Arita Ware: Japan's First Porcelain, 400 Years On

Say Japanese porcelain and you say Arita ware. Carried on for more than 400 years around Arita Town in Saga Prefecture, its white, fine-grained surface and precise painting influenced not only Japan but the porcelain industry of Europe. Meissen, Chantilly, Delft — the great porcelain regions of the world learned from Arita's technique and styles. Why did Arita ware captivate the world so completely? Let us look closely at its history and character.

Knowing a region before buying a piece makes what you hold that much more precious. If you want to learn about Japan's regions more broadly, please also see the guides below.

• Japanese Pottery by Region: A Buyer's Map
• Stoneware vs Porcelain: How to Tell Them Apart
• Arita vs Hasami Porcelain: Why the Same White Porcelain Took Two Paths

What Arita Ware Is

Arita ware is porcelain fired around Arita Town in Saga Prefecture, with the longest history of any porcelain in Japan. Its birth goes back to the early seventeenth century, and because porcelain was fired here for the first time in Japan it is known as the birthplace of Japanese porcelain.

Its defining feature is the beauty of translucent white porcelain. Made from crushed stone, porcelain is far harder and stronger than stoneware. Flick the rim of a thinly formed piece with a finger and a clear, metallic note rings out.

Saga Prefecture, Home of Arita Ware

Saga Prefecture, the home of Arita ware, sits in northwestern Kyushu, in the region formerly called Hizen. That this became the birthplace of Japanese porcelain was no accident.

The largest reason is that good porcelain stone was discovered in the town of Arita. In the early seventeenth century, potters who had come from the Korean Peninsula found the Izumiyama quarry, and porcelain production began in Japan for the first time.

Saga's geography also played a major role. Close to the Korean Peninsula and the Chinese mainland, it had long been a window through which advanced technique and culture entered. And with the shipping port of Imari, Arita's pottery crossed the sea under the name "Imari" and grew into an international brand that captivated European royalty and nobility.

Saga today holds not only Arita but neighbouring Imari, Takeo and Karatsu, distinctive kiln sites each with their own character. Within quiet country surrounded by gentle mountains, smoke still rises from the chimneys, and for more than 400 years the handwork of makers has been carried on without a break. To visit Saga is to trace the source of beauty through use in Japan.

The Birth of Arita Ware

The history of Arita ware begins with a single discovery in the early seventeenth century.

During Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea (1592–1598), the Kyushu daimyo Nabeshima Naoshige brought skilled Korean potters back to Japan. One of them, Yi Sam-pyeong, discovered white porcelain stone at Izumiyama in Arita around 1616. That was the starting point of porcelain production in Japan.

Until then, Japanese pottery had been dominated by earthenware and stoneware, and the white porcelain imported from China and Korea was a special foreign luxury. With Yi Sam-pyeong's discovery, Japan could at last produce porcelain itself.

That revolutionary event changed the history of Japanese ceramics from the ground up. Through the seventeenth century Arita's technique advanced rapidly, and during the gap when porcelain imports from China ceased amid the turmoil at the end of the Ming dynasty, Arita took over much of that share and export to Europe began in earnest.

Because shipments went out through the nearby port of Imari, it circulated in Europe as "Imari ware." Versailles in France, Dresden Castle in Germany — Arita ware, which European courts and nobles competed to collect, was praised as a marvel of the East.

The Four Great Styles of Arita Ware

Arita ware is not a single style. Several developed over 400 years, each forming a world of its own with a different beauty.

Ko-Imari: opulent export porcelain

The earliest export style. Built on sometsuke — cobalt blue underglaze — with lavish decoration added in overglaze red, green, black and gold. Exported in quantity to Europe, it furnished the tables of the courts.

Ko-Imari today is a collector's item traded at high prices at auctions and antique markets in Japan and abroad. A fine mid-Edo piece can carry a price in the hundreds of thousands to millions of yen.

Opulent, densely worked, with historical weight. It suits collectors and antique enthusiasts.

Kakiemon: the beauty of empty space

One of the most internationally known styles in Arita ware. It is defined by asymmetrical painting that values empty space, set on a milky white porcelain body known as nigoshide. Natural motifs — birds, flowers, squirrels, rocks — are drawn carefully but in bold composition.

Established by the Kakiemon house in the seventeenth century, the style crossed to Europe and was imitated by many great kilns including Meissen in Germany, Chantilly in France and Royal Delft in the Netherlands. That is how innovative its beauty was.

Refined, spacious, with the dignity of asymmetry. It suits collectors who value historical significance.

Nabeshima: tribute to the shogun

The highest grade of porcelain, made on the order of the Nabeshima lords as gifts for the shogunal house and never sold. It did not circulate on the open market and was made at a completely closed official kiln.

Perfect symmetry, vivid colour, and the comb-tooth pattern cut into the foot ring as proof of authenticity. Many surviving Nabeshima pieces are designated National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties, and contemporary artists make new work while carrying the tradition forward.

Composed, formal, aristocratically exact. It suits fine gifts and a formal table.

Sometsuke: the classical beauty of blue and white

The most widely loved style in Arita ware. Plants, landscapes and geometric motifs are drawn in cobalt blue on translucent white porcelain, covered in clear glaze and fired.

From plain folk-kiln work to refined one-off pieces by contemporary artists, the price range is wide, which makes it ideal as an entry point for anyone holding Japanese ceramics for the first time.

