Kobashi Toshimitsu is the creator of the first tea cup I’ve ever bought. I went to visit him in 2019, and wrote a little about it.
Bizen is a town in the Okayama prefecture of Japan (2 prefecture’s West of Kyoto) well known for its pottery. It has a very easy to identify wabi-sabi style which is created with semi-random effects in the kiln. There is no glazing in Bizen, and the cups are heavy stoneware generally made from rice paddy clay in the towns area.
The town itself isn’t very big. The pottery center is really just 2 roads, and to walk from one end of the strip to the other takes maybe 30 minutes. The main road is a thoroughfare for cars which runs parallel to the Japan Rail station ‘Imbe’. On this main road you can find the Bizen Pottery Museum, Bizen Potter’s Organization, and far to the East; MuGenAn’s shop. The second road is one block to the north, it’s a narrow walking street lined with small pottery shops, art galleries, and cafes.
I had a chance to visit Bizen in January 2019. On an early Monday morning my father in law drove us over from Osaka which took a couple hours. We had brunch at a coffee shop called Udo which is adjacent to the Bizen Potters Organization. It was neat ambiance in the cafe because all of the cups and plates used were made in Bizen.
The Bizen Potter’s Organization has a large shop inside which has wares from every potter in Bizen, usually around 6 pieces which show the general scope of the potters work. You can buy things from this store or get the information about how to contact the potter directly. This was the first place we went and I think we spent about an hour inside.
I went into Bizen thinking that Kobashi-san’s cups were made with a style uniquely his but it turns out that there’s a couple potters who also do the straight edged form of tea cups. I was humbled. We left BPO and headed East up the main street. We wandered into a few shops here and there but there was nothing too exciting to see. We eventually took a look at our phones GPS and learned that MuGenAn was straight ahead. We popped in to say hello.
I wrote an article about Bizenyaki back in 2013, I was super hyped to buy my first clay tea cup and kyusu teapot. I got them in a Daimaru department store in Osaka and learned about MuGenAn from the brochure inside the box. My cup means a lot to me, and as I write this article it’s sitting empty off to my right. Before we went to Bizen my father in law called MuGenAn (the company which employs the potter who made this cup) to ask if I could meet with him. I had no idea about this. When we arrived in the store he was there waiting to greet us. As I’ve never met him before of course I couldn’t recognize him, I asked this attendant to show me Kobashi-san’s work. He took me over to a section of the store with several cups ranging in style from cups for Sake, High Balls, Water, and Tea as well as various other wares for flower arrangement. He seemed to know a lot about him and as I embarrassingly waxed poetic about my fantasy of meeting him while I’m in town when he said “You know I’m Kobashi right?”
He invited us for a tour of the kilns which fire all of the MuGenAn wares (there’s several potters who work under MuGenAn). When we arrived at the address and got out of the car I immediately felt that there’s a special aroma to the area. Wood. There’s wood everywhere, easily 5000 pieces neatly piled up in bundles creating a wall around the front of the workshop. It smelled like the lumber yard of a building supply store, just with pristine, humid mountain air instead of ‘dust’ and ‘hot pavement’.
There were 3 kilns from my recollection. 2 smaller kilns which can hold several hundred items, and a major kiln which can hold 15,000 or so items. The major kiln is fired once or twice per year and it consumes a LOT of wood! The traditional Bizen kilning process takes approximately 2 weeks straight of constant pine wood fire. During the firing weeks the potters do shift work approximately 8 hours a day to stock the kiln with new wood to keep the temperature up. There’s always someone present during the firing. This process creates so much residual heat that it has to be done in the cooler months of the year otherwise its unbearable.
I’m going to be getting a batch of tea cups from this years production in October. 10 cups in total, and I’ll charge the retail cost of what they sell for in Japan plus a couple extra dollars to cover shipping. It’s a very exciting prospect for me to be working with Kobashi-san and MuGenAn as an ambassador to Bizen pottery for Canadian’s.
A nice tea cup should be the first item for any tea lover, its importance is second only to the tea itself. There’s a wonderful feeling that utilizing art during everyday life brings. Although the price may be high, Kobashi-san charges no where near what some other producers charge and I think he makes a superior product. I’ll test the waters with these first 10, and if successful I will bring in some tea pots and matcha bowls next year.
2024 Update:
More cups will be sent this year, I ordered 10 cups and 30 Bizendama. They will be fired and mailed in October.
I have 2 cups from 2021 still for sale, you can view the black version here, and the blue version here!
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