#1 Ceramics and Calligraphy

**The Artist Yasumoto Kajihara**

Kajihara never confines himself to a single style. From works of quiet refinement to pieces full of childlike playfulness, he moves from one thing to the next, following his interests and intuition. The freedom of these transformations never ceases to surprise those around him.

Seen from the outside, this movement can appear almost random, without any fixed course. Yet beneath it all lies Karatsu.

But when I say Karatsu, I do not mean an attitude weighted toward the past, such as simply reproducing Old Karatsu. Rather, Kajihara seems to trace the history of Karatsu while imagining other forms it might once have taken—other possible Karatsus that could have existed.

In that sense, Kajihara’s lifelong project seems to be the creation of a new Karatsu ware capable of going beyond Old Karatsu itself. He considers the relationship between Karatsu and Goryeo or Joseon ceramics, between Karatsu and qingbai porcelain, between Arita and Karatsu. Through his work, he seems to explore an “alternative history” of ceramics: a history that never actually happened, but might have emerged through different encounters, exchanges, and collisions between cultures.

And yet one question arises.

What kind of aesthetic sensibility, after all, guides Kajihara when he makes his ceramics?

There is something shared even by works that, at first glance, seem entirely opposed in style: something at the very core of Yasumoto Kajihara.

In his ceramics, I had only dimly sensed what lay at the root of his work. But now that it has become visible from another angle—through his calligraphy—it seems finally to be coming into focus.

What is this *something* that can be felt running through Kajihara’s ceramics, calligraphy, and poetry?

A pale, lucid pillar at the center of Yasumoto Kajihara’s existence.

By knowing both the ceramics and the calligraphy, it gradually begins to reveal itself.

But there is no need to hurry.

Like uncovering a fossil, we should gently brush away the earth around it, slowly, so as not to break what lies beneath.

Look at the calligraphy, then return to the ceramics.

Look at the ceramics, then return once more to the calligraphy.

In this series, moving back and forth between the two, I would like to trace little by little the “root” of Yasumoto Kajihara as an artist—a figure of whom, even now, only a small part has been exposed.

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To offer something close to a conclusion from the very beginning: the fact that Kajihara’s art name is **Shinsui** (薪水) provides an important clue.

Firewood and water.

Firewood becomes fire, and together with water sustains human life.

Fire and water belong wholly to nature, yet they are also drawn into human life and become elemental forces through which culture itself is formed.

**Shinsui.**

These two characters are something we will return to more than once as we follow the work of Yasumoto Kajihara.

For now, it is enough simply to remember the name.

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Ceramics come from somewhere deep.

Earth and stone, formed over tens of thousands or millions of years through the workings of the planet, are dug from the ground by human hands, crushed, kneaded, and given form. Fire then transforms them decisively into another state of being.

Ceramics are a technology by which the immense time of the earth is transformed, through fire, into something else.

Fire stands at the origin of culture, and ceramics—culture’s way of bringing nature into the human realm—are an extraordinarily dynamic and even celebratory art.

Yet although ceramics belong to culture and technology, they are never entirely subject to human control.

At a decisive stage, the work of ceramics must be entrusted to fire—to a force beyond the maker.

There is, of course, skill and experience in how that fire is handled. Even so, there always remains an element of nature that cannot be fully calculated or controlled.

This is particularly evident in an anagama kiln, where the realm beyond human control is comparatively large.

To accept what lies beyond one’s own intentions.

Not to force nature into submission to culture, but to acknowledge chance—to acknowledge forces exceeding human power—and to work together with them.

Kajihara’s ceramics therefore arise neither from the artist’s individuality alone nor from the accidents of nature alone. They come into being somewhere in the territory between the two.

And ceramics, though fundamentally concerned with beauty, are also tools: things made to sustain human life.

 

Then what, exactly, is calligraphy?

Why was it that, when I first encountered Kajihara’s calligraphy, I felt that “the person himself” appeared there at a much closer distance than in his ceramics?

*(To be continued. Next: #2, “On Calligraphy.”)*