Among contemporary art ceramists and potters in various countries, there are few who are unfamiliar with the ceramics technique known as “raku.” This method of custom-firing pieces at low temperatures gained popularity in Europe and the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century, and today raku kilns are a common fixture at university and art-school ceramics programs around the world. While most makers of raku ceramics are aware that “raku” is a term that originated in Japan, they use the firing technique in ways that owe little to Asian traditions. As a result, Western raku bears faint resemblance to the Raku ceramics of Japan.

Morgan Pitelka’s Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons, and Tea Practitioners in Japan makes it clear that Japanese Raku originated within a very different cultural context from that of Western raku. Focused primarily on the origins and development of Raku ware during Japan’s early modern period, Pitelka’s work also examines how members of the Raku family of potters and the Sen family of tea practitioners worked together to create virtually unassailable dynasties of tea practice and low-fired ceramics production. The dynasties created by these two families continue to exert great influence on traditional Japanese culture even today. Far broader in scope than simply a book about Raku ceramics, Pitelka’s work adeptly challenges accepted notions about nearly every aspect of Raku’s history, making a major contribution to the emerging scholarly paradigm for investigating Japanese craft traditions.

The book’s first chapter, “The Origins of the Raku Technique,” deconstructs the standard representation of Raku ware’s beginnings, in which the tea master Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591) is supposed to have directed an immigrant ceramic artisan named Chōjirō (act. late sixteenth century) to create an entirely new type of tea bowl. As Pitelka points out, archaeological investigations of late sixteenth-century sites have discovered low-fired, lead-glazed ceramics of the same types as those considered to have been devised by Rikyū and Chōjirō, but clearly differing from handed-down examples attributed to Chōjirō’s hand. Through his investigation of archaeological and documentary evidence from sixteenth-century Kyoto, the author constructs several, more plausible, narratives for the genesis of Raku ware. Even so, it is evident that the existence of Chōjirō was not a complete fabrication; a lion-shaped roof-tile sculpture dated 1574 that bears his name is generally accepted as authentic (17–18). The author skillfully negotiates the complicated path through putative and provable facts regarding Chōjirō, Rikyū, and early Raku pieces. He ends the chapter by clarifying his focus over the ensuing chapters of the book: to show how the creation of lineages and narratives served to establish a ceramic genre that had the appearance of being both coherent and monolithic.

In chapter 2, Pitelka explores the growth of low-fired tea ceramic production within the cultural context of early seventeenth-century Kyoto. Although the political center of the Tokugawa shoguns was established at Edo in the early seventeenth century, Kyoto remained Japan’s foremost cultural locale for nearly a century, flourishing in a new atmosphere of extended peace and prosperity. The chapter describes some of the interconnections between Kyoto cultural ateliers, primarily the Raku and Sen families, but including figures such as Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637), Oda Uraku (1547–1612), and Katagiri Sekishū (1605–1673) as well. This demonstrates the ways in which Raku family potters such as Jōkei (d. 1635) and Nonkō (1599–1656) created networks within Kyoto’s artistic community that would later be exploited in the establishment of a more formalized (and formidable) historical legacy.

Chapter 3, “Inventing Early Modern Identity,” begins the bread-and-butter section of the volume. Although most earlier books on Raku ware mainly focus on ceramics presumed to have been made prior to the death of Nonkō in 1656, Pitelka effectively argues that the way in which Raku history is viewed today is the result of the work of Nonkō’s successor, Kichizaemon Ichinyū (1640–1696), during the second half of the seventeenth century. In response to several challenges that threatened his family’s primacy in low-fired tea wares, Ichinyū took important steps to bolster his workshop’s prestige. Interestingly, other hereditary artistic families during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took similar measures, as each sought to build perceptions of authenticity and stable tradition in their target audiences. One of these measures was to establish a continuous lineage of artistic and technical transmission, usually from a revered founder. As the author points out, the transmission of secret teachings from master to follower is a prime component of Zen Buddhism, though in the context of art lineage, transmission generally was from senior family member to heir. This transmission was symbolized by the bestowal of the hereditary name Kichizaemon and the use of the character nyū (to enter) in Buddhist names taken by Raku workshop heads upon retirement. It is noteworthy that this practice mimicked in large part the customs of the Sen schools of tea, with which the Raku workshop developed and maintained an extremely close relationship.

The following chapter, “Institutionalization of the Iemoto Gaze,” investigates the codification of the relationship between the Raku house and the Sen schools of tea, and examines the growth of the hierarchical iemoto system in particular. The Sen schools became among the most successful of the iemoto-led organizations, and continue to attract many adherents today. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many cultural disciplines in Japan came to be organized in a similar manner, with an organization/family leader (iemoto) wielding virtually unassailable authority over a hierarchy of supporters and trainees. The iemoto had the ability to set standards and methods of practice and performance, and, in the case of tea masters, to determine which types of implements were appropriate for use in the making of tea. The Raku workshop was one of a number of Kyoto artisan establishments that enjoyed extensive product patronage by the Sen schools (especially the Omotesenke school). The close relationship between patron and craftsman provided benefits for each, such as in-depth training in tea practice for the artisans and direct input into product development for the iemoto.

