The pioneering generation

Westerners have been coming to Japan independently, attracted by its arts and culture, since the Meiji Restoration, some of whom ended up establishing in the country permanently. Well-known names include British writer and translator Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) and Portuguese writer Wenceslau de Moraes (1854-1929), both of whom had Japanese spouses and remained in Japan until their death, with the first even adopting a Japanese name. However, it was only after the Second World War that Western nationals started to come to the country at considerably higher rates.

Nonetheless, even today, non-Asians still represent a very small percentage of foreign residents in Japan (18% in 2017), with nationals from the European, North American and Oceanic continents accounting for only 9.5%, according to recent statistics of the Ministry of Justice (2017).

During the arrival period of the first generation of potters in the 1960s and 1970s, Japan had already fully recovered from the Second World War and was on track to becoming one of the world’s major economic powers in the following decade. In particular, the 1960s were marked by a period of avid modernization and

westernization with a growing projection of the country on the global stage, represented by the hosting of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 1964. However, during this period, immigration rates were still low and comprised mostly of residents from Japan’s former colonies (Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan). Furthermore, until the 1970s, Japan was not an obvious travel destination. In his overview of the history of international tourism in Japan, Eguchi Nobukiyo (2010: 146) states that it was only in 1970, when the country hosted the World Exhibition in Osaka, that people from foreign countries first started visiting the archipelago en masse. Canadian Randy Woolsey, who arrived in the country in 1965, the earliest in our sample, remembers how expensive intercontinental traveling was at that time, thus making it a privilege of a few:

In those days nobody traveled from Canada to Europe. Just some city people did it maybe, but not like now, when everyone travels everywhere. It was expensive and you just didn't do it; you didn't think about doing it. Even immigrants that came to Canada didn't go back to Europe again. They said they would, but never did; it was too difficult (Randy Woolsey, November 2017).

But while traveling was not an obvious leisure choice or even available for most ordinary people, the 1960s and 1970s saw the generation known as baby-boomers starting to take advantage of the quickly expanding network of youth hostels to adventure into the world. This was exactly the case of Woolsey, who took a plane from Canada to Scotland and backpacked all around Europe for one year before heading to South East Asia, arriving in Japan in 1965. In fact, many of the subjects who arrived in Japan during this period were encouraged by a sense of adventure and some came with no particular plans except to travel and explore the country’s culture. While many had a background in arts and a previous interest in ceramics, others only became interested in Japanese traditional crafts after arriving in the country. For example, Randy Woolsey’s attraction to ceramics developed from his frequent visits to the art galleries located department stores in the neighborhood where his company was located, which he visited during his lunchtime break when working as an English teacher in Tokyo. His sudden eagerness to learn pottery led him to quit his job and

adventure alone in the Japanese countryside, despite having little knowledge of the language at that time:

I found a pottery shop in Tokyo and it belonged to [Mashiko ceramic factory]

Tsukamoto. They had a shop in those days in Tokyo. So I got a friend to translate for me and ask if I could study there and they said: “Sure, okay”. And so… you're young, I was only 24, I didn't even think about it, I just quit my job and went to Mashiko in the train in November; it was snowing and I had my futon and everything on a little train from Oyama, only one train a day. And I walked all the way to Tsukamoto, which was about four kilometers, with everything I owned and finally found Tsukamoto. I had never been there. I had no idea about the place, I'd never seen a kiln. I’d never seen a wheel, never read a book about pottery (Randy Woolsey, November 2017).

Besides the countercultural movements of the 1960s that stirred a mindset of freedom and adventure, the arrival of this first generation of potters to Japan also coincides with the Zen boom that swept Europe and the United States in the decades following the end of the Second World War. In fact, American John Wells, who first arrived in the country in 1978, has stressed that, while today many foreigners come to Japan drawn by its popular culture such as anime and manga, in those days, it was Zen that “was cool” amongst his generations’ youngsters. Coming to Japan in 1984, Robert Yellin grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in closer contact with Eastern spirituality and Zen Buddhism through the influence of his eclectic family than modern European philosophy. Instead of becoming a potter, Yellin opened a ceramics gallery in Mishima (Shizuoka) in 1996, which now located in near the famous Philosopher’s Path in the city of Kyoto, and was one of the first people to use the internet to disseminate knowledge about Japanese ceramics in English. From all of our subjects, Canadian Tracey Glass was the one who came to the country specifically to study Zen. In 1979, she stayed for three months practicing meditation at a Soto Zen Buddhist monastery in Nara before taking the trans-Siberian train to travel around Asia.

