Life in Japan

Records written by potters from the village of Naeshirogawa, paint a picture of their early years in Kyushu. The Imjin War ended with the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1598, and was followed by a period of instability in Japan, culminating in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600.  Naeshirogawa was in Satsuma, the domain ruled by the Shimazu family of daimyos, who were on the losing side at Sekigahara. The Shimazu were occupied with political matters outside their domain for several years after the battle and did not turn their attention to the potters for some time.

The Naeshirogawa source, A Record of How We Were Brought From Chosŏn in Years Gone By (Fig.14) suggests the potters encountered difficulties with language, providing for themselves, and tensions with locals who would also have been competing for scant resources in the post-war period. The document also shows that they received help from other locals in Satsuma, and eventually, from the daimyo. ¹⁶

It was a time of military upheaval, and no orders were made concerning the people from Chosŏn, so all worked the land or made pottery. They somehow managed to survive…”

The record continues:

Because they were foreigners, the people of the place often derided and interfered with them. Once, someone entered the house of a potter…behaving as he wished…. [The Koreans] attacked this person. However, after that day, a local warned them… that other locals were going to retaliate…

The potters fled to Naeshirogawa, where the locals offered them shelter, and they eventually settled:

…at the end of the twelfth month they fled to the area around Naeshirogawa and camped under some trees in a pitiful state…some local peasants took pity on them and gave them food.  They built huts or stayed in the homes of the farmers for three years. The lord came to hear of their plight and ordered that twenty-three houses be built for them.” ¹⁷

Fig.15 & 16, a bowl from the early seventeenth century, is an intriguing example of Hagi ware, a ceramic tradition that was founded by Korean potters brought to Japan after the Imjin War. The Hagi corpus was comprised of elite items such as tea wares for the Mōri family, and Hagi potters are known to have produced replicas of classic Korean tea bowls. This particular bowl was fired with a yellowish glaze to approximate the warm golden color of Korean Ido tea bowls, which was traditionally likened to the colour of a loquat.

The poem on this bowl is particularly unusual, and may offer some echoes of the voices of Koreans in Japan after the war. It is written in the Korean alphabet known as Hangul, and brushed using iron pigment on the surface of the bowl. Since the poem is written across the entire surface of the vessel, its full appreciation would have been revealed through handling the bowl after drinking.

The masterful but otherwise unattributed calligraphy has invited further analysis. Many pieces of contemporaneous Chosŏn wares (e.g. Fig.18) bear Hangul inscriptions written in a lively manner. Those made for local consumption include the names of owners inscribed on the bases of vessels. ¹⁸ In these examples, the swift brushstrokes exhibit a simple efficiency. However, the characteristic rhythm and confidence of the brushwork on the Hagi piece shows the hand of a trained artist. Since there was often a division of labor between potters and decorators, it is likely that the calligrapher and potter are not the same person.

This poem is written in the Korean short verse form known as sijo. The poet uses the term, Ho-Koryŏ, the meaning of which is unclear. Although this is a Sino-Korean word, because here it is written in Hangul (a phonetic alphabet) it is unclear what Chinese characters might have been intended. Koryŏ, the name of a dynasty that ruled on the Korean peninsula from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, was a synonym for Korea in Japan. And it is possible that “ho” is intended to mean “little” — in other words, it may mean the voice of the poem is going to visit “Little Korea”, a settlement of Koreans in Japan. ²⁰

The poem also features a Ho-Koryŏ (“Korean”) dog. The line “he has heard and fell silent” implies that the dog has heard the Korean language command “Dog, stop barking!” and has understood, indicating that it understands Korean and therefore belongs to the Koreans in Japan. By identifying a dog as “Korean, too,” the voice of the poem implies that both themselves and the dog are Koreans.

Through its use of the barking dog trope, the poem can be thematically compared with a famous Korean folk song called the Dog Story, which originated from and was popular in South Kyŏngsang Province in the late sixteenth century. ²¹ The dog in question is described in the song as either a “black dog” or “sapsalgae,” a shaggy Korean breed of dog (Fig. 18).

