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Shikki

漆器

lacquerware

Although they abhorred cluttering their stark interiors, when the wealthy Japanese set out to impress visitors, they did it often with lacquerware. Writing boxes, trays and tableware, tea caddies and boxes for incense requisites or bentō (packed lunches), chests for travelling or storing special clothes (see right): all of these were exquisitely decorated by master artisans. Black, red, yellow or multicoloured, the gleaming lacquer often enhanced elaborate designs made from powdered gold and silver (maki-e) or inclusions of metal and mother-of-pearl. Japan knows a thing or two about lacquer, as Europeans were aware long before it opened its doors to the outside world; during the 18th century, English furniture makers simply called the process 'japanning'.

The Japanese call items so treated nuri-mono (coated things), but the term referring more specifically to the craft itself is shikki, which translates more closely. It had long been assumed that the technique made its way into Japan via the ancient Sino-Korean connection; there are fine examples of 1,300-year-old lacquerware in the temple treasure houses of Nara. But archaeological sites in Japan have recently yielded lacquered wooden fragments; carbon dating puts them in the middle of the neolithic Jōmon period (10,000-300BC).

Called urushi in Japanese and used in most of East Asia, the substance itself comes from the sap of a tree (Rhus vernicifera). Tapped like latex, it is filtered and heated before being used to coat various materials, especially wood or leather. Unlike other varnishes, it requires no solvent. Resistant to heat, water and natural corrosives, its hardness is such that it was used to coat the leather breast-plates on samurai suits of armour.

Shikki production is typically a community venture. In Narai, in Nagano prefecture's Kiso Valley, local artisans work in teams as they have done for 300 years. Some deal with woodwork, including bowls, trays, boxes and furniture. Bowls are coated with red or black lacquer by artisans seated on the floor of a workshop occupied by their forebears for generations. After several coats, the objects may go on to be decorated by painters before being lacquered again. Following each application, they are turned overnight in a clockwork drying cabinet. The lacquered products must always remain in a humid environment; perhaps high precipitation and humid summers partly explain why Japanese lacquerware is quite as good as it is.

The Japanese brought a peerless degree of refinement to lacquerware. There are centres all over Japan, including several among the sub-tropical Okinawan islands famous for their bold, colourful designs. Out of several claimants for being the first producers, Fukui prefecture's Echizen-shikki is said to have originated during the 6th century. Going back to the Heian period (792-1185), Kyoto's Kyō-shikki is one of the most beautiful, and many fine pieces were made for the tea ceremony between the 14th and 16th centuries. Like many Japanese crafts, shikki is regarded as having reached its apogee during the 18th century. It was then that the technique known as maki-e was at its most exquisite and extravagant.

With many craftsmen following in the footsteps of their forebears, shikki is alive and well and the range greater than ever. Fabulously expensive lacquered chests are still being wrought by renowned traditional masters, alongside innovative items in bold modern designs. And the soup accompanying any Japanese meal will always be served in a lacquered bowl. You see them piled high on the shelves of local supermarkets in red and black and patterned with gold. Cheap, cheerful and, more often than not, made of plastic.

Tansu

箪笥

wooden chests

Some Japanese insist that having four seasons makes Japan unique. Japan has haru, natsu, aki and fuyu (spring, summer, autumn and winter) and that makes it quite different from anywhere else. This could be construed as obdurate patriotic myopia, but what may well be at work here is a curious historical precedent. Everyone changes their wardrobe according to the season, but no one made more of a fanfare of it than did the Japanese during the Edo period (1603-1868). Ever mindful of keeping up appearances, people would practically turn the seasonal change of wardrobe into a pageant. Apart from clothes, this revolved also around an item of furniture containing them, a wooden chest called a tansu.

Tansu were mainly kept in the kura, a storehouse with massive, fire-proof clay walls which stood either next to the house itself or sometimes a little further up the street. The tansu with winter clothes were brought back in spring and the tansu that contained spring wear replaced them. In the wealthier households, the boxes were borne back and forth by liveried servants. Most typically, a tansu consists of upper and lower halves, each containing two drawers. Many are fronted with cupboard doors. The upper and lower sections have metal handles at both ends, which are in fact loops for passing a shoulder-pole.

Contrived to impress neighbours and passers-by, tansu often displayed outstanding carpentry and craftsmanship, sometimes with wonderfully decorative open-work iron fittings and lacquered finishes, but they were not designed to be admired at home. Except for tables for eating and writing upon, rooms in traditional Japanese homes are kept pointedly uncluttered with furniture. Instead they have built-in closets with sliding doors which, until Western influences took hold in the 1870s, were used for hiding away the tansu.