This deep attraction to Zen amongst the Western artistic and intellectual elite was followed by an interest in the mingei ideals disseminated by Hamada, Yanagi and

Leach within circles of potters, artists and art students, as we have explored in the previous chapter. Several American potters interviewed mentioned that, in fact, at that time, most of the books about ceramics available in English in the United States were about the mingei group. John Wells, who studied ceramics in Bizen, known for its connection to the elite world of the tea ceremony, argues that, even though the mingei represents the low end of Japanese ceramics, it was the most broadcasted Japanese ceramic movement in the United States. Similarly, American tea potter Richard Milgrim stated that, while there was a lot of information about the mingei, with many Western potters coming to Japan to study within the folk ceramics tradition, there were not many people interested in tea ceramics at that time.

After a first visit to the country, Milgrim returned to Japan for a second time in 1979 through the Midorikai, an official program created in 1970 for non-Japanese to study the tea ceremony at Urasenke, one of the main tea schools in Japan, which dates back to Sen no Rikyu’s grandson lineage in the late seventeenth century. According to the Urasenke website, over five hundred people from over thirty countries have participated in the Midorikai program (Midorikai, Non-Japanese Students Division, Urasenke Gakuen Professional College of Chado, n/d).

Besides the mingei group, other renowned Japanese potters, such as Kitaoji Rosanjin (who was also a calligrapher, collector and restaurateurs) and Toyo Kaneshige (nominated Living National Treasure in 1955 for his techniques of Bizen ware) also traveled the West in the 1960s and 1970s, spreading their knowledge and vision of Japanese ceramics, thus encouraging Western potters to come and study ceramics in Japan. The visit of Japanese artists and craftsman to the West was expanded with the creation of the Agency for Cultural Affairs (bunkacho) in 1968 as an extra extra-ministerial bureau of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Together with Japan Foundation, established in 1972 with the aim of disseminating Japanese culture internationally, which currently holds overseas offices in twenty-four countries, the Japanese government has taken an active role in promoting its officially-endorsed Japanese culture abroad. By sending Japanese artists and cultural specialists overseas, it has been introducing Japanese traditional arts and culture to a foreign audience, contributing to deepening international exchanges.

Together with these, university programs to study abroad in Japan slowly started to develop in the 1970s but were still unusual in comparison to the opportunities to study in Europe. American Gary Moler, who first came to Japan as an exchange student in 1972, claimed that his university was one of the first in the United States to offer exchange programs with Japan. This period also coincides with the Japanese government support of Japanese Studies and language education abroad, with prime-minister Kakuei Tanaka providing ten million dollars for the funding of such programs in the United States in 1973 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1973). In addition, potters of this generation were also introduced to Japanese culture and ceramics through artists and intellectuals who had been in Japan during the American Occupation and the first years after Japan regained its independence in 1952. This was the case of Richard Milgrim, who had his first contact with Japan through professors who had lived in the country during some period of their lives:

I was studying ceramics and Japanese history, Japanese culture and the teachers that I had, even though it was a very small school, I had a couple of ceramics teachers who had lived in Kyoto when they were young (…). So they were very proudly influenced by Japan at an early stage in their lives. They went back and lived in America and grew up as Americans, but they always had a very strong sort of allegiance or love for Japan (…). They were very instrumental in showing me all about Japanese ceramics and I took a strong interest in it right away (Richard Milgrim, February 2017).

Anthropologist Robert J. Smith (1992: 213) has stated that, when he first offered his course on Japanese Society in 1953 at Cornwell University in the United States, which had "a fairly substantial enrollment”, most of the students were “attracted by exotica of any provenience; some had brushed up against Tea, Flower Arranging, and Zen; others simply had heard from friends and relatives that Japan was quite an interesting place”. In fact, the American Occupation of the country also stirred up the curiosity of people who had never been there but had heard stories from their relatives and acquaintances.

In sum, arriving from the mid-1960s up to the 1970s, the subjects of this pioneering generation have now been living and working in Japan for at least four decades, which makes their time spent in Japan twice as long as the time spent in their home countries before their first arrived. While all of them have established their lives in Japan permanently, some have left the country for longer periods at a particular stage in their lives, as was the case of Randy Woosley, who returned to Canada between 1975 and 1989. Others have split their time between two countries, like Richard Milgrim, who spent thirteen years from 2000 to 2013 going back and forth between Japan and the United States.