Hasami
Hasami is a small town north of Nagasaki Prefecture, said by locals to resemble the shape of a cat’s face, with a population of about 14,000. Surrounded by mountains, it is the only town in Nagasaki Prefecture that does not face the sea. Our hosts at Oniwa, a self-renovated traditional farmhouse in Hasami, told us — half joking, half sincere — “I love everything about this town, but sushi... that’s one thing I don’t think we’re good at.”
Historically in Japan, porcelain and ceramic production have been closely associated with Arita, a city in Saga Prefecture known for Arita-yaki (有田焼), or Arita ware — a neighboring town bordering Hasami. I remember learning in history class about the three major Japanese ceramics, with Arita ware being one of them. The images in our textbooks showed large white porcelain plates and flower vases decorated with intricate traditional designs and floral-and-bird motifs in indigo blue and vivid colors. They felt far from the kinds of dishes an everyday person might use for fish and rice — they felt like art pieces better suited to aristocrats than ordinary homes.
The more I learned about Hasami, the less I felt I understood the place. Arita ware and Hasami ware were developed around the same time, in the 17th century. For a period, ceramics produced in Hasami were even referred to as Arita ware. The reason Arita became more widely known and considered prestigious was largely its proximity to the port of Imari (for this reason, Arita ware was also called Imari ware), from which ceramics were exported abroad.
At the time, porcelain tableware was expensive and mostly reserved for overseas buyers who could afford it. Hasami, however, saw an opportunity to mass-produce ceramics, created their one-of-a-kind enormous climbing kilns unlike anywhere else in the world, transforming porcelain into something meant for everyday use. These practical pieces came to be known as kurawanka wan (くらわんか椀), or everyday ceramics for the people.
You have entered Saga Prefecture, our car navigation announces as we go back and forth between the two towns during our stay. It’s only a ten-minute drive from the center of Hasami to Arita. At first glance there isn’t a striking difference between them, but Arita feels more established as a tourist town — it has a train station, gift shops, and a tourist information center. Hasami, as I came to learn, is an if-you-know-you-know kind of a place. Whenever we mentioned visiting a particular spot prior, people would say, “Oh wow, that’s really the deep parts of Hasami.”
Only recently has Hasami ware finally gained its own well-deserved recognition, after more than 400 years of continuous production. According to the official Nagasaki Prefecture website, about 8,400 people — roughly 40 percent of the town’s working population — are involved in the ceramic industry. Nakaoyama, located just a few minutes from central Hasami, is considered the birthplace of Hasami ware.
As any city person might describe a countryside town, it looked like something from a postcard; A few brick chimneys sprouting from the kawara tile roofs; the houses were built tightly next to each other, almost without space between them. I was told this was because nearly everyone in the town worked in the pottery industry. It made it easier to carry clay, molds, and finished ceramics on long wooden planks, squeezing through the narrow paths to deliver pieces from one workshop to another.
Even though many of the houses are now empty, it wasn’t hard to imagine the pottery town that once thrived here: worn green crates once used to ship ceramics, plaster molds left behind, and fragments of broken plates scattered along the paths. These shards were likely remnants from the climbing kilns, where misfired or defective pieces were discarded closeby— a term known as monohara (ものはら).
At a viewpoint in Nakaoyama, we could see one of the world’s largest climbing kilns in the distance. The Nakaoue climbing kiln site stretches nearly 160 meters and once contained 33 firing chambers. The kiln represents many things for Hasami: history, tradition, innovation, and an extraordinary level of effort and commitment. Most significantly, it embodies a shared, communal spirit — everyone in Nakaoyama once used the same kiln to fire their ceramics.
Today, only a few small ceramic studios remain in Nakaoyama, but the town’s foundations have spread throughout Hasami. Hasami operates almost as a one big team in producing Hasami-yaki. The industry is built on shared practice, shared spaces, and shared beliefs passed down through centuries among families and neighbors. No one is out of sync — just like cogs in a well-oiled machine.
“Oh — would you look at that? There’s sap coming out of the ceiling beam!” Fukushige-san laughed as she showed us around her 100-year-old house, built in 1928. The home is now registered as a national cultural property. We had asked Kodama-san — a trusted local leader who now serves as a board member at Saikai Toki Corporation— if it might be possible to visit. Without hesitation, he said, “I don’t see why not.”
