outside Nagoya. 
A number of years ago, this celebrated Shino-ware potter, now 66, brought a 250-year-old farmhouse here and had it reassembled, piece by painstaking piece. In this simple yet timelessly elegant home, with its brown wooden beams, golden tatami mats and sesame colored walls, we sit and talk of his long career as an artist and his efforts to revive the ancient techniques of his craft. 

Today, Kato-san is one of Japan's leading potters, but he began as a painter. In 1962, at age 25, he won the prestigious Young Artists Award in the national Japan Art Exhibition. "As a result," he says, "I was seriously considering leaving Tajimi and my job at the local government ceramics research institute, and going to Tokyo to work and study painting."
Fortunately for the world of pottery, a teacher encouraged him to stay on. "He said that if I was looking to create beauty, there was an inexhaustible supply of clay right here for my use," Kato-san remembers.

Kato-san worked and studied at the ceramics institute until 1970, so he knew the most cutting-edge ceramics technology of the time. "But the more I investigated scientific techniques," he says, "the more I wanted to think more simply. Finally, I grasped the profound simplicity of this work: creating ceramics is a matter of preparing the clay, making a shape and firing it."

Kato-san returned to the ways of the ancients, forgoing modern gas and electric kilns in favor of a simple wood-fired anagama kiln replicated from those of the Momoyama Era (late 1500s), based on extensive research. Called a Mino Large Kiln and measuring six feet wide by six feet deep, it was only used for about 40 years by potters of this Shino region. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the national leader, invaded Korea, and the Korean potters he brought back introduced the climbing step kiln that became the standard. "Though the anagama is an extremely inefficient kiln," Kato-san says, "I hoped that it would allow me to recapture the essence of legendary Momoyama-Era Shino pottery."

More efficient, modern kilns maintain a steady heat, but the anagama uses wood, with its many elements, impurities and uncertainties. At first the flame practically roars. "The burning wood breathes," Kato-san says, "and when it comes face-to-face with the big roaring fire, we experience an uplifting, an exaltation, a heightened sense of excitement." Then it seems to quiet down but continues to breathe for up to several days. Ash forms and flies around inside the kiln in unpredictable patterns. 

It all helps to create Shino ware's distinctive whitish glaze (ash/feldspar), and equally distinctive pinhole texture, referred to as "citron skin" by tea masters. 

"It is not I who creates the results," Kato-san insists. "Once I put the pot in the kiln, I give it all up to the fire. My ego has been tossed away."

With any kiln, there is a magical moment when the potter peeks inside after a firing. With Kato-san's idiosyncratic anagama, it's even more so. "It is a complete surprise when I open the door," he says. "The heightened sense of expectation and surprise continues until I remove the very last piece." 

Kato-san might fire as many as 220 tea bowls at one time, but he might keep only eight pieces from each firing - his internal artistic standards are that high. "To people accustomed to working rationally and efficiently, this approach probably seems unbelievable," he laughs. "Usually a potter expects to discard eight pieces and keep 212! Since I throw so many pieces away, some people might think that my skills are lacking." 

Not really: recently I was here with a group during a kiln opening. As Kato-san selected his few choice pieces and rejected the rest, several people asked where he kept his pile of rejects.

If they knew what really happens to them, they might be horrified. "Some days after making my initial selection from the newly opened kiln, I may choose a few more pieces," Kato-san says. The rest, he breaks.

Just as he rebuilt and restored his ancient farmhouse precisely to its original form, he wants to leave the legacy of the Momoyama potters of this Mino district to the next generation. That's why he uses the Momoyama anagama, and that's why he hosts a monthly meeting at his home for local potters to share, study and ruminate on ancient traditions.

That's also why he uses a rare hand-push wheel, which he can rotate with the tip of one finger, instead of the electric or kick wheels favored by modern potters. It allows him, he says, "to experience very subtle changes in the clay. I can feel where my fingers were on the previous revolution."

Perhaps the reason Kato-san chooses the slowest, least productive methods is that he calls the work of an artist learning through pain. "The process requires heavy use of the physical body," he says. "Split the firewood, prepare the soil, make a shape, place it in the kiln. I ride the rhythm of this chain of steps in the act of producing a stoneware pot. It can't be learned by short cuts and easy ways. You can shorten the time, but if you pay too much attention to technical methods, you get farther away from the creative spirit of the artist." 

"I recently found a broken shard from the Momoyama period," Kato-san says. "You could see one of the potter's fingerprints on it, and I matched my own fingerprint to it. It was an experience beyond words, beyond figures and facts." [Steve Beimel]