There were in fact several different kinds of tansu; they were neither solely for clothes nor for storing in a closet or kura. Several varieties were destined solely for the kitchen; more or less permanent fixtures and often fitted with cupboard doors above and drawers below, they are known sometimes as mizuya and were mainly used for keeping utensils and tableware. There were ship-board tansu, travelling tansu and tansu designed for use in shops; there were tansu that were strong-boxes. There was even one kind of fairly heavy kitchen tansu with wooden wheels—unlike the Western chest-of-drawers, the tansu was always made with easy removal and transportation in mind.

One of the more curious variants is the kaidan (staircase) tansu (see left). Though technically free-standing, they were designed to be incorporated into the house and, as such, constituted the staircase. Many old houses have been demolished in recent decades, along with their kaidan tansu, but fortunately, now that antique furniture fever has belatedly gripped Japan, such salvageable items are now borne away and sold.

Tansu have always been made in many places in Japan, but among the finest antique varieties are those from Yonezawa in North-eastern Honshu, renowned for expensive keyaki (zelkova) wood. Other woods used for tansu are sugi (Japanese cedar), hinoki (Japanese cypress) and, above all, lightweight, pale kiri (pawlonia) wood.

Today, the Japanese have also widely taken to having tansu in their homes—especially the growing legions of people fond of antiques. Like Korean chests, fine tansu fetch high prices on the international antique market. Reproductions are now common and, though still cheap 20 years ago, even modest examples of the genuine article have become relatively expensive.

Noren

暖簾

entrance curtains

Originally contrived as a sunshade, the noren curtain is among the most traditional of things Japanese, and one that never seems to go out of fashion. Like so many things, it is often said to have originated in China, making its way long ago into Japan with the devotional paraphernalia associated with Buddhism. The merchants attending temple services must have taken note; during the Kamakura period (1185-1333), the noren came to be used as a sign to hang over the entrances to shops. Made of thick cotton or hemp, the most basic form of noren shows characters or a white logo applied in the centre with a resist-dyeing technique on a dark indigo background, though colours and designs nowadays tend to vary a great deal.

The logo almost always represents the specialty of the house. A pattern suggesting a tea whisk and/or tea bowl, for instance, would denote a shop selling tea. The phonetic Japanese character yu—meaning hot water—is found on the noren hanging outside the entrance of the traditional public bath. Noren are commonly decorated with the owner's mon, or family crest. White on a dark background, these ingeniously simple patterns represent birds (typically a crane) or animals, a tree or plant (pawlonia, ginko leaves), a mountain (especially Mt Fuji), a flower (the imperial man is the chrysanthemum) or a Chinese character. In addition to noren, they adorn clothing such as workmen's jackets (hanten) (see pages 52-53) or kimono (see pages 54-55), stationery (see pages 74-77) and lanterns (see pages 120-121).

Traditional restaurants, sembei biscuit makers and craft shops alike display the mon of the founder or owner. Boasting a history of several generations, some businesses earn a great deal of prestige. In much the same way as the master of any art or craft, a chef or confectioner may take on pupils, and when one of them is ready to open their own shop, the master may grant them the use of the house name. After all, for centuries Japanese craftsmen have customarily adopted their master's name. Although not necessarily dependent on its predecessor, the new shop is permitted to use the same logo and noren as the parent institution. This is considered a great honour. The operative expression is noren wo wakeru (to divide the noren), implying membership of a family.

Threaded over a bamboo pole by means of loops, the noren is suspended over the shop entranceway. Depending on the width, it may be divided up into two, three or four panels (though occasionally more) and it generally reaches down to cover only about a quarter of the entrance—all this being devised to make it easier for the customer to enter. If you see a noren over the entrance, it means the shop is open. Having rolled the noren up around the pole at closing time, the staff take it away altogether before they lock up and go home. Longer noren leave only the bottom quarter of the entranceway uncovered. This kind will usually only be split into two panels. They often front cheap drinking haunts known as ippai nomiya, though traditionally these have a curtain made of hanging lengths of straw rope called nawa noren. These days nawa noren is a common expression denoting any cheap drinking dive—whether it actually has one fronting the entrance or not.

Long sought for providing cool shade in summer, noren are also a common fixture in private homes. Although they often deploy contemporary designs of a high standard, including abstract calligraphy and subtle modernist renditions of traditional designs and colours, decorative noren these days can depict anything. This includes western floral motifs, garish copies of Utamaro woodblock prints, kittens, puppies, Japanese children's cartoon characters and—yes—Mickey Mouse.

