mid edo period –
bizen pottery
Riemon Kanashige, who died in 1767, was appointed as the first Bizen ware artisan of the Kanashige family by the feudal lord of Okayama in 1729. He was the first Bizen ware master craftsman of the Kanashige family, and produced many fine pieces for the shogunate and as gifts for the feudal lords.
His eldest son, Kanashige Risaburo, who died in 1927, lamented the decline of Bizen Pottery during the Meiji period and sought new opportunities for Bizen Pottery. Anticipating the demand for clay pipes as construction materials for railroads, he invited craftsmen from Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture, to establish Ibe-Shokai in 1885 and began manufacturing Bizen ware clay pipes. In 1888, the Sanyo Railway Company was established and railroad construction began. When laying new tracks, earthenware pipes were required to pass under the tracks to secure water channels, and Bizen ware pipes were in high demand as they were hard and strong enough to withstand the weight of a train, and the manufacture of earthenware pipes expanded.
Hisaichiro’s second son, Kinshige Shinzaburo, became a Bizen potter, and his son Kinshige Isamu, who became a Bizen potter under the name Touyo, became a Living National Treasure.
Kaneshige Tsutomu, the son of Risaburo, succeeded to the kiln as the heir of the original Kanashige family, and devoted himself to Bizen ware production as the 76th Kanashige Riemon.
Kaneshige Minoru, the 77th Kanashige Riemon, was not Tsutomu’s real son, but an adopted son. Minoru’s family was a local landowner and village headman who went to the continent as a soldier during the war, was interned in Siberia by the former Soviet Union after the war, and later returned to Japan. The heir to the Kanashige family was killed in the war, so Minoru, who was close to his father, was adopted as the head of the family and succeeded to the kiln.
