Many of you are familiar with the name and works of Shoji Hamada (1894-1977), arguably the most widely famed of all Japanese potters. When he settled in the backwater potting town of Mashiko, Tochigi Prefecture, in Taisho 13 (1924), no one imagined that he would turn the conservative potters' world upside down and bring potters and collectors from across the globe to their village.
It wasn't easy for Hamada in the beginning. When he first arrived the potters of Mashiko were producing utilitarian wares for daily use in the households, inns and pubs of Tokyo: cooking pots (nabe), tea pots (dobin) or grinding bowls (suribachi). The locals didn't want him there; his knowledge of glazes and firing was too intimidating.
He writes of that time, "Mashiko was fine and the people quite nice, but they had a tendency toward stubbornness. I was the object of much suspicion. I was constantly confronted by the police."