Artist Spotlight: Shinohei-gama
Every product made by hand embodies the character and ideals of its creator. In Japan, the individuality of the artist, as well as the influence of his region, his town, and even the neighborhood he grew up in, are all strongly reflected...
Takashi Shinohara is normally a reserved man of few words.
It’s a common Japanese trait that takes some adjustment for westerners accustomed to more direct communication, especially in business. I was therefore taken aback by his frank, honest response to my pitch asking him to join our small circle of artists.
“Your assessment of what’s happening in Japan is accurate. We’ve already lost half our business and now feel very limited in what we can sell here,” he wrote. “My wife and I are new in this market and not very good at telling our story. I would be very grateful if you could help us.”
The man’s earnestness caused a lump in my throat, and I had the distinct sense that my fledgling company, three years now in the making, had arrived at some significant moment. After all the sermonizing about the good I’m hoping to accomplish, I’d finally found my prototypical struggling artist. And the more I learned about Takashi and his wife, Megumi, the more I realized they are exactly the type of people I’ve built this business to help.
Finding Their Art
A common passion for art brought the Shinoharas together. Both grew up in the Kanto region near Tokyo, Megumi in one of the city’s outlying districts and Takashi in neighboring Saitama to the north. “I watched a lot of television shows about traditional crafts when I was small, and my parents often took me to galleries and museums in the city,” Megumi remembers. “Over the years, I became more and more interested in vintage crafts, so when I was old enough I worked part-time jobs to afford ceramics classes after school.”
Megumi’s interest in pottery-making steadily took root, and when the question of college approached she knew where her future lay. “I thought back to my first pottery class, when I was only ten, and of course I could never have guessed that I would end up pursuing a career as a professional artist. But as my interest in art strengthened, my path in life steadily became clear. So after high school I was on my way to Kyoto to study ceramics.”
Takashi also remembers an early introduction to art. For him, it came by way of his mother and the porcelain and glass creations from Japan and overseas that she collected and sold in her own small gallery in Saitama. “She started me early in appreciating things that are made by hand. I liked the ceramic dolls and Wajima lacquerware, but my favorites were her Kyō-yaki tea bowls with their colorful patterns.”
Like Megumi, Takashi’s interest in pottery turned to passion as he grew, and after graduation he was off to the same college in Kyoto to start his own artistic journey.
Finding Each Other
The two would-be artists ultimately made their way to northwestern Kyushu, birthplace of some of Japan’s oldest pottery traditions and, to this day, a popular apprenticing ground for graduates of the country’s top art schools. There, they joined a thriving, eclectic community of sage masters, practiced veterans, and idealistic newcomers like themselves. Megumi took on an apprenticeship as a ceramics painter in the small Nagasaki town of Hasami, while Takashi, two years behind, found himself behind a potter’s wheel just across the Saga border in neighboring Arita.
The two could not have chosen a better place in all the world to cut their artistic teeth. Arguably the most prolific of Japan’s ancient producing regions, Arita is world-renowned for its signature Imari-ware, a delicate porcelain adorned with colorful, exquisitely-detailed patterns that took its name from the nearby port town from which it was shipped. Mass-exported to Europe beginning in the late 17th century, Imari-ware helped revolutionize the European ceramics industry, as the foremost makers in places like Meissen and Delft began incorporating Arita styles and techniques into the collections they produced for emperors, kings, and the highest nobility of the era.
It was in this richly artistic and close-knit community that Megumi and Takashi immersed themselves, trained, and began to develop their own interpretations and styles. It was also here that they met, grew close both as artists and as a couple, and decided from then on to take all of their next steps into the future together.
A Place for Us
Set back in the foothills of Mount Hangoku just west of the ancient capital of Kyoto, the Shinoharas are surrounded by stunning natural beauty. Dense forests, flowing brooks, bright meadows, and bubbling hot springs are only minutes out the door, and the lush, green hills on all sides seem to roll on idyllically forever.
