It was painted in the town of Daishoji, which existed in the center of present-day Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture until the early Showa period. From the early Meiji period to the Showa period, it was produced in large quantities in the area of the former Daishoji domain in response to orders from Japan and overseas.
Towards the end of the Edo period, the Daishoji clan, which owned the Daishoji area in Enuma county, invited a potter from Kyoto, Eiraku Wazen, for industrial promotion, which is said to be the beginning of Daishoji ware. In the Meiji era, when the clan lost its protection due to the abolition of the domain, demand for Daishoji pottery decreased, and the potters began to copy Imari ware in earnest.
First, through the efforts of Matsuyama Seishichi (1836-1918, later known as Okura Juraku), who was a potter at the Matsuyama Kiln, a former clan kiln, he mixed pottery stones from Kutani and Hanasaka with Hizen pottery stones to improve the base material suitable for Imari’s original ware, and also introduced clay molds to create a system for mass production of bowls, chrysanthemum-shaped dishes, and small dishes of the same shape and size. The potters were able to supply a large number of “Imari-shita” (semi-finished products), which were finished by dyeing, to the painters in Daishoji.
After that, “Imari-shita” was fired at the Okura kiln, the Kitade kiln (later the Seisen kiln) by Kitaide Uyomon (?-1928), a potter from the Matsuyama kiln who opened a kiln in Sakaedani in the first year of the Meiji era, the Matsuda kiln (later the Sogawa kiln) by Matsuda Hanyomon, the Higashino kiln by Chokushi, and other kilns in Yawata in the former Nomi district. The excellent painters of Daishoji painted on the “Imari-shita”, and the system of mass production of Daishoji Imari was established under the division of labor between Yamashiro for the base and Daishoji for the top painting.
The painters were Takeuchi Ginshu, his younger brother Asai Ichigo, and the Dajyoji painters trained by Ginshu, including Nakamura Shuto. For these reasons, it is said that the kilns that fired the base materials on which the overglaze paintings were painted were concentrated in Daishoji.
One of the characteristics of Daisyoji Imari is that aka-e painters of Daisyoji used their own red paint with elegant colors for line drawing and reddish darkening of Imari copies in order to do a good job of fine overglaze red painting. In addition, some painters studied glazes and tried to reproduce the paints used in the original poem, and it is said that they tried to be as close to the original as possible.
For these reasons, Daishoji Imari has become a notable figure in the history of Kutani ware, although it was created as a measure to revive Kutani ware, which was on the verge of decline in the Meiji period.
