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1 - Shaping Family Identity among Korean Migrant Potters in Japan during the Tokugawa Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2020

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Abstract

This chapter considers the management of family through analysis of manufacturing and cultural traditions among Koreans relocated to Japan during the Japanese invasions of the Korean peninsula during the period of the Imjin Wars (1592–98). In particular, it examines the monument created by Jissen, a fourth-generation son of the Fukaumi family who had come to Japan to work in ceramics during the period of the invasions. Potters were particularly desirable labourers during this period and Korean family-run operations were critical to the development of Japanese porcelain manufacture. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Jissen raised the temple monument to his great-grandparents, changing tea ceremony practices had brought Aritaware increased attention from the Japanese nobility, and then from a wider European clientele. This chapter analyses how his monument helped construct the identity of a translocated family, and gave meaning to dynasty, house and household in Tokugawa Japan.

Keywords: ceramics, Korea, Japan, household, dynasty

This essay considers the management of family through analysis of manufacturing and cultural traditions among Koreans relocated to Japan during the Japanese invasions of the Korean peninsula from 1592–98, known as the Imjin Wars. In particular, it examines the monument created by Jissen, a fourth-generation son of the Fukaumi family who had come to Japan to work in ceramics during the period of the invasions. Potters were particularly desirable labourers brought to Japan during this period and Korean family-run operations were critical to the development of Japanese porcelain manufacture. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the family's descendant celebrated the founding significance of his great-grandfather and great-grandmother with a temple monument. By this period, changing tea ceremony practices had brought Aritaware increased attention, first among the Japanese nobility and then to a wider European clientele. This chapter analyses how Jissen's textual and material artefact helped to construct the identity of a translocated family, giving meaning to dynasty, house and household in new ways that were shaped by their presence in Tokugawa Japan.

In Hōon Temple (Hiekoba, Saga prefecture, Kyūshū), an eighteenthcentury stone monument tells the story of Korean potters who came to Japan at the end of the sixteenth century. It was erected by Jissen, a son of the Fukaumi dynasty central to the establishment of the ceramic industry in Arita and the production of the then world-famous porcelain known as Aritaware.

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