Recent research has shown that a migrant Korean would have known the original version of the Dog Story and could then have recorded it on the surface of the Hagi tea bowl with some minor errors and revisions. ²³

The eighteenth-century version and the Hagi poem are almost identical, except for the appearance of the famed poet, Du Mu as the lover in the former. Thus, in the Hagi version, we can understand the voice of the poem as a “lover”, who is visiting Koreans in Japan, and is themselves Korean, perhaps an envoy looking for prisoners taken during the Imjin War. This Korean lover is able to quieten the barking dog because he speaks Korean and the dog understands his command.

Although further evidence is lacking, we may surmise that the poem was written by a first-generation Korean who was not only a skilled calligrapher but also a poet familiar with the sijo form. The poet used the allusive vocabulary of sijo to convey a sense of longing: for the lost captives on the part of the lover and for Korea on the part of the captives.

Yi Sam-P’yŏng, probably the most well-known Korean immigrant potter in Japan took the Japanese name, Kanegae Sanbei, and married a Japanese woman. In historical documents such as Old Records of Kanagae and Kanagae Family Records, his Korean name does not appear, and he was referred to as Sanbei or Kanegae Sanbei. ²⁴

Likewise, the first Takatori potters, P’alsan (Hachizō in Japanese) and his family, were brought as skilled potters by the Kuroda family around the time of the war. They began ceramic production for the Kuroda and were later granted full warrior status. According to the Takatori Family Record, their Japanese surname, “Takatori” was assigned by the lord, Kuroda Nagamasa, who ordered the change of the character for “Taka” to emphasize the potter family’s Korean origin. ²⁵

Over the course of the Tokugawa period, most settlements of Korean potters lost their Korean language skills and identity. An exception is the Korean pottery community located in the village of Naeshirogawa in Satsuma domain. This village retained its Korean identity throughout the Tokugawa period, and descendants of the original potters are still active in the town (now known as Miyama) today.

During the Tokugawa period, attempts were made by the domain authorities to preserve the Korean identity of the Naeshirogawa villagers, and they were often depicted wearing Korean dress in illustrated travel guides (Fig.23). In 1676 the Naeshirogawans were prohibited from marrying someone from outside the village, although people from other villages were permitted to marry into the Korean community. In 1695, the Naeshirogawa villagers were prohibited from using Japanese names, and any who had a Japanese name were ordered to change it to a Korean one. ²⁶

These measures may be seen as attempts by the domain authorities to preserve the Korean identity of the villagers, together with the pottery and language skills they posessed. In addition to ceramic production, Naeshirogawa also provided Korean language interpreters for Satsuma throughout the Tokugawa period, and so there was an additional need to preserve the Korean culture of the community. ²⁷

Satsuma, which is located on the southern island of Kyushu, was one region that provided troops for Hideyoshi’s Imjin campaigns, and the Shimazu family, who were the hereditary rulers of Satsuma, brought back Korean potters. The village of Naeshirogawa, where most of these potters eventually settled, was located about one day’s journey from the castle town of Kagoshima.

During the 1610s, the daimyo of Satsuma began to regularly visit the village of Naeshirogawa on his way to the shogunal capital of Edo. These journeys were part of the system of alternate attendance, in which, approximately once a year, for two and a half centuries, daimyo lords, their samurai retainers and servants paraded along Japan’s highways between their castle towns and the city of Edo in order to attend upon the shogun. ²⁸

During visits to Naeshirogawa, the Satsuma daimyo would hold audiences with the potters at which gifts would be exchanged, and the villagers would perform Korean dances and display their pottery wares. Illustrations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries show that the practice continued and that the villagers would wear Korean costums on such occasions (Fig.26).

In return, the daimyo gave the potters gifts of money, honours such as the right to bear a surname and to carry a sword (indicating a rise to warrior class status), and issued proclamations prohibiting locals in the region from harming the Korean community. The domain also supported the Korean pottery community in Naeshirogawa by providing money for houses, the digging of wells, and disaster relief.

The example of Naeshirogawa shows how a mutually beneficial relationship was established between the community of Korean potters and their daimyo captors. The pottery industry provided a source of income for the domain and in return the potters received protection and support from the domain authorities. ²⁹