Hello. There are a few places around here called Chotaro-yaki Kiln, aren’t there? Even with my car’s navigation system, I still got lost.

Akihiro: Oh yes, there are three kilns all together. They’re run by my brothers. My elder brother is fourth in the line, I’m the fifth, and my younger brother is the sixth. We’re all going about it in our own way, but the basics are the same.

What are the basics of Chotaro-yaki?

Akihiro: The most distinctive feature of Chotaro-yaki is the glaze. We use natural glaze, which results in a pottery with depth and charm. The founder’s name was Chotaro Ariyama. When he was walking in the mountains, he found some good clay and natural glaze. The pottery he made with it was discovered by a famous artist named Kiyoshi Kuroda, and that was who decided he should call his work Chotaro-yaki.

The works made of natural glaze and clay are called Chotaro-yaki, then.

Akihiro: Yes. Even now, I walk in the woods looking for glaze and clay. But, sometimes I find it on other people’s land. (laughs) Of course, I get permission afterwards, but I borrow a little there on the spot for a test firing. (laughs)

I see. By the way, the vessel used for pouring shochu called a kurojoka is quite famous, isn’t it?

Akihiro: The first generation at our kiln was inspired by the sight of Sakurajima reflected in the water of Kinko Bay and based his design on what he saw. It’s a little known fact, but the kurojoka originated at the Chotaro-yaki Kiln.

Now, this is another topic, but Akihiro, you’re the fifth in the family to take on a kiln. Was it your father who taught you the trade?

Akihiro: It’s actually rather complicated. I was adopted by my father’s older brother. So to be precise, my uncle, the second in the line, was the one who taught me.

When were you adopted?

Akihiro: I have no idea. I’ve been living with my uncle for as long as I can remember. Well, I have heard the details from someone so I do know, but I never heard it from my uncle. I don’t know exactly when I was adopted, but in my eyes, my uncle is my father.

Wow, is that right? So that’s how you wound up at this kiln.

Akihiro: Yes. He was a very strict man, but he was also a very witty, funny man. Actually, I went to him for advice when I decided to marry my wife here.

Akihiro’s Wife: That’s right. I was working at the Nissan Prince, and he came in to buy a Skyline GTR, and I was part of the deal. (laughs) But, all joking aside, his father did come to check me out at the showroom.

That’s quite a unique start to a romance.

Akihiro: Ours wasn’t an arranged marriage or a romantic love marriage. It was more of a negotiated marriage. (laughs) I asked my father for advice. I said, “I’m thinking of marrying the girl at the showroom.”

Akihiro’s Wife: That’s right. His father had a sort of aura, a look about him. He was a wonderful man. But when I first saw him in the showroom, he had a walking stick, his beard was grown out, he was wearing a Ho Chi Minh hat, and he was smoking a rare brand of cigarette called “Ikoi.” I just thought, “Who is this guy?” And then it turned out he’d come to scout out whether I’d make a good wife or not. (laughs)

I see. He was a very unique man.

Akihiro: But with me he was very strict.

Akihiro’s Wife: He had both a strict side and a mischevious side, and that was what made him such an interesting man. He loved inviting people over and entertaining, but he never drank a drop of alcohol himself.

Akihiro: Yes. And then, when we had a guest scheduled to come, he’d start tidying up three or four days in advance. We’d thoroughly clean the place. And then, the other craftsmen and I would start to get really nervous. Then, once the visitor left, he’d say, “Well, you all must be tired. Let’s have some tea.” So everyone would relax and feel calm again. He had a silly side to him. He wasn’t strict all the time, and I think that’s why he was such a charmer.

You must have learned a lot with a teacher like that.

Yes, I did. He taught me a lot, but most of all, he taught me, “Make good use of your head and your arms!” I think one’s head and arms are the basis for any kind of work. It’s the same for pottery.

Akihiro’s Wife: And he also was a big believer in “beauty and function.” He couldn’t accept objects which had no function.

He sounds like a classic gentleman from a bygone era.

Akihiro’s Wife: You could be right. He hated how I wore men’s hand-me-down clothes. The next day, he bought me a red blouse and said, “Women should wear this kind of thing.” (laughs) He was such a delightful man, really.

Akihiro: I think the reason why I’m still making everything by hand, without a mould, is because that’s how the founder, and my father the second owner both did it. I’d like to preserve their style of doing things. That’s why I stick to handmade. I hope I can pass it all on to my son. Now, my son prefers spinning records over spinning the potters wheel though. (laughs)

Thank you very much. I feel like I got a very good picture of how you’re carrying on the wishes of your forefathers.

Akihiro’s Wife: I’m grateful to have met this guy, but I’m also very grateful to have been able to meet and live together with my mother and father in law.

