From fields and mountains, I gather soil that suits me. Then I pound it with a mallet, sift it, and mix it with water to make potter’s clay.

If you use clay that has been mass-produced in a factory, the process is simple. Factory-made clay is easy to use and has no imperfections.

On the other hand, it is also a clay without character. The clay I collect in nature is exceptionally rough and does not stretch.

It’s viscous and easily degraded. It’s too easily damaged by fire yet too resistant to it.

In a word, a clay with such “drawbacks” is also a clay with character. Accordingly, unique pottery can be made from unique clay, even if many “mistakes” can occur in the process.

While there are many ways of making pottery, I mainly use a kick wheel consisting of two circular boards, one on top of the other. The potter’s foot turns the lower board.

I prefer this kind of wheel because it allows me to adjust its speed as I wish and provides good contact with the clay. As I have already said, clay has a strong personality.

If I emphasize myself in the process, the personality of the clay will vanish. In practice, however, I try to make the clay my own, even if it is difficult to find the right balance between myself and the clay.

As far as human beings and their spontaneous creation of random forms are concerned, a certain commonality seems to persist from ancient times up to the present day. From the past to the present and into the future, people’s lives will change in manifold ways, yet there is something that will never change.

I want to continue being involved in the creation of that immutable “something.”

I have been making pottery since 1971. As a beginner, I had no training and had never seen a kiln.

I began to throw pots with only one book to guide me. At first, it was not so easy.

Once, for example, the contents of the kiln weren’t adequately fired, while the tarpaulin cover started to burn. Fortunately, no serious consequences ensued.

Since then, I have paid more attention to the exterior of the kiln than to the interior. A later experience was equally worrisome.

I had just replaced the tarpaulin with a slate roof, and that was fine. Then, only four or five days later, one of the strongest typhoons in decades blew the slate roof off and soaked the kiln.

On yet another occasion, firing in a wet kiln produced unexpectedly good results. As an amateur potter, the stories that I could tell are endless.

Eventually, after four or five complete failures, I finally managed to successfully fire ten or twenty percent of the pieces in the kiln.

Around the third month after I started making pottery, I set up my wares to sell in front of Nanzenji temple, the Kyoto National Museum, and along the rice paddies in Ohara. I felt a little worried about other street vendors and the police....

In the pottery world, there is a belief that it takes years to learn how to make potter’s clay, and years to learn how to control a potter’s wheel. Yes, those things are important.

What I think is most important, however, is less the pottery itself than the “something” that comes from within me. In my case, that “something” just happens to be making pottery.

I just did what I wanted to do, and so I didn’t need a conventional teacher-apprentice relationship. That was never going to work, and I didn’t need anyone to teach me skills.

In retrospect, it was around the end of high school that I began to have a vague sense of “something.” At that point, I had decided to become a painter. While I was painting, I felt an urge to pursue something ill-defined within myself, and that eventually led to my abandoning painting and to enter a Zen monastery.

I shaved my head, donned a robe, and began a life of Zen-centered asceticism. I arose at 4:30 a.m., meditated, read sutras, and did all kinds of chores.

When this was no longer enough, I was sent on a pilgrimage. I took enough money with me to cover my funeral expenses.

Sometimes I slept in a temple, sometimes in the open air; sometimes I headed for the mountains, taking along a little food, and did zazen [Zen Meditation] for a few days. All the same, after less than two years had passed, I decided to conclude my life as an ascetic monk.

I felt that these Zen practices were only a way to escape from myself and from my painting. At the same time, pursuing something that emanates from my inner being, and something that emerges from making things—these two things are the basis of my life.

Following these principles, in 1969, I acquired more than three-quarters of an acre (c. 3300 m²) forest in Mima on the eastern edge of Nara. During a light snowfall, I began to clear the land, create a path, level the ground, and build a hut measuring about 325 sq. ft. (30 m²).

The building materials consisted of old lumber and discarded tiles. Friends served as carpenter, plasterer, and roofer, and together we completed the job with no professional help.

Building this hut, painting, ceramics, selling my wares—these are all one and the same thing for me. I wish to continue searching for that “something” that comes from my inner Zen and from making things.

I have not yet mentioned the most consequential thing for a potter, and that is firing. There are many different types of kilns, but they can be roughly divided into direct-flame and inverted-flame.

In the latter, the flame rotates inside the kiln, and the temperature inside tends to be uniform, so that the results are stable. Most potters seem to use this type of kiln nowadays.

In the autumn of 1971, I built a direct-flame kiln that is quite simple. It looks like a tube cut in half horizontally and placed on a slope of approximately 30 degrees.

The fire comes from below, and the smoke exits out the back. As a result, pieces from the parts of the kiln that flames do not reach (e.g., both ends and near the floor) are often underfired, and the kiln has many losses; but it is also possible to get a few unexpected and interesting results.

This is the type of kiln in which old Sue ware is said to have been fired. Known as anagama or semi-terrestrial kilns, the first direct-flame kilns were introduced to Japan from the continent via Korea around the 5th century.

Sue ware was fired in these. Compared to Jomon and Yayoi pottery, Sue ware was much harder and can still be seen intact today.

