For a few weeks in August and September, Yoshiyasu Harada hardly slept a wink. The young master potter of Kichiemon Porcelain Co. Ltd., in Saga Prefecture, had been immersed in making dozens of intricate ceramic plates.

In Harada's studio shards of broken pottery cover a table — consequences of tiny miscalculations in the moisture content of the clay or the temperature of the kiln. A few plates are drying in a dark cabinet — they look like flat mushrooms and seem to be in repose, waiting for their turn in the oven.

"It takes a day to paint one of these by hand," he says, showing me the finished product. It is a white disc with rounded edges that, at first, appear to be completely smooth. Upon closer inspection, I notice that the matte surface has been overlaid with the ghostly image of an Iro-nabeshima design — a classical pattern used in Japanese porcelain — painstakingly rendered in shiny white glaze. The effect was elegant and subtle, like that of a watermark.

"This white-on-white technique has potential," Harada says. "It's a way to make something modern based on Japanese tradition."

The plates were created for Dining Out Arita, the latest installment of the Dining Out events, which bring top chefs and local artisans together to host a unique pop-up dinner over the course of a few days. The latest edition took place outdoors on one of Arita's cobbled streets, amid traditional Japanese buildings, and featured chef Andre Chiang of Restaurant Andre in Singapore. The event also showcased seven porcelain masters, who prepared a special line of dishes to match each of the courses served. Chiang, who is also a potter, worked directly with the porcelain makers to design the pieces.

Harada's white-on-white plate became the canvas for a dish of cured mackerel and scallop chips with chestnuts and cress puree.

"We are celebrating 400 years of Arita's history and thinking about how to start from a blank page, to move forward while holding on to rich traditions," Chiang says, referring to the 400th anniversary of the region's famed Arita-yaki porcelain that is coming up in 2016.

Thinly sliced raw squid, bathed in a smooth sauce of kombu (kelp) and sprinkled with wild gains, was presented on a slanted plate with a pebbled rim. Both the plate design and the combination of ingredients "embrace the landscape of Arita," says Chiang. "The rice fields, the Izumiyama Quarry (where kaolin clay used to make porcelain was first discovered in Japan), and the mountains surrounding the town."

Chiang's "white truffle risotto," which arrives in a lidded dish that resembled a chunk of kaolin clay, was a kind of culinary pun: the dish contains neither white truffles nor rice, but was made with short pasta and Belper Knolle, an aged Swiss cheese that has an intriguing truffle-like aroma.

I had never thought deeply about the relationship between cuisine and ceramics, but the Dining Out Arita event changed my perspective. As Chiang points out, chefs and potters share the same goal.

"When you see the empty plates at the end of each course, that's the happiest moment for both of us," he says with a smile.

For more information, visit www.diningout.jp and arita-episode2.jp.