Chawan lover #1 : a ceramic landscape



(c) N.Cohen

A mountain, a tea-bowl
and thousands of pictures

Few days ago, I was looking at one of Sasaki Kyoshitsu's chawan as I was making my own tea bowls in his workshop. Mt Fuji's shape was arising in bone white color on its shiny black side. It felt like it had appeared before me before a dark stary night. It gave quite a contrast with the gentle breeze of the early June and its almost shadowless sunshine. So I started to wonder : why is Mt Fuji so fascinating ?

 Mt Fuji is certainly a landscape in itself. No need to draw anything around it nor to detail which face of it you are painting. Its shape is enough to make it recognizable on prints and advertisements.

 During my first trip to Japan, I could not see Mt Fuji and, at that time, I did not understood why the Japanese fancied this mountain so much since it is not so high nor peculiar. I then thought that the Japanese loved their unique "big" mountain like some villages in France love their only church. 
It was only when I took the Shinkansen during my second trip that I could see the famous rock and understand my mistake.

It is not the size of Mt. Fuji that makes it a masterpiece. It is its complete loneliness and perfect line simplicity. Its curve prints itself on the retina almost instantaneously. And it stays there as the image of the mountain, its evident and indisputable symbol. As if the universal outline that indicate mountain was there, right in front of my eyes.
To see Mt Fuji on a photograph before seeing it in real life was pointless : looking at it then, I only saw the flat imprint of the most common mountain in the world. After I had met the mountain, each time I saw its picture I remember this strange and sudden feeling that seized me the first time. And since symbols always have something sacred in them, I can understand why, to this day, Mt. Fuji is considered as a "small" god by the Japanese.  There is something of the divine realm in this pure shape. Because it is nothing less and nothing more than what it represents. In that regard, this mountain is self-sufficient and gets closer to the perfect being described by Aristotle. Maybe, that is why even I can see something divine in Mt Fuji.

Fuji-san, Friend of all

But counter to all the greek gods of our pantheons, this one is physically here, among us. It is even very much here. Half of the mainland Japanese people swear that they can see Mt Fuji "on clear weather days". Mt Fuji is the necessary crossing point between Tokyo and its rival sisters from the Kansai : Kyoto and Osaka. There is no road that can ignore "Fuji-san", no  villager has not at least one of its faces in mind.  I wonder if it is not the reason why the Japanese call . it "Fuji-san" instead of "Fuji-sama". "-sama" would indicate the respect given to a God, "-san" indicates something more akin to an equal relationship, the kind that you have with a friend or a fellow traveller. I can imagine that Fuji-san is to present to be a complete mystery : it has become a good accointance.

 (Thanks to my dear friend Amélie, I now know that "-san" here comes from the Chinese word for "mountain". Now I wonder : is any friend a mountain in Japan XD )

Sasaki Shoraku's Fuji-chawans

After I met this god-friend, I can understand why the Japanese people like to meet it everywhere : the mountain that is a landscape in itself is enough to call to mind a peaceful and and open view.

 That may be why Fuji-san is also found on chawans for the tea ceremony. Mt Fuji was represented very early on ceramics. But since Jôkei, second heir of the Raku family, drew a Fuji-san on a black bowl (kuroraku), Mt Fuji has become a must of the tea houses. And looking back on Sasaki Kyoshitsu's, I can imagine Mt Fuji glowing in the clear light of the night as the sole reflection of the moon or rise above the clouds and the sky itslef just there...on a tatami mat, in a candle-lighted tea room.

I leave you with a short video of Sasaki-sensei and two Fuji-san themed chawans

Dôzô, o raku ni, lets be simple.


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