When a vessel emerges from the kiln baptized by fire, it is to be expected that accidents will occur, and the nature of these accidents is not entirely predictable. This seems to me to be analogous with the way in which we live our lives: changing our individual destiny, overcoming all obstacles, but still moving within the river of human destiny that is beyond our control.

* * *

I’m often asked, “What kind of wares do I wish to make? What is the goal of your work?” I have never been able to provide a satisfying answer that would make a person nod their head in agreement.

I can talk about clay and kiln firing in any way I like, but what is it that I am looking for every day when I knead the clay, sift the ashes, and chop the wood? Answering this question with words and sentences seems to me much harder than making a teabowl.

Among people who make pottery, there must be countless different thoughts and feelings. Some may be trying to approximate past masterpieces that they have found especially compelling.

Others may make works that resemble Kakiemon [enameled porcelain], which I heard about as a child, and be drawn to the beauty of nature’s palette. Such craftsmen can spend an entire lifetime trying to create an orange that looks like the persimmon in the setting sun.

Still others are fascinated by celadon ware that evokes of a timeless atmosphere, while others concentrate on Tenmoku glaze. Then there are those who try to express in clay the forms that lie hidden in their heart.

As a microcosm of human society, the world of ceramics is just as diverse, and both progress at their own pace.

In 1970, I visited the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo, where much of the folk art collected by Soetsu Yanagi and his Folk Art Movement are exhibited. There I discovered a large oido teabowl among the many works on display.

“This is it!” The generosity that emanated from this bowl—the way it embraced everything, good and bad, and yet was not overbearing—moved me deeply. I reveled in gazing at it for a long time.

Since then, it has been my good fortune to hold Joseon bowls in my hands on a couple of occasions. All of them must have been expensive, but none gave me the joy that I experienced from looking at the oido teabowl at the Japan Folk Crafts Museum.

That said, when asked what about the shape and color of the oido bowl that attracted me, I can’t remember a single thing about either. The bowl was not identified on a box, nor was it even given a name.

It was simply marked oido and was kept in a glass case along with other objects in a room on the second floor. There were also a lot of old textiles, furniture, and pottery downstairs, but once I found the oido bowl, I forgot about the rest of the exhibits and didn’t move.

Thinking back, all that I remember is what a comforting feeling it gave me. I can only say that I felt as if I was facing a person rather than a bowl, and that I seemed to be in the presence of the [Buddhist] Devine Mother and the Great Compassion.

The bowl was far more than its form, far more than its color. Even through the glass, it still enchanted me, the viewer.

This really surprised me, and it left an indelible impression, even after I had returned home.

What is made by human hands gets passed on by those who made it, and continues to flow through humankind, transcending time and place to an inconceivable degree. The fact that I can express this timeless and unchanging inner flow in a single vessel is the natural answer to the questions of what I am trying to do and why I am living this way.

We have no choice but to go on in our own way, observing the unchanging flow that has nurtured people’s unconscious mind throughout the ages, since we first evolved on earth. In my handiwork made with clay, I wish to express the state of the divine motherly compassion, the quietude embracing all good and evil, which the oido teabowl had expressed.

In other words, I want to create nothing other than this state of mind. Imitating the shape of the oido bowl is not the point; I have no desire to imitate an oido bowl, no matter how wonderful it is.

All that I can hope to do is to clarify how I felt when I saw the bowl, what had been hidden inside me, and what had attracted me to it so intensely. If growing up in Japan and living on this earth leads only in one unchangeable direction—the flow of a great river of destiny—then I must keenly observe and listen to the continuous throughline at the center of this river.

Those who came before me have passed it on to me, and I will pass it on to the future generations.

In some areas of human endeavor such as science, the past is the basis for further progress. After electricity was discovered, all sorts of electrical appliances were invented, followed by further unexpected developments.

The foundations are built up, step by step. The visual arts, however, do not work in the same way as science.

I believe that the only way to express what the human heart feels is always to start from scratch. In the realm of painting, many materials have been developed, and manifold paints and canvases are available.

In the field of pottery, electricity, gas, oil, glazes, etc., have made it possible to use materials that were unimaginable until recently. It is still up to the artist, however, to paint on the white canvas and to transform the clay into a vessel.

The process of making something always begins from scratch. People have forever worked with clay to create shapes of all kinds, but clay—today, just as it was in the past—is nothing more than clay.

There is no way, as there is in science, to build on the achievements of the past and to move forward, one step at a time, with certainty. Some crafts have been preserved and/or perfected for generations.

Yet even in traditional crafts, it is the technique that is preserved, while the work of making must always start from scratch.

When people engage in handicraft with the facade of consciousness stripped away, the ancient mind and the modern mind can be perfectly aligned. As if wet with rain and assailed by the howling wind, the millennia have consumed so many people, one after another, that even the human heart seems to have withered beneath the veneer that covers it.

There is a technology that fouls the sky, which used to be infinitely clear. There is a medicine that cures disease, but there is also science that creates diseases.

Living in a such complex and dizzying a world, I have written about something so vague that it seems to have been forgotten.

Have I been able to explain to some extent why I create ceramics? It seems to me that there is a limit to what can be expressed in words.

I wish to live my life without being overwhelmed, wondering all the while how far my working with soil, starting from scrath, can advance and expand within me.