Yoshizu

marsh-reed screens

Most people associate yoshizu with summer. This comes first in the television commercials, almost as soon as the last cherry blossoms have dropped from the trees, when it is still spring. Nubile beauties in teeny swimsuits luxuriate in the turquoise Okinawan shallows; bright blue arrows of coolness blast from sleek air conditioners over idealized interiors. The commercials warn too of summer setbacks. It's hot and humid; the Japanese, like the British, open conversations with remarks about the weather. In summer, "Atsui desu ne?" ("Isn't it hot?") is heard around the clock.

The commercials also warn of the approach of bug season, vividly depicting armies of gokiburi (cockroaches) and mosquitoes being effectively exterminated by chemical means. Though no less glued to TV commercials, people in the countryside often still prefer katori senkō or mosquito-removing incense. Green and shaped into a spiral, this sends pungent—though not unpleasant—smoke drifting up under the roofs of older houses.

Katori senkō is burned mainly by traditionalists, the kind of people who also put up yoshizu (marsh-reed screens) against their windows and open doors to provide shade from the harsh summer sun. Traditional restaurants generally put up yoshizu too, notably specialists in soba noodles—a year-round Japanese staple popularly eaten cold in a variety of ways in summer. Sōmen, white noodles so thin and translucid that they look ethereal, are often served in bowls floating with ice cubes. They're not exactly substantial, which is just as well, as Japan's sweltering canicular season is very debilitating and causes a loss of appetite. The term natsuyase (summer thinness) has been used to identify the effect for centuries.

Some believe the antidote lies in eating eels. Folk legend has it that the custom was initiated by a wily 18th-century scholar, who was really in cahoots with the eel merchants. Behind the yoshizu of today's traditional eel restaurants, plenty of people still seek this high-protein fish as a summer treat. Meanwhile, yoshizu go up too to provide shade as well as partitioning in beer gardens. Situated often on the roofs of department stores, one finds adepts here quaffing tankards of chilled brew from tumbler to bucket size.

Yoshizu are erected in front of traditional dessert shops too, where kids eat shaved ice topped with syrups coming in an amazing array of garish colours. There are inumerable fairs and festivals all around Japan in summer; one to look out for is Obon, the Buddhist festival of the dead. Obon is the time for lantern festivals, when families pay respect to deceased relatives and light fireworks outside their homes. In downtown Tokyo in Ueno, summer finds families dressed in yukata (see page 55) strolling through evening plant markets, the stalls being partitioned with (what else?) yoshizu. Along here too they sell insects. The lovely firefly, now vanished from polluted cities, blinks brightly in little bamboo cages along with the suzumushi (bell crickets) whose enchanting, high-pitched ringing sound can turn even the most sultry night idyllically cool. You find too the kind of insects children stalk with butterfly nets in the daytime, especially rhino beetles and, later in the season, semi (Japanese crickets).

The shrill whirring of the semi in fact heralds summer's end—stifling as it still is in late August. Everyone moans about the heat but once the insect orchestra falls silent and it's all over, most people are looking forward to saying "atsui desu ne?" again next year. And bringing out the yoshizu.

Byōbu

屏風

painted screens

No one knows when byōbu first appeared, but 8th-century Japanese historical records report that they had been presented to the emperor by a Korean ambassador in 686. Like most continental novelties, byōbu were at first used exclusively by the aristocracy. In pre-medieval times, the aristocratic dwelling was large, single-storied and, as now in the Japanese house, featured sliding panels to divide the rooms. The Japanese predilection for screens was a result of the hot, humid summer weather; sliding panels allowed air to circulate, but also provided shelter from drafts (byōbu translates as 'wind shelter'). They also provided privacy if needed.

Minimalism has always been of the essence in Japanese art, but if the walls of a dwelling were to remain pristine, one could instead decorate panels and partitions, thus several different kinds of screen developed. One was the byōbu; they served as canvasses in a kind of painting called shōheki-ga.

Mainly religious, but in some cases secular as well, early Japanese art had always been executed in the Chinese style. Then because of the increasing popularity of emaki (picture scrolls) during the Heian period, narrative, historical and naturalist themes developed relatively free of outside influences. This style was known as Yamato-e (Japanese pictures), and the Chinese style came to be known as kara-e (outside pictures). Both were used on byōbu, but in the relatively austere Kamakura era (1185-1333), byōbu were mainly decorated with Chinese-style ink paintings.

