Kasama, Japan, is a pottery town where many of the potters came from somewhere else. Since Ibaraki Prefecture opened a ceramics guidance center here in 1950, Kasama has spent more than 70 years welcoming makers. It built a potters' housing estate, an art village, and a ceramics industrial park, and since 2016 it has trained new potters at the Kasama College of Ceramic Art.
There is clay in the ground, no single style to follow, places to learn and to sell, and Tokyo is close by. Most of the reasons potters choose Kasama are things the town set out to build.
Kasama, Japan: A Pottery Town Where Makers Move In
Kasama lies about 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Tokyo, in the middle of Ibaraki Prefecture. In and around the town there are roughly 300 kilns, most of them individual potters' studios. Each maker chooses their own clay, glazes, and firing, which is why Kasama ware has no single style.
In many Japanese pottery towns, a kiln passes down through a family. Kasama has kilns like that too, some going back to the Edo period. But it also has many potters who moved here from elsewhere and built kilns of their own. The city itself describes its pottery as the work of newcomers and local kilns side by side. That is no accident. After World War II, Kasama decided that welcoming makers from outside was how it would survive.
After the War: A Town Down to About 30 Kilns
For most of its history, Kasama made kitchenware: storage jars, suribachi grinding bowls, and earthenware teapots. After the war, as the way people lived changed, those pots disappeared from Japanese homes.
In 1950, Ibaraki Prefecture opened the Ibaraki Prefectural Ceramics Guidance Center in Kasama. The center trained people and developed new glazes, aiming to move the town from kitchenware toward craft pottery. Some of those who trained there stayed on and opened kilns in Kasama. In 1956, a pottery cooperative was formed, with just eight members. Still, the decline went on. By the early 1970s, Kasama was down to about 30 kilns.
A Town That Built Places for Makers
Kasama's answer was to bring makers in. In 1963, a group was formed to build a potters' housing estate and encourage people in the pottery trade to move to Kasama. In 1965, a thatched farmhouse that the potter and gourmet Rosanjin Kitaoji (北大路魯山人) had used as his home in Kita-Kamakura was moved to Kasama and renamed Shunpu Banri-So (春風萬里荘). The move set off the idea of an art village, which opened in 1966. Today, some 40 studios of painters, sculptors, potters, and textile artists are scattered through it. In 1972, a ceramics industrial park followed.
No one was turned away for the kind of pottery they made. A 2024 study from the University of Tsukuba points to this open door as the beginning of the mix of styles that defines Kasama today.
In 1982, a group of individual potters, pottery workshops, and local shops held the first Kasama Himatsuri pottery festival (陶炎祭), with 36 exhibitors. Today it brings together more than 200 potters and kilns every Golden Week, Japan's run of spring holidays. In 1997, the cooperative completed its own clay-processing plant, and preparing clay is still one of its core businesses. In 2000, the Ibaraki Ceramic Art Museum opened as the first museum in eastern Japan devoted to ceramics. Each of these was a place for makers to arrive, make their work, sell it, and stay.
The Kasama College of Ceramic Art: A School That Still Trains Potters
In 2016, the guidance center became the Kasama College of Ceramic Art, run by Ibaraki Prefecture. Its ceramics course takes two years and admits 12 students a year, and a one-year research course follows for a few more. Applicants need a high school diploma or the equivalent.
According to Ibaraki Prefecture, 75 students had graduated by fiscal 2022. A survey that year found that 69 of them, or 92%, were working in ceramics, and 54, or 72%, had stayed in Ibaraki after graduating. Graduates go on to work at local kilns or set up studios of their own, becoming the next generation of the town's potters. The college helps them get started, with introductions to studios and courses in the basics of running a business.
Five Reasons Potters Choose Kasama
Put the town's story together, and the reasons potters choose Kasama come into view.
- The clay is here. Kasama clay, fine-grained and sticky, is dug locally, along with iron-rich gairome clay formed from weathered granite, and the cooperative prepares clay for potters.
- There is no house style. Potters don't have to fit a regional mold, so they are free to choose their own clay, glazes, and forms.
- There are places to learn. The college offers two to three years of training, and the potters who moved here before them are part of the town.
- There are places to sell. The Kasama Himatsuri in spring, Pottery and Living (To to Kurashi) at Kasama Craft Hills in autumn, and galleries and kiln shops around town put makers face to face with the people who use their work.
- Tokyo is close. Kasama is about 100 km (60 miles) from Tokyo, and the Kanto Yakimono Liner bus from Akihabara gets there in about 1 hour 40 minutes. Potters can work with clay underfoot and still reach a big market.
Behind Every Pot, a Town That Made Room for Its Maker
Kasama pottery has no single face because the town never asked its makers to have one. A town that was down to about 30 kilns became what it is today by inviting makers in, training them, and building places for them to sell.
Pick up a piece from Kasama, and behind it is one person who chose the clay and built the kiln. That person may well have come to Kasama from somewhere else. To choose a piece from Kasama is to choose that maker, and the story of a town that made room for them.