Hasami is not a flashy or touristy town. The people are modest and gentle, the way grandparents or relatives might treat you when you visit during summer vacation or the New Year holidays. “Come, come! Look — there’s fukinoto. I’ll fry it up and make tempura for us,” said Mrs. Hatanaka, crouching in her backyard beneath a plum tree that had just begun to sprout, smiling at us with bright, shining eyes.
We had just met the Hatanaka couple, who run a community hub in Nakaoyama — once a pottery workshop, now renovated by locals into a cultural center. They were baking pizza for us in an oven made from a repurposed kiln. We didn’t ask for it of course, they just started making it.
This kind of candor was not rare; we encountered it everywhere we went. “Have you been to Harada-san’s tea farm?” “Have you visited Nishino-san? They’re just across the river!” Everywhere we went, someone had a place or a person to recommend.
Our team had a running joke. Whenever the photographer tried to take portraits, people kept moving. The Hatanakas were doing a million things at once, Kobayashi-san would run off in one direction, Fukushima-san in another to show us something new — a nimble bunch, always in motion, enough to blur every shot.
It isn’t surprising that nearly everyone here knows one another. In a small town, news travels quickly — but I noticed that certain rituals travel just as easily as well.
We visited Harada Tea Farm, located in the heart of the Onigi rice terraces and run by its fourth-generation owner, Kenji Harada-san. They welcomed us in to show us how they prepare tea. As many locals had promised to us, Harada-san’s tea changes your perception of what green tea tastes like.
Each of us received a small teapot and scooped a tablespoon of tea leaves inside. The aroma rose immediately, filling our noses. First, pour hot water into a cooling cup. Once it cools enough to hold with both hands, slowly pour the water into the teapot and wait for about a minute. Don’t shake the pot. Pour gently, saving the very last “golden drop,” as Harada-san’s wife explained.
The first pour was almost soup-like in texture — thick and slightly syrupy. Harada-san smiled and said, “It’s almost like drinking dashi, right?” With the second, third, and fourth pours, the tea gradually changed in color and texture, becoming smoother yet somehow even more aromatic.
I was chuffed to see that our hosts at Oniwa served us tea exactly the way Harada-san had taught us. “Oh — you’re pouring it the way we learned too!” I said eagerly. She laughed and replied, “I can’t pour it nearly as well as Harada-san, but I’ll do my best.”
We went to an old jazz cafe called Doug, run by a snazzy eighty-year-old man, Masato Tateishi-san. After retiring from designing seal (hanko) design, he now runs a cafe. His parents owned a hanko shop in Sasebo, a city next to Hasami. He left for Tokyo when he was young, but returned to Hasami at twenty-five after his family heard there was growing demand in the ceramic industry for hanko stamps.
“I was so bored — I didn’t like Hasami,” Tateishi-san recalled, looking back on those days while making us a cup of coffee. He showed us his collection of hanko at the cafe, though he kept getting sidetracked chatting with a regular customer reading his newspaper.
“I was plotting my next escape back to Tokyo,” he said, “but the hanko orders never stopped, so I guess I just stayed.”
People told us that almost every stamp design you see on plates in Hasami was made by Tateishi-san. I spotted one at Wazen — a yellow mimosa carved by him. I traced the mimosa with my fingers, thinking about the person behind the flowers, and felt something warm settle inside me.
I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people I now knew stood behind a finished product. I can’t look at a plate anymore without flipping it over to find a signature, looking closely at the design or tracing the rim while imagining the maker’s face. It becomes difficult to see these everyday tableware as just ceramics.
We went to an old jazz cafe called Doug, run by a snazzy eighty-year-old man, Masato Tateishi-san. After retiring from designing seal (hanko) design, he now runs a cafe. His parents owned a hanko shop in Sasebo, a city next to Hasami. He left for Tokyo when he was young, but returned to Hasami at twenty-five after his family heard there was growing demand in the ceramic industry for hanko stamps.
“I was so bored — I didn’t like Hasami,” Tateishi-san recalled, looking back on those days while making us a cup of coffee. He showed us his collection of hanko at the cafe, though he kept getting sidetracked chatting with a regular customer reading his newspaper.
