Eimei

Eimei - Hideaki Shimizu

It's hard to interview Eimei without quickly getting into talking about his father. Eimei has managed to make a name for himself on the Japanese market and has received prestigious awards. And that is a even bigger achivement considering when you have such a famous father as Youzan that cast a long shadow. Youzan is known in Tokoname as "The King of glaze". In the 60's he managed to seriously introduce glazed pots in the bonsai pottery world of Tokoname. He had studied old Chinese ceramics and glazes for a few years in Kyoto and returned to Tokoname with Shinsha, an oxblood's red glaze, and his own unique version of Namako. This opened the door to a new market, and within a few years half of the one hundred potters in Tokoname made glazed bonsai pots. This also meant that companies engaged in glaze introduced their commercial colors. Youzan, however, continued to experiment on his own and is today very well-known both internationally and in Japan. Eimei still produce pots with some of his father's glazes, except for the Tenmoku, who was his father's life project and, as Eimei of respect, does not want to reproduce since he beleive his father took it to perfection. In this stage of his life he is busy providing for his family and to make sure to supply the domestic Japanese market with his trademark pots, but looks forward to the day when he can lean back and make pots for his own sake. He has ideas about new shapes he wants to develop and how he wants to experiment more with the pot's feet. "As young, I had many artistic dreams, when I got older, these have been rooted and has matured. They have resulted in my own unique style. It's important to me that you do not have to look for the chop on the pot to see that it's an Eimei, son of Youzan.”

The famous Youzan Namako glaze. The one to the left is made by Eimeis father, the one to the right by him.

Eimei telling me about his younger years when he was trying to change the conservative bonsai pot market. Among other things he founded a group of young artist that tried to modernize the style of Tokoname.