Plates, small dishes, and the pottery styles behind them. How to choose, use, and care for authentic Japanese tableware — from Mino to Arita — without the mystique. Written from Japan.
Two rice bowls on the same shelf. Same white porcelain, same weight in the hand, same thin cobalt line around the rim. One is $16. The other is $44. The $44 bowl says Arita on the box. The $16 bowl says Hasami — and twenty-five years ago, it would have said Arita too. That is…
Lift the rice bowl. Leave the big one on the table. That is nearly all of Japanese bowl etiquette — and you do not have to memorize which bowl is which, because the bowl tells you. A vessel meant to be lifted is built to be lifted: it has a carved foot ring you can…
This is a reference page. Most guides to Japanese pottery translate the words; almost none translate the measurements — and the measurements are where buyers abroad get surprised: a bowl smaller than expected, a “300ml” teapot that pours two thirds of that, two pots both sold as “8-gō” that are visibly different sizes. None of…
A teapot listed at 300 ml that pours two cups and stops. An 8-gō donabe that turns out to be two centimetres narrower than your friend’s 8-gō donabe. A plate whose size is given in a unit you can’t convert, from a place you can’t find on a map, with nothing written anywhere about the microwave….
Open the lid at half past twelve and one of two things has happened. Either the rice is still loose — grains that separate under the chopsticks, dry enough to lift cleanly — or it has settled into a damp slab, there is a film of water on the underside of the lid, and the…
A donabe (土鍤) is the earthenware pot at the heart of the Japanese winter table — the vessel that carries a simmering hot pot from the stove to the center of the meal, still bubbling, and lets everyone serve themselves. It cooks rice with a faint crust at the bottom, holds a one-pot nabemono through…
Kintsugi turns a broken bowl into something arguably more beautiful than before — but can you actually eat and drink from a mended piece? The honest answer: only if it was repaired with traditional natural lacquer (urushi) and fully cured. Many modern quick-repair kits use epoxy or synthetic resin and are meant for decorative pieces,…
Two Japanese soup bowls, one at $18 and one at $180, photograph almost identically. Nobody is hiding anything. Both are smooth, dark, seamless surfaces, and a camera can only see surfaces. One of them is a sprayed film over moulded plastic. The other is a block of wood turned on a lathe, wrapped in cloth…
Search for wabi-sabi tableware in English and you will be shown, almost without exception, the same thing: matte beige stoneware with a deliberately uneven rim, sold in sets of six identical pieces, photographed on a linen runner. It is a look, and the look is finished before it reaches you. Nothing about it will be…
There is a rule about seasonal patterns in Japan that almost nobody writing in English says out loud, and it changes what you should buy: you put the motif on the table before the season arrives, and you put it away once the season is at its peak. A maple-leaf plate is not for the…