Akihiro: (smile)

Tsuge kushi have become more of a traditional product these days, but in the past they were known in Japan as combs of the highest quality. There was even a song about the tsuge kushi combs of Satsuma that people used to sing in the Edo period.

Why are the tsuge kushi combs of Satsuma so famous?

There’s a species of boxwood (tsuge) called Satsuma tsuge that grows in the Ibusuki area. The best kind of boxwood is the Satsuma tsuge. As a material, it’s very dense, and the oil in the wood is retained well. It’s also very resillient. It combs through the hair very smoothly. That’s why the women of the Edo period loved them so much.

So the climate around Ibusuki helped to make it that way.

Among the boxwood that grows in Satsuma, the grain is very fine, and it’s very flexible. Around Ibusuki, the boxwood growing areas have a relatively low mean temperature. That’s why the growth is slower, and the growth rings are very narrow. This helps to produce a condensed, very dense wood. Quality-wise, imported wood can’t measure up in the least. You can tell at a glance, just by looking at the surface. It’s completely different.

They’re very expensive even now, so in the past they surely weren’t something the average person could get their hands on?

I’m sure that’s how it was. The fact that they’re a luxury product hasn’t changed even today. But really, women these days, they’ll easily spend 10,000 or even 20,000 yen in one visit to the hair salon. If you think of it that way, our combs last a lifetime. They’re really not all that expensive. (laughs)

Even so, Mr. Kita, you’ve got beautiful hair. I know that must sound strange, but…

Thank you very much. (laughs) But, I just comb it you know. I don’t do anything else.

I heard that your Kita Factory has invented a boxwood brush, and has even registered a patent. Is that right?

Yes, it’s true. One day, I started thinking about how young people use combs. Young women grip the comb in their fist. They don’t hold them like Japanese women used to. Also, our sales had started to slip, and I figured I had to try something new, and I came up with a brush made of boxwood. We brought it to market, and it sold pretty well.

So I suppose that makes the Kita Factory the birthplace of the boxwood brush.

Well, we do hold a patent, but apparently all you have to do is make a brush with a different number of bristles and there’s nothing we can do. There’s really no benefit to having a patent. (laughs) But I truly believe I was the first to come up with this idea. Thanks to the brush, our factory has made a comeback.

Were you facing a crisis at one point?

Yes, we were. I’ve experienced three boxwood comb booms since I started here, but after that, it got so bad that I couldn’t pay people’s salaries and had to let some staff go. After all, this place really is a small-town microenterprise. It was very amicable. I just said, “We’ve got no more work here, but I heard that company has something you can do.” It was very simple. (laughs)

Now, Mr. Kita, how did you wind up taking over this business?

I wasn’t the oldest son or anything, and I had no obligation to take over the business. But when I was young, I was just drifting around and my older brother called me home and made me help out with the business. At first I never intended to become a comb-maker. But while I was here, we had a boom period, and I started to enjoy the work. The next thing I knew, 42 years had passed. (laughs)

So you’re an old hand at this by now. Weren’t you ever drawn to any other trades?

Oh no, I never was. Despite my appearance, I’m pretty good with my hands, and I can do pretty much anything I set my mind to. But as things turned out, I was given this boxwood comb shop to take care of, and made it my business. I feel that’s my life, those are the cards that were dealt to me. I’m not that smart, and I didn’t go to a good school. I just did the best with what I got. I think it’s important to do that. I’m never going to win any Order of Cultural Merit with my work, and I’m never going to build any legacy either.

I see. You haven’t any legacy?

I consider the Satsuma tsuge boxwood to be my best legacy. “That comb maker, I heard he’s got lots of boxwood.” That has been the long-standing industry rumor about my place. (laughs) In other words, the wood is my legacy. If my son ever wants to take over the factory, I at least will be able to leave him a lot of boxwood.

If your son did decide to take over the business, what kind of advice would you give him?

I would never force him to take it over. But making something yourself and selling it yourself is the most honest, straightforward way of doing business, and I think it’s the best way. Just explaining things alone, it doesn’t cover it all. There’s no manual that sets it all up. You’ve got to move your own hands and explain what your body knows, and sell it. I think that’s the best way to do it.

Now finally, this is a difficult thing to ask, but do you think these combs would be alright for men to use as well? I mean, they say you’ve got to take good care of your scalp and all, right?

There’s nothing wrong with that. Other than this comb, I don’t do anything to my hair.

Firstly, could you tell me what is special about Sakurajima-yaki pottery?

It depends on the item, but there is a silver sheen in it called “ginsai” which is unique. The clay has a lot of iron and minerals in it, and when it’s fired at 1300 degrees, it develops a silver luster.

It gives a certain sense of the magic of nature, doesn’t it?

