Bizen Pottery History: 1,200 Years from Sueki to the Tea Bowl

The history of bizen pottery is usually compressed into a single line: “Japan’s oldest pottery, more than a thousand years old.” Inside that line sit the techniques carried over by immigrant craftsmen, the quotas set by the imperial court, the shift from reduction to oxidation firing, and the aesthetic that tea masters discovered — layer upon layer of history, arriving at the japanese ceramics we hold today.

This article takes the history outlined in Bizen Ware: The Famous Pottery Born from the Six Ancient Kilns — Earth and Flame and goes deeper, period by period, from the age of sueki stoneware to the stagnation of the late Edo era. Why did bizen pottery become red, and why does it draw its beauty from having no glaze at all? Let us take the reasons one at a time.

• Bizen Ware: The Famous Pottery Born from the Six Ancient Kilns — Earth and Flame

Bizen Pottery Began with Sueki Stoneware

The direct ancestor of bizen pottery is sueki (須恵器, grey stoneware).

The Jomon and Yayoi earthenware that came before it was hand-formed and fired at low temperature, and it leaked. Sueki was different: thrown on a wheel and fired hot in a tunnel kiln under reduction, producing a hard, grey stoneware. Strong, and watertight. The people who brought this technology to Japan were engineers who crossed from the Korean Peninsula.

Arriving with them was Rokuro seikei (wheel throwing). Jomon and Yayoi pottery-making had been Tebineri — hand-building, and women’s work — but from the introduction of the wheel onward, sueki production shifted to become a specialised male occupation. When the technique changed, the makers themselves changed with it, and the first step of the history leading to today’s bizen pottery was taken.

Alongside it, hajiki (土師器) — descended from Yayoi earthenware — continued in wide use. Soft, reddish-brown, fired in oxidation, it served everyday cooking and ritual.

Immigrants Settled in Okayama, and Bizen Became a Production Centre

Around the year 400, people from the kingdom of Baekje on the Korean Peninsula were naturalised in Japan, and some of them settled in what is now Okayama Prefecture. This is how sueki technology took root in Bizen. Because the hajiki potters migrated at the same time, Okayama of that era became a densely populated region.

Sueki and hajiki production at the time was administered from the centre — the capital at Kyoto. Bizen was positioned as one of its production bases. And in the Engishiki (延喜式), the code of law compiled in 901, Bizen was assigned the largest delivery quota of all.

Being able to fire that many pieces meant there were kilns, there was clay, and there were people. That accumulation became the foundation on which bizen pottery would later survive as one of the Six Ancient Kilns.

Hard Years: The Rise of Lacquerware

But once the age of the samurai began (from the late twelfth century), this system of central control lost its power. Makers who had survived simply by delivering a fixed quota lost their backing.

What followed was harder still: the rise of lacquerware. Light, unbreakable and well suited to soup, lacquer pieces spread widely, and demand for sueki and hajiki themselves contracted. As Japanese Lacquerware Guide: How Urushi Brings Wood to Life shows, lacquerware was, for its time, an overwhelmingly advanced option.

Potters had to find a way of living that was not the life of a potter. The history of bizen pottery begins with standing up again from this crisis.

From Nara to Heian: Earthenware Becomes Pottery

Pottery began to be fired in Bizen itself roughly 1,200 years ago, in the Nara period (710–794). The shift from earthenware to pottery came in the Heian period (794–1185). By then the two lineages — sueki and hajiki — had merged technically.

What separates earthenware from pottery is whether glaze is applied and the firing temperature.

Bizen, however, does not sit neatly in this scheme. Bizen chose to stay unglazed and fire hot instead. This principle is called Yakishime (unglazed fired ware), and it is the idea inherited from sueki, carried on unchanged. The full classification is set out in Japanese Pottery: Earthenware, Stoneware and Porcelain Explained.

Late Heian: Why Bizen Turned Red

Here lies the decisive turning point in the history of bizen pottery, and the one most often overlooked.

Sueki up to this point had been reduction-fired — starved of oxygen inside the kiln. Iron in the clay develops black, and the piece comes out grey. But by the late Heian period, red pottery was what people wanted.

So Bizen switched to oxidation firing, increasing the burn and firing harder. Send in enough oxygen and the iron in the clay develops red. What emerged from this was the reddish-brown that belongs to Bizen alone.

The colour we picture today when we hear the words bizen pottery is the result of that shift in demand, and of the change in firing that answered it. How to read the colours and markings that appear on the surface is covered in Japanese Pottery Keshiki: How to Read Glaze Drips, Flame Marks, and Kiln Effects.

Bizen Alone Changed Its Kiln Early

From the sueki era onward, Bizen and every other region used the Anagama kiln — a tunnel dug into a hillside on the slope, large enough for an adult to enter stooping, pitched along the incline.

But Bizen was the first among the Six Ancient Kilns to take a new option. While the other regions kept using tunnel kilns until the Muromachi period (1336–1573), Bizen moved early to the semi-above-ground kiln, the so-called teppō-gama (鉄砲窯). Its structure: a trench dug into a natural slope, roofed over with an arched vault.

Afterwards, as the other regions developed from the Muromachi period onward, Bizen’s kiln was left holding the oldest form of all. By keeping that old form, Bizen preserved its own history intact, and carried it into the present day.

