Yutaka Nakai
Wake, Okayama
Yutaka Nakai was born in 1999 in Wake, a small town in Okayama Prefecture set against the hills that lead toward Bizen. His father worked in Bizen ware, and clay was simply part of the household, something to touch, something always nearby, long before it was something to master.
He liked making things. That was the constant, even before he knew it would become a trade. After junior high school, he chose a high school with a ceramics program, and it was there, learning the fundamentals of the craft, that the idea of continuing his father's work stopped being a possibility and became a decision. In 2018, straight out of high school, he began training under his father. The business remains a family one today, three generations working from the same workshop in Wake.
What sets his approach apart is not ambition toward scale or reputation, but a fixed attention to use. Before he shapes anything, he considers how it will be held, how it will meet a mouth, what it will carry.
The Place
Wake sits in Okayama Prefecture, close enough to Bizen City to share its clay and its firing tradition, but distinct enough to hold its own workshops. It is quiet, hill-bound country, set back in the hills that lead toward Bizen.
Philosophy
“I think about how something will be used before I think about how it will look. A handle should sit well in one hand. A rim should feel right against the mouth. A plate should already know what food it's meant to hold.”
Simplicity, for Nakai, is not a style choice. It's what's left when a form has been reduced to exactly what its use requires.
The Craft
Nakai's pieces are yakishime: high-fired, unglazed stoneware, left to take its color entirely from the kiln rather than any applied glaze. Many carry hidasuki, the marking left where rice straw wrapped around a piece reacts with the clay during firing, leaving a scarlet trace against a pale ground. What defines his work is the restraint: every form reduced to exactly what its use requires, and no further.
The Work for Haremono
For Haremono, Nakai makes vases and drinkware shaped entirely around use: slender forms pared down to their essentials, walls kept thin and lines kept simple, each piece sized to sit comfortably in one hand and hold its shape in daily use.
A vase, a cup, a bowl for matcha: none of it asks to be noticed. It only asks to work exactly as it should, quietly, for as long as it's used. That, more than any single technique, is what three generations in Wake have been refining all along.
Toshiaki Mori
Imbe, Okayama
Toshiaki Mori was born in 1982 in Imbe, the district of Bizen City known as the birthplace of Bizen ware, into the Mori family, direct descendants of the six founding families that established the tradition roughly five centuries ago. In 2005 he studied at the Bizen Pottery Center, and the following year began working at Hozangama, the kiln his family has carried forward for generations.
His work moves in two directions at once: the discipline of tradition, and quiet experimentation within it. In recent years he has added hand-building and detailed work alongside wheel-thrown forms.
His exhibition record spans decades in Japan's traditional and contemporary ceramics shows, a kiln-building collaboration with Oxford University, and exchanges across the United States, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Ecuador, and Thailand.
The Place
Hozangama sits in Imbe, the district of Bizen City that has served as the center of Bizen ware for centuries. Kilns have worked this same small area for generation after generation, long enough that the district and the craft are often spoken of as one and the same.
Philosophy
“I want to know what story is inside a piece. Not simply that it took a long time to make, or that its color is rare, but that someone interesting visited while it was being shaped, or that something happened during the days it spent in the kiln. A piece's charm comes from the experience behind it, the same way a person's does.”
He has also spoken about a piece's relationship to its owner over time: that Bizen ware, handmade one at a time, carries a kind of individuality, and develops further character the longer it's used.
The Craft
Mori's pieces carry hidasuki, the scarlet markings left where rice straw wraps the clay during firing. At Hozangama, he treats the kiln's traditional methods less as fixed recipes than as variables worth continuing to study, in pursuit of colors that haven't quite been seen before.
The Work for Haremono
For Haremono, Mori makes everyday tableware and a wind chime, each piece carrying the scarlet hidasuki markings and warm, earthy tones of a kiln whose lineage in Imbe runs back to the origins of the craft itself.
A mug fired in Imbe carries five hundred years of a family's kiln inside it, but it doesn't announce any of that. It only asks to be used, to develop its own quiet character the longer it stays in someone's hands, which was, in the end, always the point.
Emi Kanda
Okayama City, Japan
Emi Kanda began working with Bizen ware in 2021, the newest practice among Haremono's three artists, and by her own account, still an early one. She works from her home in Okayama City rather than a family workshop or kiln of her own, and continues attending a pottery class today, the same one that first drew her in. What brought her to clay wasn't inheritance or apprenticeship but simply a love of making things by hand.
Her focus sits apart from tableware entirely: accessories and Bizen tama, small Bizen ware beads, built around a single, plainly stated idea: bringing a little color into everyday life.
The Place
Okayama City is the prefectural capital, a short distance from the smaller towns of Bizen and Imbe. It's a larger, more urban setting, home to Kanda's workshop and daily life rather than a historic kiln district.
Philosophy
“Because there's no glaze, you can feel the clay exactly as it is.” For Kanda, that directness, texture with nothing between the hand and the material, is the entire appeal of working in Bizen ware, and the idea her accessories are built around: small, wearable pieces that bring a little of that same warmth into daily life.
The Craft
Kanda's pieces are smaller in scale and more personal in purpose than tableware: earrings and beads shaped from unglazed clay, carrying the same natural markings associated with Bizen ware more broadly, including hidasuki. Rather than vessels meant for daily use at the table, her work is meant to be worn.
The Work for Haremono
For Haremono, Kanda makes ceramic jewelry: small, lightweight pieces finished with natural hidasuki markings, carrying the same unglazed texture and warmth as the rest of her work, made for everyday wear.
A pair of earrings is a small thing to carry a tradition in, but the clay doesn't know the difference between a bowl and a bead. It only knows fire, and touch, and the years someone has spent, so far, learning what it can become.