Like Hakone for residents of Tokyo, the small city of Kameoka provides a year-round escape from the surge and press of urban life for people in nearby Osaka. Plum and cherry blossoms illuminate the spring; enticing scents of mountain herbs float down on warm summer breezes; chill autumn air turns maples a fiery, passionate crimson; and the soft, surreal, pure-white stillness of winter, with the absolute silence of the snow, engenders both a wonder and an unease that together stir reflection when gazed upon from within warm, smoky spaces.
After leaving Kyushu, and with an apprenticing stint along the way in historic Seto, Megumi and Takashi founded Shinohei-gama here in 2018. An ideal environment for any artist, the Kameoka countryside is all at once a source of creative inspiration, a calming and reinvigorating influence in the stress and fatigue of daily life, and a constant, poignant reminder of the place and power of nature across more than 15,000 years of Japanese tradition and culture.
Takashi credits the patient guidance of mentors and colleagues in giving him the inspiration and confidence to go it alone. “I really admired the creative atmosphere in Arita. It was a very engaging and cooperative community. There was an energy and rhythm to the production cycle that you could feel in each shop, and this became ingrained in all of us learning there.
“In Seto, I worked in a studio where the owner used to drink coffee from an old Kiseto mug. Now, Kiseto-ware was born from pieces that failed to achieve the proper Seto green during firing, so they might be considered inferior. But I was so fascinated by the color and luster of that one mug that I couldn’t get it out of my head for a very long time.
“I think this was the final step for me. I had a strong sense of what I wanted to make, and I was ready to give myself the chance to make it.”
Simple Life, Simple Style
From its modest foothold, Shinohei-gama is quietly attracting attention with its own approach to innovation within the constraints of traditional Japanese pottery. Many of the country’s most enduring traditions were born ages ago out of the struggle to survive in harsh environments, and what Megumi and Takashi have embraced from this rich heritage are a reverence for nature and an instinct for efficiency and utility that remain hallmarks of Japanese innovation to this day.
“My goal from the beginning has been to find a respectful distance from tradition while still honoring it, basically to create new designs that still feel familiar,” Takashi shares. “My wife and I grew up very simply, and our lifestyle here is also simple, so naturally we are drawn toward simple and useful designs. I'm always concerned foremost about how easy a product will be to handle or whether it can be used in cooking or serving, for example.”
“As children, we were surrounded by farms and rice fields. I know what it means to be connected to the land,” Megumi adds. “There’s an honesty in our relationship with nature that we feel we must respect, so what my husband and I see around us ultimately sets the standard for what we create.”
“Our pieces are inspired by the shapes and colors of plants, stones, and other natural things we see every day, and there’s an emotional warmth that comes from that familiarity,” Takashi agrees. “Whether it’s a Kiseto bowl with a finish that mimics the way moss grows on a tree or a mug with the texture of rough soil, our goal is to create useful products that give an honest and familiar feeling.
“Customers often tell us that there’s an artistic quality to our work. I didn’t study pottery as art, rather my focus has always been on daily necessities. Of course I’m happy if someone sees art in that, but we just want to offer products that can enrich people’s lives in some way.”
Whether lifestyle essentials or objets d’art, much of the magic that makes Shinohei-gama’s ceramics special comes from the unique rhythm the couple have developed in working together. They collaborate on product concepts and designs, but each also brings an artist’s individuality that they’re both careful to allow each other to express. Megumi explains: “We both share technically strong fields. My husband has a talent for molding and texturing the forms, and I add the finishes and decorative painting. We try not to get in each other’s way. We each want the other to be free to bring his own individual touch to every piece.”
“We both bring our strengths, yes,” Takashi agrees. “My shaping and surfacing establish a basic expression, but my wife adds the warmth that really resonates with customers.”
Inside the Storm
Running a small business naturally comes with its share of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty, much of which today can be attributed to the sweeping changes economic events have forced on a way of life that has, until recently, remained relatively unaltered across much of Japanese history.