How the structure of a kiln moves flame and ash, and decides the expression of a piece, can be read in Wood Fired Pottery: The Art of Japan’s Noborigama Climbing Kiln and Noborigama kiln.

Kamakura to Muromachi: What Was Being Fired

Kamakura Period (1185–1333) — Jars, Urns, and the Grinding Bowl

What Bizen fired in the Kamakura period was jars and storage urns. And the piece for which demand in Bizen ran especially high was the suribachi (摺鉢, grinding bowl). Bizen clay, fired hard and dense, resists wear under grinding. Here a practical requirement became the region’s speciality outright.

Pieces from this period begin to show the wood-ash glaze called goma (胡麻, sesame). Ash from the firewood settles on the piece, melts at high temperature and turns to glass, sometimes leaving trails as though glaze had run. Because no one applied it by hand, it is called Shizen-yu, natural ash glaze.

Muromachi Period — Tea-Leaf Jars, and the Chinese Wall

In the Muromachi period, tea-leaf storage jars began to be fired. In this field, though, the highly practical Chinese imports were prized, and Bizen never took the leading role.

The current turned in the mid-Muromachi, as the Sengoku era of warring states began. Tokkuri sake flasks and similar pieces came to be fired, and with the spread of wabi-cha — the austere style of tea — Bizen began producing tea ceramics too. Not lavish Chinese imports, but beauty found in the raw texture of clay itself; this inversion of values pushed Bizen onto the main stage.

What the tea ceremony brought to japanese pottery is covered in detail in Japanese Tea Ceremony Ceramics: & History and What Wabi-Sabi Ceramics Bring Into our Life.

Late Muromachi — Guilds and the Shared Kiln

In the late Muromachi, Bizen’s makers organised into za (座, trade guilds). Kilns moved from individual ownership to the shared kiln — a system in which one kiln was divided and fired between them.

Sharing a kiln means that how the flame strikes a piece, and how the ash falls on it, is decided by where it stands. Bizen’s “landscape that never repeats” is born partly from the structure of that shared kiln.

Momoyama Period (1573–1600) — Tea Masters Chose Bizen

In the Momoyama period, Bizen came to be loved by tea masters more than ever. The piece used most of all was the kensui (建水, waste-water bowl). Flower containers had been known as celebrated pieces even before this, and spread further in this era.

At a tea gathering, the kensui is the piece into which used hot water is discarded. To choose a raw, unrefined clay piece for the least conspicuous utensil of all — that choice was itself the Momoyama aesthetic.

For a comparison with a region that aimed at the same austerity by the exact opposite method, Hagi Ware and Bizen Pottery: Two Philosophies of Wabi-Sabi in Japanese Ceramics is the clearest place to look.

Edo Period (1603–1868) — The Age of Sculptural Work, and Then Stagnation

With the Edo period, Bizen’s mainstream changed. Three-dimensional sculptural figures took the centre, and incense containers and similar pieces were fired in quantity. It was an era in which the skill of carving clay and building form was refined.

But in the late Edo, sales stagnated under pressure from Imari and Seto porcelain. White, thin, and able to carry painted decoration, porcelain was a new option for the people of the day.

• Arita Porcelain Guide: Japan’s First Porcelain and Its 400-Year Legacy

Within that, Bizen’s production system had no choice but to change as well. Until then the cycle had been large in scale — a shared kiln fired for thirty to forty days, opened once a year — and this shifted toward the present-day arrangement of small groups of makers opening the kiln more frequently.

Receiving 1,200 Years in a Single Piece

So it is that bizen pottery, while inheriting its history from the past, came through crisis by changing its kiln and its firing method on its own terms, and arrived here. Follow the history of bizen pottery and you notice that this region has never once had a period of stability. Cut loose from state administration, pressed by lacquerware, pressed by porcelain — and each time it changed what it fired. From jars to grinding bowls, to tea ceramics, to sculptural work.

Even so, one thing never changed. The choice of Yakishime (unglazed fired ware), applying no glaze at all.

The principle carried in by immigrant craftsmen 1,500 years ago — fire it hot enough and it will hold water without glaze. From there to now. The hidasuki plate in your hand, the guinomi sake cup with goma running across it: both stand on that principle, and that is the appeal of bizen pottery still being fired today. Why not bring a piece with 1,200 years of history behind it into your own daily life?

Related Articles & Guides

More on Bizen

• Bizen Ware: The Famous Pottery Born from the Six Ancient Kilns — Earth and Flame
• Hagi Ware and Bizen Pottery: Two Philosophies of Wabi-Sabi in Japanese Ceramics

Following the History and Lineage

• The History of Japanese Ceramics
• Japan’s Six Ancient Kilns: the Country’s Oldest Pottery Regions

Understanding Kilns and Technique

• Wood Fired Pottery: The Art of Japan’s Noborigama Climbing Kiln
• Japanese Pottery Keshiki: How to Read Glaze Drips, Flame Marks, and Kiln Effects
• Japanese Pottery: Earthenware, Stoneware and Porcelain Explained

Bringing It Into Daily Life

• Japanese Sake Cups: Ochoko, Sakazuki, Guinomi and the Complete Guide
• Japanese Sake Ware guide
• Japanese Ceramics That Grow: How Handmade Pottery Changes and Deepens with Every Use
• Japanese Ceramics Care Guide