Iga Ware: Fire, Ash and the Beauty of Rough Clay

A Picture the Fire Drew Once: Keshiki

Ceramics has a word, keshiki — landscape. It refers to the pattern and surface that the flame and ash of a kiln draw by chance across a piece. Calling that a landscape shows a Japanese aesthetic in which pottery is met the way one might appreciate the scenery of the natural world.

Keshiki appears on pottery from every region, to varying degrees. But no region has pursued it as thoroughly as Iga ware, or seen the essence of beauty so completely in the contingency of flame and ash.

Iga City in Mie Prefecture. In this mountain basin, once known as the home of the ninja, a kiln tradition has continued for more than 1,200 years. Iga clay, Iga firewood, Iga kilns. The work born of that trinity carries a wildness, a rough beauty, a strength drawn from nature — and it continues to attract collectors worldwide.

The History of Iga Ware: A Thousand Years of Fire in the Ninja Country

How Iga ware began

The history of Iga ware goes back to the eighth century. Kilns in the Iga area then produced the grey ware known as sueki — sturdy pottery valued for storage and as burial goods — and this is taken as the source of Iga ware.

Geography raised Iga ware. In the inland mountains of Mie Prefecture, in strata said to have been the ancient bed of Lake Biwa, lies a particular clay called Iga clay. It contains organic matter from those old lake beds, and when fired at high temperature it produces a distinctive pitted unevenness across the surface.

Neighbouring Shigaraki in Shiga Prefecture is one of Japan's leading ceramic regions, counted among the Six Ancient Kilns. Like Shigaraki, Iga sits on rich ground of its own, and it is here that Iga ware developed its own character.

The Momoyama golden age of Iga

Iga ware grew brilliant in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The development of tea, and tea practitioners' hunger for the wabi tea bowl, gave Iga a new life.

Momoyama tea masters of the warrior class, above all Furuta Oribe, wanted not perfect, beautiful bowls but rough, dynamic, unpredictable ones. Deliberate distortion, cuts and tilts began to be applied to tea bowls, and an aesthetic called hakaku — breaking the rules — was born.

Oribe loved forms that were playfully unconventional, almost comic. He disliked symmetry and found real interest in the warped bowl. This is close to the thinking of his contemporary Sen no Rikyu, but where Rikyu pursued the still wabi-sabi that comes from nature, Oribe preferred powerful work with the energy of movement, and used Iga methods to build distortion and cuts in deliberately.

Iga clay, and the charring, ash deposits and running melted ash — bidoro — born of long, high-temperature firing. Work born of that energy was prized as ware for wabi tea, and Momoyama Iga carved its name permanently into the history of Japanese ceramics.

Decline and revival

In the Edo period, Iga ware shifted from tea utensils to everyday tableware and household pottery. Practical pieces — jars, vats, donabe — became the mainstay, and the earlier wabi beauty receded for a time.

The revival came through the mingei movement of the Meiji and Taisho eras and the makers connected to it. Efforts began to rediscover the properties of Iga clay and bring Momoyama technique into the present, and that leads to the flourishing of Iga ware today.

Visiting Iga

Iga City is about an hour from Nagoya by Kintetsu train or car. Several kilns are scattered through the city, and with a reservation you can visit a workshop and buy directly.

The Iga Ware Traditional Industry Hall exhibits the region's history and contemporary work together, making it the ideal first encounter with Iga ware. Nearby there are also several shops handling not only new Iga makers but old Iga ware from the Momoyama and Edo periods, so a trip tracing the history is possible.

What Defines Iga Ware: A World Made by Flame and Ash

The properties of Iga clay

What decides the character of Iga ware is the particular nature of Iga clay.

Fired at high temperature (1,250–1,300°C), the organic matter within it vaporises and creates bubbles large and small. That produces the grit and unevenness characteristic of an Iga surface.

Iga clay is also strongly refractory and withstands long firings. That connects directly to its function as donabe, and the reputation that Iga donabe stand up to direct flame is widely known among cooks.

Long firing and the beauty of ash

An Iga firing usually runs for ten to fifteen days. During that time, the following happens inside the kiln.

• Ash falls and melts into glaze　Ash from burning wood swirls and settles on the pieces. Melting at high temperature, it forms a glassy natural glaze on the surface — a glaze no one applied.
• Melted ash runs　Its running creates distinctive flow patterns across the surface. Ranging from blue-green to amber, this natural glaze is one of the great highlights of Iga ware.
• Where the flame strikes, the piece chars　It turns black to brown. The pattern of that charring also differs completely depending on the position in the kiln and the movement of the flame.

All of this is the product of chance, beyond the maker's control. The maker chooses the clay, forms the piece and loads the kiln. What happens to the surface after that is decided by flame, ash and time. That is the core of the Iga philosophy.

The Representative Forms of Iga Ware

Flower containers

One of the most representative Iga forms is the flower container.

Momoyama tea practitioners regarded Iga's rough clay, running natural glaze and charring as the conditions of the most beautiful flower container. Placed in the alcove of a tea room, an Iga container brought the breath of nature indoors with a single wild stem.

Contemporary Iga makers still treat flower containers as one of their most important forms. From large jars to slim single-stem holders, containers of many shapes continue to come out of Iga kilns.

Mizusashi (water jars)

As tea ware, Iga's water jars and flower containers hold particularly important positions. A mizusashi holds the water used in tea and plays an important role in the setting of the tea room.

An Iga mizusashi, with its rough clay and the surface of its yohen, harmonises perfectly with the wabi space of a tea room, and it is still highly valued by tea practitioners.

There is also a form that symbolises Iga: the mimitsuki mizusashi, a water jar with large lugs, or "ears." A rough, rock-like body with ears that express a decorative strength beyond any practical need — exactly the dynamic form Oribe preferred.

Donabe (clay pots)

What is known internationally as the practical Iga product is the donabe. The refractoriness and heat retention of Iga clay give it the finest function as a cooking pot. The reputation that rice cooked in an Iga donabe tastes better is a long-standing conviction among cooks.

Donabe go on direct flame, and many households use them instead of a rice cooker. Cooking in a donabe, where even heat convects around the ingredients, shows its real value in simmered dishes, mixed rice and hotpot. Iga donabe are also popular as practical gifts sent from Japan abroad.

Wild Pottery, Made by a Poet of Fire

Iga ware is pottery that a maker forms and that fire then draws upon. Work created jointly by a person and by nature. That is what Iga ware fundamentally is.

Its rough clay, its running natural glaze, the landscape of its charring. These are not defects but proof that a piece holds a universe of its own. Like Bizen, it is a region that uses no glaze, yet the aesthetic is entirely different. By taking flame and ash more actively as materials of beauty, Iga ware is among the most poetic pottery in Japan.

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• Bizen Ware: Pottery With No Glaze at All

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