Tracing the Boljoon-Japan connection

Arita, Japan—About 361 years ago, a ship sailed out of Nagasaki, Japan, loaded with ceramics from the kilns or ovens of Arita and Yoshida towns. The ship was most probably headed for Manila, where it unloaded its cargo to middlemen, probably native Visayan traders or even Muslim merchants from Mindanao, who then brought these to provincial trading ports in the then-young Spanish colony called Filipinas.

Three of those ceramic wares—two from Arita and one from Yoshida—eventually found their way to Boljoon town, southeastern Cebu, in the hands of natives there. By some stroke of luck, these three were later interred together with two individual burials that were eventually excavated by my team from the University of San Carlos and the National Museum in 2009. After initial analysis through an e-mail sent to Dr. Takenori “Ken” Nogami of the Arita Folk and History Museum (AFHM), it was confirmed that these were not Chinese ceramics, although they had been buried with a few pieces from the Anxi kilns in China.

Today I have come full circle, as it were, coming to Arita and Yoshida as well as the adjacent trading port of Imari where these wares began their journey to Nagasaki. With me is a team from the University of San Carlos composed of Fr. Generoso Rebayla, SVD, the vice president for finance; Prof. Malou Samson, the university curator; and Dr. Hope Yu, the new director of the Cebuano Studies Center. We are here as guests of Dr. Ken and the AFHM. This is our fourth day in Japan and we have been shuttling from one museum to another and the remains of 17th-century kilns and production centers in Arita, Imari and Yoshida.

Yesterday was especially sentimental and emotionally fulfilling as I was able to touch with my own hands the ceramic sherds recovered from Yoshida dating to 1650-60 that resemble the large and complete green enamel overglazed charger or bowl that we recovered from Burial 47, a probable adolescent male. This large ceramic ware, now on display at the Boljoon Parish Museum, covered the individual’s face. The sherds were shown to me at the storage room of the Kyushu Ceramic Museum that the curator graciously allowed us to enter. Earlier we had been to the Okawashiyama village in Arita, a mountain settlement full of ceramic-producing families that have never stopped their craft since they began in the 1600s with Korean mentors.

Arita is known as the pottery capital of Japan. It was here exactly 400 years ago that the legendary Korean potter Ri Sampei literally found a mountain of “kaolin,” Mount Izumi, which is now nothing more than a flat ground behind AFHM. Kaolin is the most important ingredient for the production of blue and white porcelain, which eluded Japan until then. Kaolin clay, named after a mountain of white clay called Kao-ling in China, is what made the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) an unforgettable period for ceramics in China. Its discovery during that period started the production of blue-and-white porcelain wares, which would reach artistic heights during the tumultuous years of the Ming Dynasty (1386-1648).

Japan has had a long tradition of ceramic production but only in unglazed high-fired types. When the daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi conquered Korea in 1597, he brought home the following year a large number of Korean potters to transfer their technology to the Japanese. Today their descendants, who have since intermarried with local Japanese, continue the tradition in many settlements in and around Arita.

Arita’s primal position is expressed in almost everything that one sees in this town as well as those of nearby cities: signages, heritage markers, store names, even wash basins in public toilets are all made of beautifully designed blue-and-white porcelain. Even a lightbulb was protected from rain and snow by a blue-and-white dish in one of the old houses lining Arita’s main street. Bridges are also decorated with mosaics made of porcelain on one side and artistic tiles, also of blue and white porcelain, decorating the other side with dragons, phoenixes and other legendary animals or plants. Here and there one finds ceramic pieces, some of them huge jars, decorating the street corners. On the day we arrived (which was last Monday) there was even a Ceramics Festival in Arita.

The journey for me here in Japan has just begun—a trip that is not my first but that is definitely different from those few times I had been here. Next week we proceed to the port of Nagasaki, and for bringing me here to Japan, I wish to thank the Sumitomo Foundation for providing me with the financial support and also USC for providing a modest allowance to me and my team here.

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Watch out for our upcoming “Kabilin” episode on this journey to trace the Japanese ceramics found in Boljoon, to be shown on Channel 14 SugboTV.

ERRATUM: Last week’s column, my simple mathematical abilities once again failed me, probably because I submitted way beyond the deadline and was too busy to edit my work. Bagyo sa Doce, the typhoon of 1912 happened 99 years ago, not 90. I think it was a typographical error. Mea culpa.