午夜剧场

Standing before a painting in a museum I happened to enter, I stop, and the surrounding sounds fade away.

I am looking at the painting, yet the painting is looking at me; or perhaps my own eyes are watching myself looking at the painting from above. Then, my body feels light, and my eyes are watching myself looking at the painting from beneath the floor I am standing on.

There, I realize that I seem to be moved by something, and a time begins where I thoroughly observe what I am sensing—observing my own senses.

Regardless of whether it involves a work of art, this may be a sensation everyone has felt at least once when moved by something. Even now, as this has miraculously become my livelihood as a so-called "potter," I often feel that this "sensing of one's own senses" is both the starting point and the destination of everything.

After graduating from the Faculty of Letters with a major in Aesthetics and Science of Arts and serving the Juku for two years as an administrative staff member attached to a laboratory, I suddenly decided to enter the path of pottery at the age of 24 and trained in Karatsu for five years. I have since become independent and am now in my tenth year.

Usually, I collect soil and stones from the mountains of Karatsu, refine them by hand into clay and glaze, shape them, apply the glaze, and fire them in wood-fired kilns or climbing kilns—making vessels in a way that is essentially unchanged from the Momoyama period. My daily work involves creating tea utensils, sake ware, flower vases, and tableware using the Karatsu ware styles of the Momoyama period, while adding my own slight interpretations and nuances.

Creating so-called "traditional crafts" as an artist is a somewhat paradoxical job of creating "original imitations," and it is a frightening job where one can fall into a rut or repetitive imitation if one lets their guard down even slightly.

The only way to counter this is to look clearly at what I have made, dissecting my own senses to see which parts are alive and which are dead, and which parts of my own vessels move me and which do not, thereby directing my next creation.

When I recall when I cultivated this "sensation of sensing one's own senses"—which could be called my lifeline today—the time I spent commuting to Hiyoshi and Mita comes to mind; a time when I was free precisely because I was suspended between anxiety and expectation.