Introduction
Hi everyone, I have one question for you. So when was the last time you got earth on your hands?
My last video was about how a Japanese ceramic artist called Kakurezaki-san thinks about life, and this is the second part of that. And this one is really deep and interesting again, because until he was ten he grew up on a remote island with no one on it, and apparently the only things he could talk to were the mountains and the sea. So his relationship with nature runs very deep, and in the end this one left me thinking about all sorts of things to do with life again.
Even if you are not a potter and craft isn’t really your thing, it’s a really wonderful story that shows you something we have forgotten in our modern life. And from a completely new angle.
So if your days in the city are busy, I would especially like you to watch this one. So here it is.
The ten years he spoke to no one
Until I was ten or eleven, still in primary school, I lived on an island. No electricity, no running water, no gas, not even a bicycle. I had never seen money. I lived like a monkey. So I had no idea whether my family was rich or poor.
I talk a lot now, but that’s because I trained myself to. Until I was ten, there was nobody where I lived. So there was no talking. You couldn’t cry either. If you cut yourself to the bone, you’d just crush some mugwort and rub it in. There was nobody to shout to, and nobody to cry to. Only mountains, sea and rocks.
I only ever grew up as “I”. There was no “you”, and no “he” or “she”.
My father was away on the ocean-going fishing boats. My mother was doing something with the church or the fields. I didn’t even know I had an older sister and a younger sister until I had to get my family papers to apply to university.
Being on my own was completely normal. I never felt lonely or anything like that.
I didn’t need to talk. I barely spoke until I became an apprentice.
My master used to say, “Kakurezaki hardly speaks, but when he does, it’s frightening.”
Because I’d say the first thing, then jump to the fifth, then the tenth.
What he feels but cannot prove
Nobody lives around my house any more. If I go there dressed like this, the stones and the trees get restless.
Like something alien has turned up. Really. Only what I feel, mind you.
I might take my clothes off.
I have a pee, that sort of thing, with nothing on.
And then it all goes quiet.
Only what I feel, though.
A conversation you never noticed
Even with a family, I naturally feel I have to be strong on my own.
It just comes to me naturally. Bizen ware is unglazed. No glaze at all. You just fire it hard with wood, with pine.
The clay is there in the rice fields or the hills, and there’s water, and you fire it with pine. That’s the ordinary way of thinking about Bizen ware.
But the water, the pine and the clay are all brothers.
No matter how modern the shape I make, the plants accept it.
That’s recorded in you, in your whole body. There are all sorts of things, metal, porcelain, glass, plastic.
But with something made of clay, you want to touch it, and your hand goes out to it, don’t you.
I always wondered what that was.
What clay language means
When we speak to young people at universities, we talk about the language of form. A shape has meaning, or rather it has words. What is this one expressing? Say it’s a human body. The words make you feel something. There’s meaning in it.
So sometimes I say the clay a shape is made from has a language too. That’s clay language.
People from abroad are used to pottery that’s smooth. When they come to Japan, they find rough pottery like this. That roughness is its character, so they say they want to touch it.
Clay language. Because there’s a language passing between you and the piece, you’re talking to it, aren’t you.
Clay language. If you ask what this thing is made of, it might be earth from ancient times. Our grandfathers and grandmothers might be in it. Plants too.
All sorts of things might be in there.
That kind of language, passing back and forth,
is there between you and the piece, isn’t it.
And that’s why your hand goes out to it.
The thing I feel most now, I’ve felt it since I lost my father and my mother. The two people who gave me life are gone.
After his parents died
It’s only a theory, of course. I also say it like this. A sense of life and death starts to come out. I wonder if I’ll go back into this earth too, one day. And that earth might be a pot a thousand years from now. That goes through my head.
Life, and things like that, cling to you whether you like it or not. And when that happens, I think you start to understand clay language naturally.
The clay he refuses to throw away
I make every pot carefully. Clay gets under my nails. I rinse the sponge into a bucket and let the leftover clay settle. After about three days there’s a centimetre of clay at the bottom. I collect that, and it’s enough for one sake cup. So I don’t throw it away.
Is it just because I’m Japanese?
I suppose people start to feel grateful, don’t they. To the plants and so on.
I’ve always wondered why Japanese pots move me so much, and why things from abroad don’t reach me in the same way.
To put it simply, you’re of the Yamato people.
When you’re born in Europe or America or Japan, you’re born as a human animal.
Then the place you’re in, and your parents, are what make you a person, aren’t they.
I think that’s where the difference between Europe and Japan comes out clearly.
So does something in it resonate?
It’s not about good or bad. I think we accept it unconditionally. It’s got nothing to do with deciding you like it or you don’t.
We never judged any of that back in primary school, did we. We used what our parents gave us, whatever somebody put in front of us.
So it’s completely unconscious, isn’t it. Something at the level of DNA.
What moves you doesn’t have to be Japanese.
Why not just reach for whatever moves you?
What I took away from it
So what do you think? I think this one was another really interesting story, one that gives you a lot to think about. I really like the idea of clay language and that way of seeing things.
If you work in a city all the time, you probably never touch earth in your daily life. I’m the same, really. But I still remember very clearly making sandcastles and little balls of sand in the park or in the garden at home when I was little. And the feel of it is still in my hands, decades later.
Of course, I do think technology and life getting easier matters a lot, but in the end we are part of nature, and there is a depth in a person that technological progress can’t reach, and I think it comes from whatever it is in us that senses nature instinctively. That’s what struck me again this time. So for me, this one really was another precious and wonderful story.
Japan really is mostly forest, and there are the mountains, the sea and the rivers as well. It’s a country that’s blessed with all of that. So people here have always felt a particular way about nature. And I grew up with nature that close. That’s probably shaped the way I think without me noticing. I feel that very strongly.
So I’d love to hear what you thought in the comments.
Yeah, I’ve been going back to England for a while soon, which I’m really excited about, and I’m getting ready for that at the moment. There is a kind of space I want to make in the future, somewhere people can gather. So while I’m there I would like to go around exhibitions, hotels and the other places people gather in, and places you only get in Britain. And I really like the way William Morris thought about things, so I want to go back and see the places connected to him. And I’d like to learn what I can about the Arts and Crafts movement, and about British craft in general. I’d like to share as much of it with you as I can.
So if you found today’s video interesting, please subscribe. It really does push what I’m doing forward, more than you would think. And I’d be so glad if you did.
And also the parts of Kakurezaki-san’s story that wouldn’t fit in the video, I put those out on Substack as a newsletter, or I don’t know what to call it, like a blog or a newsletter or a podcast, but it’s there. And I would really happy if you had a look at that too.
Okay, so I hope you are doing well and stay safe. I will see you in the next video.
