In the spring of 2016, Japanese tea cafe will open in USA supported by Cool Japan Fund (source:worldteanews.com). In this cafe, we can enjoy not only tea, we can enjoy Japanese pottery also! The pottery shown or provided in the café is “Hasami-yaki” from Nagasaki prefecture, located in southwest of Fukuoka.
Unfortunately, the sophisticated Japanese pottery in Shizuoka will not be exhibited or sold there.
So “Shitoro-Yaki” is introduced in this post, it is one of the best Japanese potteries for tea or tea ceremony.
Shitoro-Yaki is made in Kanaya area located north part of Makinohara plateau. This area has abundant clay minerals of fine quality, perfect for Japanese pottery.
Features of “Shitoro-Yaki”
1. Resistance to humidity
– In the process of Shitoro-Yaki production, the vitrification is carried out at higher temperature to tighten the body of pottery, resulting its resistance to humidity. Perhaps, this would be because of higher content of clay mineral in its raw material. This feature is suitable to store loose leaf tea for long time.
2. Specific color – dark or subdued color
– Shitoro-Yaki has slightly yellow or red color with subdued atmosphere. Its raw material contains somehow higher content of ferric oxide comparatively. This would be the reason of its yellow or red color.
Kobori Enshu, one of the most famous tea masters in Edo era like Senno-Rikyu, loved these features. In the result, Shitoro-Yaki is certificated as one of the “Enshu Nana Kama” – 7 pottery loved by Enshu.
The author of this blog has joined a experience program of Shitoro-Yaki crafting. In this program, the craftworker gave participants some unique tea pots as presents shown below.
We can infuse tea by using this pot as follows.
There are some crafts that provide such kind of experience program. For getting the details, we should contact with the Shimada city Tourist Association*.
*The webpage of the Shimada city Tourist Association describes articles in Japanese only. If you need, you can see the webpage of Shimada city. By clicking “Foreign Language” button, you can read explanations in English, Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese. Unfortunately there are no descriptions for the experience program of Shitoro-Yaki crafting in the page of Shimada city. If you contact with Shimada city, you may get some information in English.