CLAY IDOLS: TOSHIN FUJIWARA
The second of a three-part series on Bizenyaki, Okayama Ceramics.
We are travelling through the town of Imbe, passing dozens of red brick chimneys which rise up over clay tiled rooftops; passing thousands of stacked pieces of wood ready to heat kilns (and send smoke up the chimneys), passing old ceramics factories, passing rice fields. It is late afternoon when we arrive at Toshin Fujiwara’s home. Outside: three dogs, a rooster, birds and fish in tanks. Inside: the wild smell of deer meat grilling on a stove. Fujiwara is sitting on a swivel chair beside a window. Today he is working on a small clay statue of an old man sitting atop a cow rendered in incredible detail. “Learning one form- like this cow- is not so hard, it takes about a year,” he says, “but learning many forms and styles is very difficult.” Toshin Fujiwara has been producing Bizen-yaki since he was 28. He is a master of the figurative style known as Saiku. In the old days he made more traditional Bizen-yaki, things like cups and bowls as he helped his father but after his knees became damaged, he moved to the Saiku style which he could make sitting upright.
In Saiku, the clay is sculpted into mythological figures to be purchased by Shrines, businessmen and the elderly. “Young people are not interested in this kind of thing as it’s becoming too expensive for them.” Even his smallest pieces cost nearly ¥50,000 because the high quality clay used is expensive and creating the pieces is slow and intricate. He builds the statues slowly, first working on the legs and then the body one layer at a time. Because the pieces are always hollow the hardest part is keeping the thickness of the clay even. Unevenness causes breakages, ruining days (or weeks) of work.
Fujiwara takes us to a room next door with a collection of his work; arching tigers with grotesque faces, a buddha carrying a giant frog, an old man riding on the back of a elephant. Originally the craftsmen who made Bizen-yaki, pottery from the Bizen area, were interested in producing functional items which could be used in everyday life; cups for drinking from, bowls for grinding things in, simple small cups and bowls for storing food, grinding seeds, eating and drinking from. But over time Bizen-yaki came to be seen as a thing of beauty. Strong aesthetic ideas took hold during the 16th Century in Japan Bizen-yaki pieces became the preferred items for tea drinking ceremonies for their imperfect, rustic elegance. Fujiwara’s forms do not have that same sense of imperfection which traditional Bizen-yaki is renowned for. Fujiwara’s forms are rendered in meticulous detail and great care is taken to make each figure look realistic. Fujiwara’s style, Saiku, is about creating pieces which carry a different kind of substance than tea or sake, they are idols and fetishes, places for gods, spirits and souls to inhabit.
“Once a company asked me to make a small statue of their company president,” says Fujiwara as we are leaving, “they asked me to place a photo of the man inside his own statue so that when it was fired in the kiln his soul would be released inside the clay.”
Toshin Fujiwara’s workshop is located at 639 Imbe Bizen City, Okayama Prefecture.
TEL: 0869-64-3481
Original text and photography of this entry appeared in Paper Sky No. 35 (Basque, 2011)