We believe that there is a certain natural energy dwelling in the material that produces the uniquely rugged yet refined look in the works.

What kind of history does Sakurajima-yaki have?

Actually, Sakurajima-yaki isn’t a style of pottery with a long history or tradition. Sakurajima itself has been around for many tens of thousands of years, so the clay itself surely has a very long history, but Sakurajima-yaki pottery was started by my father.

So, your father was a potter then, I suppose?

No. Originally, he was a local civil servant who worked in the Sakurajima town office in the tourism department. A bureaucrat. I don’t know what he was thinking, but suddenly he established a kiln. I imagine he’d gone to someplace like Ijuin, which is a place famous for Satsuma-yaki ceramics, and had some kind of revelation.

In rural areas, working as a civil servant is one of the best, most stable jobs you can get! Why did he quit?

That’s true. He never talked about it with his family, he just said, “I’ve submitted my resignation papers,” and started doing pottery. I was still just a high schooler then and I didn’t really understand. I just thought, “What on earth has he done?” He was in his late-forties and he made a big life decision. The family was too busy to object; he had us all helping out at the kiln! (laughs) Kagoshima men are all stubborn, so once he made up his mind he wouldn’t have listened to what we said anyway.

That’s an amazing story. If he was willing to make such a decision, he must have been very attracted to pottery, or a very good sense about it.

Of course my father had a certain amount of interest in Satsuma-yaki. But he was so badly coordinated, and he’d never done pottery before. He started the workshop in 1972, and it was just a constant run of errors. He’d study a bit then make something, study and make again. Over and over.

If he started the kiln up without any preparation in advance, then you must have had no income at all for quite a while.

Yes, that’s right. He just spent every day working at it, and he kept at that for two years. In other words, we went two years without an income. He had no sense of how to run a business. He did set up a store at the workshop, but he had never done that kind of business before, and the shop looked just like a house, with a gate and everything.

You operated the business as a family, isn’t that right?

Yes. My father did the firing, my sister turned the wheel, and I did the glazing. There were two other staff as well. My mother was running a fruit shop. I think that’s how we were able to stay alive . Even so, we were up to our ears in debt. The fear of the bills at the end of every month is something I can’t forget even now. But other than that, we were quite laid back. We had the attitude, “As long as we make it, it’ll sell someday.” We’d talk about how, “Pottery doesn’t have an expiry date.” So we just kept building up our stock. (laughs)

When did things finally start selling?

That was when the tourist boom happened. It was around 1976. Back then it wasn’t easy to take trips overseas. Everyone took their holidays within Japan. Miyazaki and Kagoshima were particularly popular. For honeymoons, people didn’t go to places like Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan like they do now. A lot of people came to Kyushu. So people would come to Kagoshima and visit Sakurajima, come to our shop and buy some things to take home. We started getting more and more customers like that.

In one sense, it’s quite amazing that the kiln got on track in just one generation.

We had our low points – we were taken by a wholesaler for a few million yen once, but during the bubble years in the 1980s, our stuff just flew off the shelves. Our huge parking lot was packed with cars. We sometimes ran out of things to sell. Even then, the customers wanted to buy something to take home, so they waited outside for the pieces to be fired.

They were buying fresh-baked dishes straight out of the oven!

Yes they were. They’d look inside the kiln at the pots and say, “I’ll take one of these and one of those.” When I think about it now I can hardly believe it myself.

What are your thoughts on how to proceed now?

Actually, the founder, my father, passed away last year. The economy isn’t very good now, so I can’t say we’re doing well, but the Kyushu Shinkansen bullet train service is starting in 2011. I’m hoping that will bring some more visitors to Kagoshima’s Sakurajima. Well, we already know what it’s like to hit rock bottom, so in that sense we have nothing to fear. (laughs) I hope we can continue to manage the business debt-free, and keep providing good products for our customers.

I’m sure your father would be very happy to know that the family is still carrying on his life’s work.

I think so too. But I wish I had asked him, “Why did you become a potter?” That’s one thing I still don’t know, even now. (laughs)

This neighborhood still has a lot of character. It’s nice. Were you born here?

Yes, I was. I was born in Arakawa-ku (in 1947) and raised here too. It used to be all craftsmen living around here. My father was a craftsman. He used to make the necks for shamisen.

So with shamisen craftspeople the work is divided up then, is it? Do you have a specialty, Mr. Katoh?

I’m a hide stretcher. My father told me, “The people stretching the hides make good money, so you should become a hide stretcher.” So when I graduated from junior high school, I began my apprenticeship under a hide stretcher. (laughs)

You started working as a craftsman straight out of junior high school. I can’t even imagine that.

I was fifteen, so I didn’t even really think about it. I just became a craftsman. Every day, learning new techniques, that was my job.