During the strife-torn Muromachi period (1333-1568), lavishly painted and gilded byōbu became fashionable among shoguns eager for ostentatious trimmings in their new villas and castles. The master of the Kanō school, notably Motonobu (1476-1559) and Eitoku (1543-1590), brought shōheki-ga to its zenith, blending elements of kara-e and Yamato-e together. Consisting usually of two, three, four, or six panels, byōbu often came in pairs; a landscape or scene with figures ran continuously from one screen to the next.

Byōbu became more common during the Edo period (1603-1868), when the Rimpa school founded by Sōtatsu and exemplified by Ogata Kōrin (1658-1716) came to the fore. It emphasized decorative composition, further developed in the 18th century by Itō Jackuchō with his remarkable animal and bird designs. In the 19th century, shōheki-ga generally became formulaic, mainly comprising pallid emulations of late medieval masterpieces. Painters working on byōbu today are scarce.

Shōji

障子

sliding paper screens

One of the most defining things about the Japanese traditional home is the shōji. Either a paper sliding door or a sliding paper screen, it shouldn't be confused with the fusuma—a sliding paper door of a different kind. Covered with thick paper, the fusuma are opaque and their function is as room dividers or cupboard doors. Often magnificently adorned by master painters in the past, today they are still often quite prettily decorated.

The shōji on the other hand are absolutely plain. Consisting of panels of latticed wood covered on one side with thin white paper, the shōji slide in grooves and are placed immediately behind the windows of a house. A traditional Japanese room thus requires no curtains. Fitted with solid wooden panels at the bottom, shōji are also used as doors to rooms facing a corridor with windows; many traditional Japanese houses have a corridor running around the front and sides of the house both upstairs and down. The shōji date back to a time when there were no window panes, so having the rooms set back from the windows via a corridor ensured one could stay dry in all but the most severe weather.

In fact, until glass came to be adopted increasingly from the end of the 19th century, the shōji were what would be described in the west as windows. The Japanese word mado (window) really refers only to the window cavity. The shōji were placed inside or just behind it; the windows along the corridor would thus be fitted with shōji just like the doors facing them. To prevent getting the outer shōji wet if it rained hard, one had to slide the amado, a solid wooden shutter, closed in front of the window. The pre-modern Japanese must have spent a lot of their rainy days in semi-darkness.

In fairer weather, the shōji imbue a room with a lovely diffuse light as white as that reflected from snow. Even after window glass had become widely adopted, frosted glass was often used in the outer shōji to achieve the same effect. Window glass in traditional Japanese houses is otherwise perfectly transparent, the window frames frequently being shaped exactly like the shōji of old.

Tending to yellow fairly quickly, the paper used in these screens ideally needs replacing about once a year. Shōji are also notoriously fragile and are forever being torn—especially in households with small people with busy little fingers. If one can't be bothered to replace the entire panel, the alternative is to stick a little square of shōji paper over the hole. About a century ago the repair was a little more elaborate; people would often cut out the replacement piece in a variety of shapes—often birds or animals for the amusement of the perpetrators of the mishap.

Travelling around Japan in 1905, British photographer Herbert Panting aroused great curiosity in children in country inns. "Not only do Japanese rooms have ears," he commented about the flimsy walls, "but they have eyes as well. It is quite a common occurrence to see a human one peeping through some small hole in the shōji. Occasionally you may detect a finger in the act of making such a hole or enlarging one already made." And once, in the dead of night, he threw open the shōji "in time to see three pairs of heels flying down the corridor... while shouts of laughter filled the narrow passage from the inquisitive nē-sans (girls) who owned them."

Ukiyo-e

浮世絵

woodblock prints

Holding pride of place out of all things Japanese in western eyes, ukiyo-e were one of the items which no serious 19th-century travellers to Japan failed to bring back home with them. Ukiyo-e began not as woodblock prints as such, but as a style of painting in the mid 17th century. Melding the styles of the Tosa school (purely Japanese genre painting) and the Kano school (Japanese reworking of Chinese painting) together, the exponents sought subject matter for their e (pictures) in the ukiyo (the floating world)—the term coined for the urban pleasure quarters grudgingly conceded by the dictatorial Tokugawa shoguns, the rulers of Japan between 1603 and 1867.

Combining all the provinces of pleasure of Edo (Tokyo) together—Kabuki theatre, tea-houses, taverns, restaurants and brothels—'the floating world' was the haunt of high fashionistas and constituted a crucible for Japanese culture. Focusing on subjects like geisha, prostitutes, Kabuki actors, erotica and aspects of contemporary life, ukiyo-e also embraced historical subjects, landscapes, ghost stories, naturalism and still-life. Lasting some 150 years, and still highly collectible today, the genre still presents us with a window on a vanished world.

