Shigaraki ware

So the potter builds the form, lights the kiln, and waits three days to find out what was made. No two pieces come out the same, and the potters made peace with that six hundred years ago.

The tanuki is the village's other export. In 1951 the Emperor Shōwa visited, the villagers lined the road with the tanuki they had made, and he wrote a poem about the sight. From that year everyone in Japan knew what a Shigaraki tanuki was.

He wears a straw hat, carries a flask, and is a shapeshifter — cheerful, clever, not much interested in a fight. Write his name a different way, 他抜き, and it reads "to outdo the others". That is why he stands outside so many shops.

One more thing about this village. After the war a training centre opened here, Shigaraki Seinenryō, teaching pottery to young people with intellectual disabilities from the age of fifteen. It was not welcomed at first; a resident named Ishino Daisuke argued that they were adults, that the difference was small, and that there was work here they could do well. They learned to throw and to fire, and the work paid. We cannot tell you that any piece here came from their hands — we buy from private collections and the record rarely reaches that far. We can tell you this is the village, and this is part of what the village is.