Megumi and Takashi are among a generation born into one of the most prolific economic periods the country has ever known. But a bursting bubble in 1990 and a steady onslaught of domestic and international challenges since then – a declining birth rate, chronic labor shortages, the rise of Chinese mass production, and most recently the COVID pandemic – have combined into a perfect storm for the Japanese economy that is now entering its fourth decade.
Growth has been stagnant for nearly two generations, forcing the population into a lifestyle of economizing that has taken a devastating toll on the country’s commerce. The relentless growth of internet retail, with its global abundance of cheap products mere days from delivery directly to our homes, has forced an even steeper uphill climb for smaller, less agile businesses – such as those involved in traditional arts and crafts – whose production cannot be modernized, scaled, or outsourced overseas.
The Shinoharas recognize the size of what’s in front of them, as Takashi describes: “The scale of traditional crafts is shrinking year by year. There are many likely reasons, but what we know absolutely is that demand for everyday items like tableware is changing. It’s important to understand that there are a growing number of people shopping in places like [dollar] stores for the products we’re trying to make for them by hand.”
“COVID hit right after we started, and we lost all direct sales here in our studio,” adds Megumi. “One option was to take our business online, so we joined a few internet retailers, put our own site together, and got into social media. It hasn’t worked out. We’re just not good at it.”
The couple quickly realized that online selling is no less challenging than traditional retail. The lure of instant access to billions of customers, coupled with the deceptive simplicity of opening a virtual storefront, belies many of the digital marketplace’s less-glamorous realities: success here requires specialized skills, years of hard learning, and – most critically – an almost daily effort spent on generating exposure, demands for which craftsmen focused on perfecting their art have precious little time.
“Most artists are fully engaged in creating, and many of us are largely ignorant of commerce and economic systems. Being effective online means you have to be aggressive, you have to stand out in social media. Quiet, dedicated artists like us, like those we grew up with, are disappearing.”
The Steps Just Ahead
“It’s always exciting to open the kiln after a firing to see what’s waiting inside,” Takashi admits, betraying a Christmas morning exhilaration common to every potter with whom I’ve ever spoken. “There’s a tension at that moment…it never turns out quite the way you expect, but when something you create exceeds what you imagined it could be, the sensation is indescribable.”
Megumi reveals a charmingly maternal affection: “I’m most excited looking at everything before it’s glazed and fired, when each piece still has the potential to turn out in so many ways. I worry a little beforehand about how everything will react to the heat, but with my hope and expectation comes a very deep sense that, whatever the outcome, it’s worth everything we put into it.”
“And when you see those same feelings in the reactions of our customers…” Takashi adds, “…you’re looking at someone being inspired by what we create. As artists, it’s up to us to share this energy to help create a consciousness of how products like these can add value to our lives.”
There’s a Japanese proverb that advises focus on the steps immediately ahead rather than on the entire journey, a perspective that can help us control our anxiety for obstacles and hardships down the road that may never materialize. Even with so much in the world seemingly set against them, the Shinoharas understand that even the small things they do every day can effect profound changes over time.
“Given how we grew up, we both feel it’s especially important that children are introduced to art and handcrafts, and that they develop a sense of how special these things are at an early age,” Megumi affirms, drawing solace from the inspirations that guided her when she was young. “Even with all the technology and modern things competing for their attention, children can still be excited by simple handmade items.”
“Tradition will also adapt,” reasons Takashi. “When we were young, Kiyomizu-ware, Mino-ware, and Shigaraki-ware were all different because the techniques and materials were unique to each area. Materials from faraway are much more readily available today, so many producers are no longer so particular about maintaining the individual styles.
“But the materials and techniques really haven’t changed. Everyone uses the knowledge and experience they’ve accumulated over the years, so the traditions are still there. And however small we are, we’re still a part of the way tradition is evolving, so it's important that we make sure to put the Shinohei-gama soul into everything we make.”