It must have been really tough.

Oh, but I was really lucky because the place I was apprenticing at had a lot of books. The first book I read there was Hesse’s Beneath the Wheel. My world opened up and I began to think about a lot of things. “Well, am I going to continue like this, as a mere shamisen hide stretcher, for the rest of my life?” and other things like that. And that was when I decided to work as a craftsman while going to night school.

Is that right? Speaking of which, how many years did you spend apprenticing to be a craftsman?

Seven years. After I finished, I was twenty-two years old and I set out on a trip. For two years, I hitch-hiked and slept outside, walking all over Japan. I didn’t have any money, so sometimes I took on temporary jobs that included room and board, and just travelled around at my own whim. If I saw a beautiful sunset somewhere, I’d say to myself, “Alright, I’ll camp here for the night.” It was that kind of trip. You could say I was a certain type of idiot. (laughs) But at that time, there were lots of people in Japan that we called the “kani-zoku.”

Kani-zoku? What’s that?

In the 1960s and 70s, people would carry 30 kilo packs on their backs and take off on long journeys without any money. Those two years I spent travelling, that was wasted time. But it was my “precious wasted time,” I suppose you could say. (laughs) I don’t know how it’s helping me, but those two years of experiences are stored away, and they’ve had a big influence on my life since then.

I see. You’re a shamisen maker, but there’s a certain rock’n’roll sense of freedom in your workshop. That could be where it comes from. I wonder if that helped give you the inspiration to make an electric shamisen?

In all actuality, I really don’t know. The electric shamisen itself
was originally made after I saw a musician playing a shamisen in a live concert. He was performing with a stand mic, but the shamisen was drowned out by the sounds of the other instruments. I started thinking about how to fix that problem, and began doing research and
development on an electric shamisen. That was back when I’d just started this shop, in 1989.

Did you want to take that beautiful natural shamisen sound and change it to an electric sound?

That’s not quite it. Actually, the truth is I wanted to take the natural sound and make it beautiful by using electricity. I mean, the guitar, the bass, the drums, if you want to go on stage with modern instruments like that you’ve normally got to play into a stand mic, and it’s very hard to hear the shamisen.

What do you mean exactly?

All the stand mic picks up are the attack notes and all of the lingering tones are lost. The other instruments use a line to pick up the sound, and drums are loud to begin with. He wanted to play on stage with those instruments, and in order to be heard, he had to use an electric line. That’s why the original point of making an electric shamisen wasn’t to create an unusual sound, but to accurately reproduce the beautiful and subtle tones of the shamisen. We went through a lot of trial and error to make it, but thanks to our hard work, our shamisen have shared a stage with the famous taiko drummer Eitetsu Hayashi.

Wow, is that right! That’s kind of revolutionary, isn’t it?

In one way, we just connected tradition with the future. Even so, “Shamisen, for the next millenium!” was the last thing on our minds. (laughs) Even so, I like to do futuristic stuff for my own enjoyment.

I see. “Futuristic stuff.” I think I get what you’re talking about.

For example, the shamisen concert advertised on this poster. This is the kind of futuristic stuff I’m trying out. The performers are really famous. Hiromitsu Agatsuma, he’s famous, right? And how about Shinichi Kinoshita and Hidetaro Honjo? I’m talking about the A-list of the shamisen world here.

Mr. Katoh, are you the promoter behind this star-studded event? I don’t mean to be rude, but craftspeople don’t usually go arranging concerts…

Yes. There’s no direct connection between the events and my business, and my wife is always saying, “Maybe it’s time you stopped?” (laughs) But really, I belonged to a theater company when I was younger, and I’m used to stage work. I used to act when I wasn’t working. That experience is serving me well now. Also, the participants are all customers of mine.

I see… It really is worthwhile to pursue things outside your regular career, isn’t it? You really are a rock’n’roll kind of guy. And on top of that, you make musical instruments that can make a sound that satisfies the top musicians. I just thought you had an interesting product and came to see you, but I clearly underestimated you! I’m very sorry.

Well, I’m good at just going with the flow. I don’t think, I just do what’s necessary in each situation, trying things out in the field, and using the results of that in my work. Years of repeating that work style has taken me to where I am now. In that sense, I think my young years travelling as a kani-zoku have served me well. (laughs)

I think that’s a really wonderful, happy thing!

Oh, I think you’re right. People who have everything but don’t know what they want to do in life must lead a pretty boring existence. Even in a tough, poor environment, if you know what you should do, if you manage to find a dream, you’re going to be a happy man. Making things I can get excited about and putting on stages is what does it for me. But, I pay for it. After an event is over is the toughest… Last year, the day after the concert I couldn’t even climb the stairs in the subway station I was so burned out. (laughs)