Classical, clean, beautiful across eras. It answers a wide range of purposes, from daily use to gifts.

Why Arita Ware Is Special

What makes Arita special is the composition of the stone that comes from this ground, a history of over 400 years, and the kilns that spent those years in dialogue with nature, refining a sensibility of their own through trial and error.

Amakusa porcelain stone from Kumamoto Prefecture, the raw material of Arita porcelain, gives the body a whiteness and translucency that cannot be reproduced exactly anywhere else. Hold a piece to the light and it glows faintly through — a beauty particular to this stone.

The decorative process runs through several stages. Underglaze painting first (in cobalt pigment for sometsuke), then clear glaze and a main firing above 1,300°C. After that, overglaze painting is applied and fired again in an overglaze kiln at around 800°C. Anything gilded takes one more firing still. It is not unusual for a single plate to go through three or four firings before it is finished.

More than 130 kilns and workshops are gathered in Arita Town today, from long-established family kilns to the individual studios of young artists, all competing in skill.

Arita Ware and Japanese Food Culture

Arita porcelain has been loved on Japanese tables for so long because its clean whiteness shows the colour of food beautifully.

Cool summer dishes — somen, chilled tofu, sashimi — look their best on the cool blue-white of sometsuke. Vegetable dishes in vivid reds and yellows shine more clearly on white porcelain. Simmered and grilled Japanese dishes harmonise with painted motifs.

The idea in Japanese food culture that a dish is completed by being served on a piece has been practised alongside Arita ware for 400 years. The same food gives a completely different impression depending on what it is served on. You could say the many styles of Arita developed as the canvas for exactly that.

Arita Ware Today: 400 Years of Tradition and Innovation

Arita's artists today attempt new expression while protecting the traditional styles.

Simple white porcelain cups that suit Scandinavian interiors. Modern sake sets making use of porcelain's translucency. Tableware hand-painted with restrained contemporary motifs. Work like this has caught the attention of design-minded people worldwide.

The 2016/Arita project, launched to mark 400 years of Arita ware in 2016, brought sixteen international designers — among them Jasper Morrison (UK), Neri&Hu (Shanghai), Max Lamb (UK) and Gustav Urgor (Denmark) — into collaboration with long-established Arita kilns to develop new Arita porcelain.

The resulting work showed vividly what happens when 400 years of traditional technique meets a contemporary design sense. Thin white porcelain cups making use of the whiteness and translucency of Amakusa stone; structural designs pushing at what porcelain can do. All of it goes beyond the frame of classical Arita ware while unmistakably coming out of Arita's technique and material.

The project showed the world that Arita ware is not a legacy of the past but a region living on within a contemporary creative context. Protecting tradition while attempting innovation: that stance is what will make Arita's next 400 years.

How to Buy Arita Ware

Visiting Arita in Saga Prefecture

Kilns are scattered from around Arita Station toward Imari. The Arita Ceramics Fair, held every Golden Week (around 29 April to 5 May), is one of Japan's largest pottery markets — an event in which the whole town becomes the venue and attendance can exceed 500,000.

Its greatest appeal is that more than 130 kilns and shops stand side by side and you can buy directly from the makers. From fine work usually available only in galleries and department stores to affordable everyday pieces, you can compare a wide range in one place.

If you are combining it with travel, Arita Station is about an hour from Saga Station by bus or JR. Building an Arita visit into a trip through Kyushu lets you choose genuine Arita ware while feeling the air and history of the region.

Buying online

Nokaze delivers work directly from Arita's artists, introduced together with the maker's story. Please take a look.

Keeping Arita Ware Beautiful

Because Arita ware is porcelain, care is relatively simple compared with stoneware such as Hagi or Shigaraki. Proper care will still keep it beautiful for far longer.

Much of it is dishwasher-safe, but we recommend hand washing for painted work and anything gilded. Overglaze painting in particular can fade over time under a dishwasher's strong detergent and high temperature. Wash gently with neutral detergent and a soft sponge.

And although porcelain is harder than stoneware, pieces knocking together in storage will scratch. Gold and overglaze work is especially easy to damage, so slipping cloth or a protective sheet between pieces is worthwhile. With newly acquired Arita ware, rinsing lightly in warm water before first use is a safe start.

• How to Care for Japanese Ceramics: A Practical Guide

How Arita Ware Is Regarded Worldwide

When Arita ware crossed to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europe had no technique for making porcelain. Alongside Jingdezhen in China, Arita was the most luxurious collecting object for nobility and royalty as porcelain of the East.

Augustus the Strong of Germany is said to have collected several thousand pieces of Arita porcelain to furnish one room of his palace as a porcelain chamber. Versailles in France, Schönbrunn in Austria — Arita porcelain stood at the centres of European power.

That historical background gives Arita ware today a cultural prestige beyond mere pottery. A piece of Arita comes from a region that led the world's aesthetic sensibility for 400 years, and that weight has not changed.

To choose Arita among Japanese ceramics is also to touch the most important chapter in the history of the medium. Four hundred years of a maker's knowledge and sense of beauty live in every piece.

Related Guides

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• A Short History of Japanese Ceramics, Jomon to Now

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• Arita vs Hasami Porcelain: Why the Same White Porcelain Took Two Paths
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• Arita Ware Utensils | Delivering Artists' Works to the World

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