濱田庄司

Hamada Shōji, the major Mingei Movement artist who has become almost synonymous with Mashiko ware. Shōji was born in 1894 the first son of father Kyūzō and mother Ai, with the birth taking place at Ōta Hospital, his mother’s home in present-day Kawasaki city, Kanagawa prefecture. He was named Shōji 象二, with the first character taken from his grandfather’s name, Zenshō 全象. As a young man his father had taken the art name Seizan 晴山 with the hopes of becoming a painter, but around the time of Shōji’s birth he ran a shop selling brushes near Toranomon, Tokyo. Shōji contracted diphtheria at the age of four, and the following year was moved to his father’s family home in Mizonokuchi for recuperation. It was this experience which led to his fascination with the countryside. He was good at calligraphy practice, influenced by his grandfather’s prowess with the brush, and it seems that he liked to draw pictures from a young age. Both his father and grandfather were generous about him painting pictures and unstinting in supplying him with paints and sketch books. While studying at the Tokyo First Middle School (present-day Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School), Shōji often went out sketching and he repeatedly won prizes for the drawings he submitted to magazines. On the other hand, he was also zealous in his study of chemistry, physics, and higher mathematics. It was around this time that he set ceramics as his future path. About then he was enchanted when he saw works by Bernard Leach and Tomimoto Kenkichi at a Ginza gallery. Around that time his father forced him to change the characters of his name, and this led to some of the articles submitted to magazines at the time using the 庄司 characters for his name. In 1913 he entered Tokyo Higher Technical School (present-day Tokyo Institute of Technology), where Kawai Kanjirō, who would later become a close friend, was a senior student, and would often visit Itaya Hazan at home as he studied under him at school. Hamada realized that the pottery pot that he had himself used at Hazan’s home was a “sansui dobin” (landscape earthen teapot) that had been made in Mashiko. During summer vacations he would visit kilns in Mino, Seto, Tokoname, Banko, Shigaraki, Iga, Kutani, and Kyoto, thus accumulating both knowledge and experience of ceramics. After graduating he began work at Kyoto City Ceramic Research Institute, where Kawai Kanjirō was working. Hamada stated, “I found my way in Kyoto, started it in England, learned in Okinawa and grew up in Mashiko.” (Hamada Shōji, “Mujinzō”, Asahi Shimbun, 1974, p. 99). Just as it says, Hamada’s complete absorption in glaze research at Kyoto City Ceramic Research Institute was his first step as a potter. This was a wonderful place to work, not only was his close friend Kawai there, he also worked with Komori Shinobu, the premier glaze research specialist of the time. Traveling to Tokyo on weekends to see art exhibitions rounded out his full days. But then he spoke with Leach in 1918 at his solo show venue (Ryūitsusō or Ruisseau, Kanda, Tokyo), and their friendship deepened the following year when he visited Leach’s pottery studio at Yanagi Sōetsu (Muneyoshi)’s residence in Mashiko. In 1920, Leach strongly urged Hamada to come to England and make pottery, so Hamada quit his job at the Kyoto City Ceramic Research Institute and went to England. In England he primarily lived in St Ives, Cornwall, and made pottery. He formed close friendships with textile artist Ethel Mairet and sculptor Eric Gill as he became all the more fascinated by healthy, free country living. In 1923 Hamada held his first solo exhibition at W. B. Paterson’s Gallery in London. The following year he traveled through France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt, as he made his way back to Japan. He spent two months living at Kawai Kanjirō’s home in Kyoto, and married Kimura Mitsue (later Kazue). In 1925 he worked at the Tsuboya Kiln in Okinawa, and it was around this time that he began to use “hakeme” brushstroke designs and “kibimon” patterns. At the end of the year he traveled through Wakayama and Mie prefectures with Yanagi and Kawai, tracing the places mentioned in Mokujiki Shōnin’s diaries. It was during that trip that the three men coined the term “mingei” as an abbreviation of “minshū no kōgei”, literally crafts of the masses. The following year saw them write their “Prospectus on Establishment of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum” (1926). In 1928, Hamada, Kawai and others entered works in the Tomimoto Kenkichi-centered Crafts Section of the Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai (Association for the Creation of National Painting) exhibition. Hamada was recognized as a representative of the Mingei school and the following year was elected a full member of the Kokugakai. Around that same time he moved into a farmhouse that he had relocated from a village near Mashiko to the site of the current Hamada Kiln. In 1931 he founded the monthly magazine “Kōgei” 工藝 (Crafts), and the ceramics researcher and potter Koyama Fujio introduced him to the businessman Ōhara Magosaburō. In 1933, the art critic Aoyama Jirō edited and published Hamada’s first collected works, “Hamada Shōji tōkishū” (Hamada Shōji Pottery Collection) (Kōseikai Shuppanbu). In 1934 he relocated a neighboring farmer’s “nagayamon”-style house, with frontage of about 16.2 m (“kyūken” in traditional Japanese measurement) as his work space. In 1942, he built a large climbing kiln and relocated another farmhouse that he named Uendai. The year 1936 was filled with activity, from discovering Munakata Shikō at the Kokugakai exhibition to traveling to Korea and Manchuria in May, and establishing the Japan Folk Crafts Museum at year-end thanks to contributions from Ōhara the previous year. At the end of 1939 he visited Okinawa as one member of the “Ryūkyū Kankōdan” (Ryūkyū Tourist Group) made up primarily of Japan Folk Craft Association members, but that year was less active than the previous year. The Okinawan opposition to language standardization being promoted by the prefectural government office in charge of such matters worsened, and he was swept into a “dialect debate” that broke out with the central authorities. In 1947 when Emperor Shōwa made an official visit to Mashiko, Hamada introduced Minagawa Masu, who praised the ceramic painting techniques of “anonymous workers”. In 1949 Hamada was awarded the first Tochigi Prefecture Culture Award. In 1952, he attended the International Conference of Craftsmen in Pottery and Textiles held at Dartington Hall, Devon, England. There he demonstrated working on the potter’s wheel and painting pottery, which greatly impressed craftspeople from Europe and the United States. That same year he traveled to the United States where he met the young potter Peter Voulkos. The following year, 1953, he received a fiscal 1952 Geijutsu Senshō (the present-day Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize) and that summer he spent time in Matsumoto, Nagano prefecture, with Yanagi, Kawai and Leach. In 1955, he was named a Living National Treasure, Preserver of Important Intangible Cultural Properties (Folk Pottery). In 1968 he was awarded the Order of Culture and the following year, named Honorary Mayor of Mashiko. In 1973, the Royal College of Art (London) conferred upon him an Honorary Doctor of Art degree. Honors continued, in 1976 he received the Kawasaki City Culture Prize. In terms of his own pottery, he began using a salt glaze technique around the time that he was named a Living National Treasure and in October 1959 his work entered in the Second International Ceramics Exhibition in Ostend, Belgium, was awarded a Silver Medal. In 1972 “Hamada Shōji shichijūshichi wanpu”, a volume of seventy-seven of Hamada’s tea bowls, was published. In 1961 Hamada was named director of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum, in 1970 the director of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum Pavilion at the Japan World Exposition, Osaka (Expo ’70), and the chairman of the Nihon Mingei Kyōkai in 1974. In 1977 the Mashiko Sankokan Museum opened with Hamada as director and chairman. At 7 am on January 5, 1978, Hamada died from old age and acute pneumonia at his home in Sayado, Mashiko village. He was 83 years old. (Iwai Mieko / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) (Published online: 2024-03-06)