Sheila's Stories and Stitches: Mashiko Pottery Festival

Back in Japan, I'm excited to attend the Mashiko Pottery Festival. I collect pottery coffee mugs and occasionally purchase other handmade items, so I look forward to doing some shopping. We travel for about 3 hours on our tour bus. There's lots of storage under the bus, so we all have our rolling shopping bags for our goodies! It's comfortable, but no bathroom. Luckily we take a break at a highway rest area. It's been a long time since I've stopped at one.

Our bus - I actually took this picture so I could find it again when we stopped. :)

At the Mashiko Pottery Sales Center parking lot

We arrive at the festival, and it's huge - there are about 500 tents set up, most of them full of pottery. I'm concerned that I won't find coffee mugs because so many people drink tea here, but my fears are quickly laid to rest when I see them at the first booths.

Inside the Sales Center

We start at the Mashiko Pottery Sales Center, a permanent structure. It's large parking lot is filled with tents - and it looks like a lot. But then as I walk to the main street (Jonaizaka Dori) they continue on both sides of the street as far as I can see. This is going to be fun!

There are also little pockets of booths, so if you go off the main road you might find 10-20 more potters set up in a cluster. Some of my favorite pieces come from here and they're a little less crowded than the main street shops.

A "secret" niche of items

This district has produced pottery for more than a 1000 years. It's considered "earthier" than some of Japan's other pottery centers, and viewed more as folkcraft and modern tablewear vs artwork. In the mid-1900s, Shoji Hamada was one of Mashiko's most famous potters and is credited with elevating the area's status. Currently there about 400 working kilns here.

The dye vats and fire pits.

Indigo dye is also a product of this region, and I stop in at Higeta Indigo Dye Workshop where you can see the process at work. This is a ninth-generation business, so I think they've gotten good at it! Unfortunately, it's also expensive - about $150 for a tunic style shirt - so I skip making any purchases here.

Scarves for sale

I decide there's no way I can keep an arrangement safe from harm while shopping
and on the bus ride home. Bummer!

There are also some booths with handmade jewelry, and a custom flower arrangement seller. He had a crowd of people watching and it was fun seeing him make his creations. Overwhelmingly though, it's pottery for sale, at a variety of price points. I find plenty of coffee mugs that cost $15, but also ones that are $75. It's the same with the kitchenware - nice works are $20, but we do see a vase that is $5000 (no one bought it). Most prices seem to be one third to one half of what they would cost at a gallery. What a deal!

It's a gorgeous fall day - the trees are changing colors and there's no clouds in the sky. What a perfect day to be outside.

The actual colors!

Those aren't feet at the bottom of the statue...

There's one other famous resident in Mashiko - the giant tanuki statue near the Sales Center. Tanuki are Japanese raccoon dogs, though they're not related to raccoons at all (they're part of the Canidae family, like wolves and foxes). They're prevalent in Japanese folklore and in the past few centuries they're seen as having a harmless, jovial lifestyle focused on bestowing humans with good fortune and prosperity. What makes them chuckle-worthy is how they are depicted - usually with a giant scrotum.

Here's the story of how that came to be (thank you, mnn.com):

actual tanuki

Believe it or not, the mythical tanuki's exaggerated scrotum has nothing to do with male virility or sexual over-indulgence. The origin of this defining characteristic dates back to 19th century, when metal workers wrapped gold in tanuki skin before hammering it into gold leaf. The strength of the tanuki's skin was so great that, according to legend, a tiny piece of gold could be hammered thin enough to stretch across eight tatami mats. Because the Japanese terms for a small ball of gold ("kin no tama") and testicles ("kintama") are so phonetically similar, the image of a tanuki with a gigantic testicular region is now associated with good fortune and stretching one's money.