Art is a way of life in Japan’s answer to Florence
There’s plenty that’s unusual about Eiko Tanaka.
The Japanese artist makes lacquerware from start to finish. She selects the wood to make her fine bowls and cups and plates and more abstract artworks. She also handcrafts the tools she will use to shape that wood into these delicate structures.
Kanazawa Castle: visitors can have a more personal experience with the art and the artisans in the prefectural capital.Credit: Ishikawa Travel
She works the lathe too, using those handmade tools like paintbrushes, a dab here, a broad stroke there, carving, smoothing, finessing, wood chips flying as she spins a block of raw timber into an ethereal vessel. And then, unlike almost any artisan in Japan, she also applies the lacquer coatings, this process itself a work of art, an act of extreme skill using Eiko’s signature black and red hues.
Oh, and Eiko is a woman. In Japan, as a woodworker in a domain that has historically been heavily male dominated, that too makes her different.
The Wajima Lacquer Museum.
About the only thing that’s not unusual about Eiko Tanaka is that she lives and works in Kaga City, in Japan’s Ishikawa prefecture, about a three-hour shinkansen ride north-west of Tokyo.
This region is well known for attracting the most talented artisans in the country, a culture of creation that dates back to the Tokugawa era, and the rule of the Maeda clan. This powerful family, much like the House of Medici in Florence, used their vast wealth to support the arts, commissioning major works that attract visitors to this day, while also encouraging talented artisans to move from elsewhere in Japan to their shogunate.
That practice is continued by the prefecture’s modern leaders, and it makes Ishikawa a vital stop for anyone interested in the works of Japanese artisans.
Plenty of the techniques used in Ishikawa are unique to the area. Kutani-ware ceramics, Kaga-yuzen silk dyeing, Wajima lacquerware, Ohi-ware pottery, and even the art of using gold leaf on porcelain – all are traditional in Ishikawa.
Gold leaf craftwork is one of several techniques used in Ishikawa that are unique to the area.
Though plenty of shops sell these products in Kanazawa, the prefectural capital, there are also many opportunities to have a more personal experience with the art, and the artisans.
Kinzangama Kiln is a famed kutani-ware producer once helmed by Minori Yoshita, named a Living National Treasure of Japan. Set on the backstreets of Komatsu, the pottery house is now under the leadership of his son, Yukio, and it continues to produce much-sought-after porcelain vases, bowls and other works decorated with gold leaf.
Visitors can peruse and buy Kinzangama’s products at the kiln, or they can take a short class in this style of pottery, learning to apply gold leaf to a small piece of porcelain. It’s one of those techniques that in the hands of an expert looks simple, but is actually fiendishly difficult.
Kanazawa traditional craft museum.
And then there’s Fuzon, the gallery and workshop run by Eiko and her husband, Masanori Yamane. Today the pair cut dashing figures, both dressed all in black, as they welcome us and lead us to the wood-turning area out the back.
Here, visitors can watch Eiko at work, standing back as she spins the lathe and applies a long metal tool and all of a sudden a solid block of Japanese chestnut, cypress or cherry wood magically becomes a vessel, a bowl or a cup or a vase. It’s incredible to see.
Eiko was born in the Aichi prefecture, near the city of Nagoya, and trained in lacquer art there. But she, like so many talented artisans from around Japan, was attracted to Ishikawa to learn the woodworking side of her craft, hoping to take inspiration from the masters who already resided here.
Her creations are stunning in their beauty and their fragility. She makes martini cups and wine cups as fine as cut glass, perfectly contoured, crystalline in their delicacy. The elegance of these shapes is balanced by the boldness of the red and black lacquer.
Fuzon is also a coffee shop, with some of the best flat whites around. And, it’s a bar. There’s a private space upstairs run by Masanori, who is an obsessive collector of artisanal Japanese gins, as well as rare sake.
To sit up at the bar with him and drink sake or a cocktail from one of Eiko’s wooden cups – it’s unusual, of course. But by now that’s expected.
THE DETAILS
More
See
Fuzon Kaga Cafe and Studio is open Friday to Wednesday, 12pm-6pm. See instagram.com/fuzoncs
Eiko Tanaka, see eikotanaka.com
Kinzangama Kiln is open Monday to Saturday, 9am-5pm. See kinzangama.com
Stay
Araya Totoan is a traditional, high-end ryokan in Kaga City, with beautiful rooms from $649 a night. See araya-totoan.com
The writer travelled as a guest of the Ishikawa Prefecture Tourism League.
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