The popularization of ukiyo-e is generally attributed to Hishikawa Moronobu (1618-94), a prominent book illustrator who pioneered the single print. Many of the books of the day (for example, warai-bon; laughing books) were designed for the titillation of the townsman; much of the output was graphically erotic shunga (spring pictures). The skills ukiyo-e artists displayed with using colour and texture to depict clothing found many prints dubbed 'brocade pictures'; these artists were nothing if not versatile. Dab-hands at pornography, Harunobu (1724-70) and his contemporary Koryūsai also made many charming prints of pleasure quarter girls doing more mundane things; the same applied even more to the great Utamaro (1750-1806) whose celebrated bijin-ga (beautiful person pictures) are masterpieces both of composition and technical skill. Capable of consummate depictions of anything and everything (including sex), the innovative Katsuhika Hokusai (1760-1849) also widened the horizons of the medium with many landscapes and travel themes, a genre greatly popularized by Andō Hiroshige (1797-1858).

Although some ukiyo-e had reached Europe earlier in the 19th century via the Dutch (the only people other than Chinese permitted to trade in Japan during the Edo period), it was in France that they had the most significant impact. Popular wisdom had it that the prints were used in Japan to wrap fish, and that they first came to the attention of French aesthetes because they were used to pack Japanese export chinaware. But the first of these notions is sheer nonsense, the second at best apocryphal. Opened in 1862 and renowned among connoisseurs of oriental art, a shop and tea salon called 'La Porte Chinoise' made its reputation above all from importing Japanese prints. The prints soon had a profound influence on French art, first of all on Manet and Degas, then on Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Van Gogh and the impressionists. Announcing bold new steps in design and asymmetrical composition, ukiyo-e changed the entire course of Western art and design.

The prints that were most popular abroad in the 1890s were already old as the great masters such as Utamaro and Hokusai had belonged to the century before. Produced in ever larger numbers and pandering increasingly to popular taste, ukiyo-e went into decline quite early in the 19th century. That said, there were still plenty of quality works around produced by 'decadents' such as Toyokuni and Kunisada. Although ukiyo-e declined as such with the demise of the eponymous pleasure quarters, the woodblock print remained a medium of choice for many significant Japanese artists well into the modern era.

Tatami

畳

tatami mats

Despite the westernization of architecture in Japan during the past century, postwar reconstruction and later building sprees, some things never change. For all its ferro-concrete and glass and for all the wall-to-wall carpeting, even the highest modern residential apartment block may not be as thoroughly western as it first seems: living spaces within will usually contain at least one Japanese-style room—distinguished by tatami mats.

"Upon these mats the people eat, sleep, and die," wrote the American Japan-scholar Edward Morse in the 1880s, "they represent the bed, chair, lounge and sometimes table, combined." Though many families nowadays prefer a kitchen table, they will always dine around a low table on the tatami mats when there are guests. Western beds are becoming common, but many people still roll out futon bedding (see overleaf) straight onto the floor. Tatami mats are also resilient, which is why foreigners often find sleeping on a comparatively thin futon far more comfortable than they anticipated.

Popular among the aristocracy during the 8th century, tatami mats were originally used as beds. In a world without chairs, the thin matting hitherto partially covering floors did little to alleviate the discomfort of hard wood, so tatami gradually came to be used as flooring too. Rules came about governing the size—the thickest being an Imperial preserve—but from the Edo period (1603-1868), tatami came to be used increasingly in ordinary homes.

Tatami mats each consist of thousands of stems of a rush called igusa tightly stitched together. Covered with very dose-woven matting, tatami feel smooth to the touch. The sides are trimmed with thin decorative strips of fabric—the quality varying according to the price. Filling the house with a scent like new-mown hay, tatami are a light greyish-green when new, fading to warm yellow as they age. About 10 cm (4 in) thick, tatami are disposed according to set patterns; with eight mats and more, they describe a spiral around the central pair. Tatami mats absorb moisture, providing welcome coolness during the muggy, hot summers; another remarkable property is the recently discovered capacity for absorbing air pollutants such as exhaust gas.

The size of a Japanese room is expressed in terms of the number of tatami mats, running from two, three to four and a half, then six, eight, ten mats and upwards, following the twice-times table. The yojōhan (four-and-a-half mat room) is an exception devised because the Japanese shun the number four on its own. The number four is considered unlucky as the character to describe it can be pronounced 'shi', a homonym for the Japanese word for death.

Tatami sizes are standardized, but there are regional variants, Kyō-ma (from Kyoto) being slightly larger than the smallest Kantō-ma (Tokyo), with Chūkyō-ma (Nagoya) in between. When real estate offices advertise properties they often refer to the Kantō mat, 176 cm x 88 cm (5 ft 9 in x 3 ft), which is now pretty well the national standard—a sign of the current premium on space.