Chapter 5 traces the dispersal of the Raku technique to workshops throughout Japan. This was achieved primarily through the publication of woodblock printed texts. As the popularity of Raku-style ceramics increased, the small-scale production in Kyoto could hardly keep up with demand. Workshops throughout the country expanded to include Raku-type wares in their repertoires, and as many as “three dozen” locales making primarily Raku-style tea ceramics began production during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Pitelka’s revealing text demonstrates that, rather than being challenged by the broad appropriation of their technique, the Raku potters, as the recognized “original” line, in fact benefited from the wide popularity of wares made in “their” style. The Raku workshop’s position was without doubt strongly supported by the family’s close relationship to the Sen schools.

The book’s final chapter examines daimyo patronage of Raku and Raku-style wares and the founding of “garden kilns” that produced Raku-type ceramics within daimyo residential compounds. The Raku method of making ceramics was ideally suited to such small-scale production, since wares could be created relatively quickly in response to a daimyo’s orders. Some of these kilns enjoyed visits by potters of the Kyoto Raku line, notably the Kairakuen workshop founded by the Kii branch of the Tokugawa family.

The dependence on daimyo patronage of both the Raku potters and the Sen tea schools meant that when the domain system was abolished in 1871, both suffered a nearly catastrophic decline in support. Pitelka gives an interesting and informative survey of the transition of tea practice from a privileged pastime mainly for men to a way of training young women to be attentive hosts and wives in a more open, cosmopolitan society. He also traces the exodus of antique tea utensils, including many examples of Raku ware, from the collections of formerly wealthy and powerful Edo period elites like the daimyo. Many such pieces eventually found their way out of Japan, landing in museums in Europe and the United States. In the rapidly changing culture of the Meiji period, Pitelka points out, tea utensils became considered by many Japanese to be purely relics of an effete past.

The Japanese disdain for tea ceramics changed toward the end of the nineteenth century, and soon tea utensils became the focus of renewed interest. Publication of the deluxe, multi-volume work Taishō meikikan (translated as “Model Masterpieces of Taisho”) in particular exerted significant influence. Pitelka identifies the set as the first written work to make judgments of quality regarding the opus of individual craftsmen of the Raku lineage, focusing mainly on the work of Chōjirō, Kōetsu, and Dōnyū. Other books on tea utensils published prior to World War II, especially Chadō zenshū (Complete Works of the Way of Tea), reinforced distinctions between the main Raku house (i.e., the descendants of Chōjirō) and others, a separation that continued to dominate thinking about Raku ware through the end of the twentieth century.

Only in his epilogue does Pitelka mention, briefly, non-Japanese practitioners of the Raku technique. As mentioned at the outset of this review, foreign makers of “raku” ceramics have almost no tangible connection to Japanese Raku. The only real relationship between the two is the method of firing, which rapidly fires either single or small groups of ceramics. Since the technique originated in Japan, world ceramics fired in the Raku manner bear the name “raku,” even though they differ from Japanese Raku in almost every other way. The experimental methods and chance effects characteristic of international raku ware have little connection to the carefully planned and executed approach used in Japanese Raku.

Those who expect Handmade Culture to be a copiously illustrated “Ready Reference to Raku” will probably be disappointed. While Pitelka’s text paints for the reader a vivid picture of Raku ware’s history, the fourteen color illustrations are too few to give a real sense of the art’s development over a span of four hundred years. Alas, in terms of its visual material, this volume shares the fate of many academic books on art and culture, especially, it seems, those by young academics presenting cutting-edge research. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words are much cheaper to print than a decent photograph. On the other hand, the book contains a fair number of monochrome illustrations, and some useful diagrams and maps as well. The format of the captions raises a question, however. Execution of each of the works illustrated is listed as, “Attributed to . . .”—even a tea bowl by Ōhi Chōzaemon IX, who died as recently as 1986. Since the bowl was donated to the Los Angeles County Museum by the Ōhi Museum in Japan in 2003, surely we can accept it as an authentic work by the artist. It seems reasonable to expect that the term “Attributed to . . .” will refer only to pieces about which there are specific grounds on which to question provenance.

Overall, the book’s layout is straightforward yet engaging. Its publication in paperback (with an attractive, four-color cover) is very welcome. In terms of the back matter, the book’s index is somewhat sparse, comprised mostly of proper nouns with only a sprinkling of other terms. The bibliography, in contrast, is exhaustive, stretching to more than eighteen pages.

Pitelka has illuminated the history of Raku ware through the intense light of Western scholarly method. By doing so, he has identified numerous inconsistencies in traditional accounts and challenged accepted ideas of attribution and authenticity. More importantly, he has done much to make the often narrow and subjective topic of Japanese tea history and its related arts research relevant to the broader narrative of human culture. In his book, Pitelka has succeeded in overcoming many of the barriers to understanding that he and others have identified as hampering scholars of tea-ware history: insular and exclusivist attitudes among tea world figures, access to a full range of documentary sources, and a paucity of similarly focused research on which to build.

The importance of Handmade Culture to an international understanding of Japanese culture is clear. Less certain is whether the book will transform attitudes toward Raku-ware history in Japan. Nevertheless, there is little question in this writer’s mind that it represents a very important step in that direction.