“I was plotting my next escape back to Tokyo,” he said, “but the hanko orders never stopped, so I guess I just stayed.”
People told us that almost every stamp design you see on plates in Hasami was made by Tateishi-san. I spotted one at Wazen — a yellow mimosa carved by him. I traced the mimosa with my fingers, thinking about the person behind the flowers, and felt something warm settle inside me.
I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people I now knew stood behind a finished product. I can’t look at a plate anymore without flipping it over to find a signature, looking closely at the design or tracing the rim while imagining the maker’s face. It becomes difficult to see these everyday tableware as just ceramics.
Wherever we went, people have told us that clay is the most important part of the process.
When we visited the clay maker Kōda Tōdō, founded in 1889, we saw how clay makers pass perfectly prepared clay on to factories, mold makers, and potters. Inside the worksite, piles of stone were stacked everywhere — some white, others streaked with brown and faint red pigments.
“This is all porcelain,” Kōda-san said with a big smile on his face. At an otherwise quiet site, we heard a sound: clink, clink. A craftsman sat on the ground, carefully striking each stone with a small hammer, removing the reddish portions — traces of iron remaining within the white porcelain rock. His name was Honda-san, his hands behind his back, shoulders hunched as he stood in front of the porcelain. He was “polishing,” a process known as migaki (磨き). His skin, weathered by years under the sun, tells of the fifty years he has spent hammering porcelain by hand since he was twenty-five.
It is not an easy technique, under the scorching heat or the piercing cold. The stone must keep the right size, ensuring that none of it goes to waste while determining exactly how much to shave away. A machine could never replicate the attention each piece received by him. “Why do you keep doing this job?” one of our team members asked. “I don’t know... I guess it’s fun,” he mutters under his breath. Later, Kōda-san told us reluctantly, “He’s the only person left who can be that precise.”
Without clay, there is no product, but without him —without all of them—there is no product that can exist.
Today, nearly 80 percent of Hasami ware is made using Amakusa clay from Kumamoto Prefecture for better results. Amakusa produces a clearer and more luminous finish for the ceramic, free from cloudiness and more stable during firing.
Still, some artisans continue to use porcelain stone from Mitsunomata, a small village southeast of Hasami, where quarries dating back to the Edo period can still be seen. The area is rich in raw materials — opal was once found there as well — and since around 1605, people have used its stone to produce porcelain.
Our confidant and trusted guide, Kobayashi-san, looked down and pointed toward the river. I followed his gaze. Beneath us lay a moss-covered rugged white rock, flecked with grey, large enough to feel like its own landscape. It look exactly like when you look down from an airplane, a patchwork of fields.
The river was so clear we could almost see the bottom of the rock where it rooted itself beneath the water. There was something almost omniscient about it, a stone shaped for centuries by the force of the river, rain, and wind. And this rock, Kobayashi-san explained, was also porcelain — one of many lying quietly around Mitsunomata.
We later met Jyuichiro Hayashi-san, one of the few potters who still uses porcelain from Mitsunomata. When he greeted us, he looked as though he had just finished a workout — cheeks flushed, slightly out of breath, barefoot. He works with a kerokuro, a traditional Japanese kick wheel passed down from his father.
His ceramics are an homage to his hometown, Mitsunomata. He uses water from the river behind his studio and clay from the porcelain stone surrounding him — every element of his work drawn from the resources of the land.
As we walked back to the car, I picked up a small piece of porcelain from the street. It wasn’t nearly as white as the stones Honda-san had carefully polished — but I took it home with me hoping it would remind me that “Nothing will come of nothing.”
A puzzle is easier solved with others helping you. Life, too, feels more exuberant — more meaningful, even more tolerable — when experienced together.
Funnily or perhaps coincidentally, hasami in Japanese means “scissors” or “in between.” With scissors, nothing can be cut unless both blades move together; in the same way, ceramics cannot be made unless every part of the ecosystem moves in tandem. Geographically speaking, Hasami sits in the middle of an abundance — a trifecta for ceramic production: mountains that yield raw porcelain stone, rivers that provide water, and akamatsu (赤松)pine from the forests for firewood.
Nothing in Hasami exists on its own.
And the four days I was in Hasami, it felt exciting to let life happen and experience it with the people that call Hasami their home.