Until very recently there used to be a tatami maker in every neighbourhood but, in the wake of so many cheaper imports from Taiwan and China, their number is decreasing, but not dying out. The mats are generally imported bundled and stitched, but the cutting, covering and custom trimmings are mainly undertaken in Japan—where this beautiful and remarkably practical flooring concept is likely to remain in vogue for quite some time.

Futon

布団

futons

I was forewarned that I would be sleeping on a mattress on the floor when I first went to Japan in 1979, but it didn't bother me over much. The night I first entered my apartment, however, I was a little shaken. There was a bright red plastic television and pristine tatami matting, but nothing else at all—let alone a mattress. Sliding back the paper doors from the cupboard, to my relief, my friends took out a rolled-up mattress and quilt, and promptly made up the bed on the floor. This is the futon, loosely used to refer to bedding as a whole, but actually referring only to the mattress. Though the latter was only 12 cm (5 in) thick, it was cushioned by the resilience of the tatami matting and the arrangement was comfortable.

The futon had by then been through centuries of evolution in Japan. My futon was not, in fact, much like the original thing at all. Cotton on the outside, it was stuffed with a mixture of both natural and synthetic fibers—a combination that made it lighter and warmer than its all-cotton parent. The quilt was essentially a Western duvet. That said, the main ingredient of nearly all today's better futons is still cotton down—as it had been almost exclusively until after World War II, when there was a sharp increase in Western concepts and materials. For a while, until they became standard, my kind of mattress was briefly called yōfuton (Western futon).

Even now, in some traditional inns you can find thin yet fairly heavy cotton futon—much as they were between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They are only slightly better than sleeping right on the floor, which is why people often use two. In the Yoshiwara red-light district in the 1890s, the better class of demi-mondaines liked to boast about using several. To prove it, they would have the maids ostentatiously air them on the brothel balconies alongside quilts made of silks and satins. Today, bedding is still regularly festooned from Japan's more mundane window-ledges and balconies; humidity causes down to be compressed and lose its fluffiness, so futon need to be aired about once a week.

The futon originated in the 17th century, when the wealthy began using mattresses stuffed with cotton down. Everyone else had to make do with bags stuffed with flax, hemp, straw or rushes. In some fishing villages they stuffed their bedding with seaweed. Until quite recently, thickly padded and capacious garments with sleeves were worn in winter instead of quilts or coverlets. These days, over a third of futon in Japan and almost half the quilts are imported—both mainly from China.

Irori

囲炉裏

iron hearths

I remember a country-style tavern in a western suburb of Tokyo. Being directly beneath the elevated train tracks, it was none too bucolic, but although the trains rumbled intermittently overhead, it was hard to tell that you weren't in alpine Nagano prefecture. Wearing a rustic kimono of indigo cotton, Mama-san sat surrounded by a low, square counter of dark polished wood, pouring sake and taking orders as her husband toiled in the kitchen behind her. A long pot-hook hanging from a beam beneath the ceiling supported a large white metal tea-kettle. It was being heated over an irori fireplace—a square-shaped hearth just next to her. Close at hand she kept an oblong box of stainless steel, with four holes devised for heating flasks of sake. The box is actually a tank, filled with water kept constantly heated by the fire just next to it. It was very similar to the one in an illustration of an irori in Edward Morse's Japanese Homes and their Surroundings and captioned "The Best Fireplace". That is apparently how they rated the irori back in 1885; those contemplating the few still extant today would concur.

But in the rustic tavern in suburban Tokyo there was no fire, nor even embers. The sake-warming box was electric. All was artifice. It was just another of those countless city furusato (home-sweet-home) restaurants evoking a lost, idyllic rural past usually fondly imagined rather than actually remembered by the countless legions of urbanites of rural descent. This wasn't a real irori at all—the pot hook hung over a gas ring.

Real irori are still to be found above all in old houses in towns and villages in mountainous districts, and in farmhouses in particular. Houses like this often have very high roofs. There is no chimney, the smoke goes straight up and out in a hole at the top. The floor is raised like a platform and the irori, always square, is sunken into the planking. The base of the hearth is sand, mixed with fine ash, so that it is a uniform grey colour. The fire is concentrated in the centre. Made of wood or iron, the pot-hooks come in several different configurations, often dangling from a chain, which may also be fitted with a rack for smoking fish. Although places still having one today invariably also have a kitchen, they will still cook certain dishes over the irori—especially nabemono (pot stews).

In winter, the irori is as cheering to the Japanese as the pub fireplace is to the British. The first time I saw a genuine irori was at a homely minshuku (family-owned inn) in Takayama; the couple running it insisted that guests should sit around it after dinner. There's no denying the irori's congeniality; conversation lasted into the wee hours and the hangover in the morning was dire!

On the verge of total extinction 20 years ago, the irori has been making something of a comeback thanks to a heightened awareness of the importance of preserving the past in Japan. They are no longer much of a rarity in traditional style inns and restaurants; and among Japanese who are able to afford a second home in the countryside, the irori is the height of chic.

Hibachi

火鉢

portable charcoal braziers

When you visit Japan's historic buildings, in many cases what you are seeing is either a replica of or a construction much later than the original, which transpires to have burned down during its long history—even several times. To be sure, the cause lay often in war and natural disaster or, occasionally, arson too. Whichever, these buildings were made of wood. The flames spread frequently from one to the next, which was often less than one metre (3 ft) away. In former times fires regularly burned down entire Japanese cities. When a blaze started in a home, it originated frequently in the kitchen or in careless use of the ro—a small sunken fireplace found often in the rooms of inns. The ro was used mainly for heating bedclothes, which were draped over a wooden frame above it, but accidents occurred when the fabric touched the embers.

Though only nominally safer, a much more popular and widespread alternative was the hibachi, a portable charcoal brazier. "Around the hibachi," observed one foreign visitor in 1907, "circulates not only the domestic but also the social life of Japan. All warm themselves at it; tea is brewed by means of it; guests are entertained, chess played, politics discussed beside it; secrets are told across it, and love made over it."

Of Chinese origin, hibachi were in use in Japan for well over a millennium. Round ones were often made of iron or bronze with handles, or ceramic (typically of thick, blue and white patterned porcelain) or cut into the bole of a tree. The section of trunk could be turned and smoothed to show the grain, then polished and perhaps carved with a decorative design or lacquered. Smoothed and polished, gnarled and irregularly shaped boles were popular too. Wooden hibachi were always fitted with a metal lining, usually of copper. Made of wood, the square or oblong hibachi incorporated a copper lining flush with the sides; sometimes it was just an open box into which a round hibachi was placed. The finest hibachi were often cabinets around 70 cm (2 ft 4 in) across and incorporating drawers for smoking requisites.

To prepare a hibachi, the fine ash within had to be raked up into a regular cone, the pieces of burning charcoal (brought from the kitchen or from a pan heated outdoors) were placed in the top. A sizeable piece of charcoal could burn for many hours. Although it was smokeless, the possibility of toxic fumes prompted people to carry the hibachi from the bedroom before retiring. The rake and tongs for handling charcoal were kept in the hibachi along with such items as an iron stand for a kettle; a grid was often placed over the stand to grill food. It was customary to place a hibachi—however simple—before each guest, along with a rectangular wooden tabako-bon (tobacco box) (see pages 72-73) which contained a miniature hibachi and a cylindrical wooden spittoon.

Capable of warming a room adequately, the hibachi was a vital household item and often an heirloom. Old hibachi have had antiquarian value for a very long time in Japan where, although no longer used, they still do today. When in use they were greatly cherished. Edward Morse noticed that one would often observe a Japanese person absent-mindedly gazing into the embers and something more: "A sentiment prompts many families to keep the hibachi burning continually; I was told that in one family in Tokyo the fire had been kept alive continuously for over two hundred years."

Satsuma-yaki

satsuma ware

The Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi's two attempts to invade Korea in 1592 and 1598 were dismal failures. But, taken with ceramics they discovered along the campaign trail, some of his generals came up with a brilliant idea for turning adversity into an asset. Rather than burden themselves with crates full of plundered pottery, they kidnapped the potters. Being regional governors, they saw ceramic production as a means of filling the provincial coffers. Although they were virtual prisoners, the Koreans nonetheless enjoyed a fairly exalted position in Kyushu. Small wonder. They were instrumental in inventing and propagating pottery techniques which made the ware from the Kyushu towns of Arita and Imari world famous in the next century.

Shimazu Yoshihisa, another of Hideyoshi's generals and lord of the Kyushu province of Satsuma (now Kagoshima), brought Korean potters back to his fiefdom too. Displaying the delicacy of porcelain, their particular specialty was a cream-coloured glaze covered with minute crackling. Despite its early popularity, the ware fell out of fashion and the Satsuma potteries declined. By the mid 19th century 'Old Satsuma' ware had become very rare and was much sought by collectors. Today there are precious few pieces outside of museums.

A different animal altogether, the newer form of Satsuma seen on these pages proved immensely popular in Europe. It was born of provincial governor Shimazu Shigehide's efforts to revive the flagging local pottery industry at the beginning of the 19th century, when he dispatched his potters around various centres in Japan in search of new techniques. They returned with the techniques of polychrome painting, learned in Kyoto's Kinkōzan pottery.

In 1827 Shigehide sent another potter to Kyoto to learn kinran—a 17th century method for applying gold to enhance red and white patterns—imitating polychrome kinran textile designs of Chinese origin adopted in Japan for centuries. Adapting what he learned to what he already knew, he and the other Satsuma potters produced a lavishly ornate hybrid. Although called Satsuma ware, it was produced only in Kyoto for some time. The finest craftsmen of the genre was a Kyotoite, Nin'ami Dōhachi, who specialized in white Satsuma decorated in the nishiki style which, like kinran, was inspired from textiles. Nin'ami opened the first exclusive Satsuma pottery in his own city—far indeed from the real Satsuma.

Hoping to take control of what they deemed should have been produced in their own kilns, the Satsuma governors sent another potter to Kyoto, who came back to launch the Naeshirogawa style which, comprising more colours, was (if such a thing were possible) even more ornate. Considered by many as the definitive Satsuma style, the ware not only faced competition from namesakes in Kyoto, but also spawned a rash of cheap imitators in pottery centres all over the country. Requiring minute precision, detailed designing and painterly skills, Satsuma ware is the product of extraordinary skill. Made almost exclusively for export, it appealed to the baroque and bombastic tastes of European courts. The work and paintings can be really exquisite, but in many cases the beauty of the objects is demeaned by sheer decorative over-kill. Praise was lavished on Satsuma ware at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867; it perfectly fitted the times. Good pieces fetch high prices today, though most look as though they were designed solely for the ponderous and ostentatious Victorian drawing-room.

Imari-yaki

伊万里焼

imari ware

Strangely, with all the influence that China had had upon Japan, the Japanese adopted porcelain over a millennium after the Chinese had invented it. Japanese ceramics had long consisted almost entirely of stoneware. In the late 15th century, Chinese porcelain was being increasingly imported, fuelling the growth of the aristocratic craze for the tea ceremony. Tea ceremony or not, the vogue for Chinese porcelain spread over the next century. It was the thing to have; high quality items were being imported more cheaply and frequently from Korea, though it soon became evident that it was high time to make it in Japan.

The shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi made his second attempt to invade Korea in 1592. The campaign was disastrous, but to his general Nabeshima Naohige (among others) feudal lord of the old province of Hizen (now Saga Prefecture, Western Kyushu) Hideyoshi had given a 'license to trade', not in ceramics, but in the Korean potters themselves. "If there are persons skilled in ceramics found whilst encamped in Korea," went the shogun's instructions, "bring them back to Japan."

The Nabeshimas kept their potters in captivity, though what had initially been coercion became more a matter of keeping professional secrets from rivals. Perhaps as a reaction to the ostentatious aficionados of porcelain, tea masters meanwhile came to prize the rough-hewn quality of stoneware all the more. Korean potters began by bringing subtle improvements to the same, notably in Karatsu; there was no clay suitable for porcelain in Japan anyway.

In 1616, the great Korean potter Li Sanpei discovered kaolin, the exceptionally light clay needed to provide porcelain with its whiteness and hardness, near the town of Arita. Working thenceforth from their 'secret kilns', the reclusive and exclusive Nabeshima potteries dominated the ceramics industry until the end of the feudal era.

In 1675 the potters moved from Arita to Okawachiyama, on the inland side of the port of Imari. This is how this kind of porcelain got its name—but not among the Japanese, who still prefer to call it Arita-yaki.

Early Imari was mainly blue and white, but, during the Kan'ei era (1624-43), the great ceramicist Sakaida Kakiemon introduced over-glaze enamelling. The concept was Ming dynasty Chinese, but the polychrome designs were inspired from Japanese textiles, lacquer-ware and screen paintings. With the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644, China's exports of blue and white porcelain virtually ceased. Meeting the booming European demand for it provided the Japanese with a bonanza. Imari ware, both the polychrome enamel and the blue, were brought to Europe exclusively by the Dutch—the only foreigners apart from the Chinese allowed to trade on Japanese territory after 1639. Blue and white Imari proved highly influential in Holland, particularly in Delft, as well as in England and Germany. By the mid 17th century, Arita kilns were also producing European-style dinner services, often embellished with family crests. Porcelain was no longer a rarity in Japan and even the common people used it for soba noodle cups.