In the previous piece, the focus was on the pottery merchants of Tajimi. This time the gaze turns upstream, to the kiln districts that once supplied those traders with their wares: the Takirō and Kasahara areas. Both towns flourished on the back of the ceramics industry; Takirō became known for Western-style tableware such as coffee cups, while Kasahara made its name in tile production.
These two settlements sit side by side in the south-west of Tajimi. From Tajimi Station, a ten–minute drive in the same direction brings one first to Takirō, and, if one continues along the road, on to Kasahara. Around the boundary between the two, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of ancient burial mounds, quiet evidence that people have lived here since long ago.
There is an old tale that potters came over from Seto around the year 1600 and opened kilns in Takirō. Yet excavations show kiln remains dating back to the medieval Kamakura period, suggesting that firing had already taken root in these hills even earlier.
Once, a local railway ran from Tajimi Station out to Kasahara (the Kasahara Railway, 1928–1978), its steam locomotives hauling substantial quantities of ceramic ware away from this small valley.
Today, the line fell silent and was reborn as a footpath named “Tōsai no Michi,” a walking route where people can feel the changing seasons with each step.
For a modest country town, that little railway was a powerful artery, helping its industry to grow and spread far beyond the mountains that cradle it.
How then did these two towns come to take shape as kiln landscapes in their own right?
These two settlements sit side by side in the south-west of Tajimi. From Tajimi Station, a ten–minute drive in the same direction brings one first to Takirō, and, if one continues along the road, on to Kasahara. Around the boundary between the two, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of ancient burial mounds, quiet evidence that people have lived here since long ago.
There is an old tale that potters came over from Seto around the year 1600 and opened kilns in Takirō. Yet excavations show kiln remains dating back to the medieval Kamakura period, suggesting that firing had already taken root in these hills even earlier.
Once, a local railway ran from Tajimi Station out to Kasahara (the Kasahara Railway, 1928–1978), its steam locomotives hauling substantial quantities of ceramic ware away from this small valley.
Today, the line fell silent and was reborn as a footpath named “Tōsai no Michi,” a walking route where people can feel the changing seasons with each step.
For a modest country town, that little railway was a powerful artery, helping its industry to grow and spread far beyond the mountains that cradle it.
How then did these two towns come to take shape as kiln landscapes in their own right?
The tableware town - Takirō
In the Edo period there was a system known as “oyanimotsu” (親荷物) that allocated specific products to each locality, and Takirō and Kasahara were designated to produce “shiro-suzu” (ash-glazed sake flasks) and “ame-dokkuri” (amber-glazed flasks). In the late Edo period, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the techniques for porcelain production that had begun in Seto reached Tajimi as well. Because porcelain commanded a higher value than the stoneware that had been made until then, it is not hard to imagine how swiftly porcelain technology spread through Tajimi’s kiln districts. Among them, Takirō seems to have shifted to porcelain particularly early. The town also appears to have stood out for its technical prowess, something that can be seen in the fine quality of the porcelain excavated from former kiln sites. In this period porcelain guardian dogs were dedicated to Takirō’s Shinmei Shrine, a quiet testament to how proud the potters of Takirō were of their own craft.
Designated Tangible Cultural Property of Tajimi City: the lapis-glazed porcelain guardian dogs of Takirō Shinmei Shrine, standing 25 cm (open-mouthed) and 24.8 cm (closed-mouthed), bearing the date 1847 (Kōka 4).
Held in the Takirō Community Hall.
Even after the Meiji era began in 1868, arrangements in the spirit of the old “oyanimotsu” system seem to have persisted, and excavations at former kiln sites have turned up many small plates, suggesting that the union’s exclusive rights kept production focused on these pieces. Thus Takirō continued to grow steadily as a kiln district, yet when the domestic market fell into recession around the late 1890s to early 1900s, the town pivoted towards Western-style tableware for export. It was among the first in Tajimi to introduce coal-fired kilns suited to firing white porcelain tableware, catching the swell of a new age. By the 1950s and 60s this export trade in Western tableware reached its height, with freight trains carrying large consignments from the little local station out to trading companies in Nagoya.
The “Tōsai no Michi” path (laid out along the former Kasahara Railway line), looking towards Kasahara.
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The former Takirō Station site, where the station building once stood, is now Takirō Central Park
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A glimpse of Takirō Station in its day, taken from the information now displayed on the sign at the site.
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Walking through Takirō, one notices how the town stretches along the hillside, and the shape of the land itself makes clear why kiln work once flourished here. After the arrival of modern coal-fired kilns, slopes were no longer a necessity, yet chimneys still rose in clusters along the ridge, becoming emblems of Takirō’s skyline. Those chimneys have since disappeared through age and decay, but the skills of earlier generations live on, and the town continues as a place of Western-style tableware.
This town is also home to Ho-Ca, the long-stay pottery residency featured elsewhere on this site. In addition, a new facility for residential pottery-making is due to open here before long.
The Ho-Ca residential pottery studio welcomes people from many different countries who come here to study the ceramic arts (instructor Shibata-sensei in the low left corner).
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Hanzōgama is currently preparing to open its own residential pottery facility.
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the tile town - Kasahara
A ceramic tile mural displayed in the Kasahara Exchange Centre, depicting scenes of work around a traditional climbing kiln.
Kasahara was once known as “the town of Kasahara tea bowls,” but today, with the Mosaic Tile Museum as its landmark, it is better understood as a town of tiles. Like Takirō, Kasahara was designated under the “oyanimotsu” system to produce rice bowls, and up to the Meiji era it mainly fired bowls, growing to the point where it was widely recognised as a town of tea bowls. In time, however, Kasahara too was forced to seek a new path, pressed by fiercer domestic competition, economic downturns, natural disasters, and the wider shifts of the age.
As the years moved from Taishō into Shōwa, Japan was struck by the Great Kantō Earthquake and architecture entered a period of transformation. More and more buildings were made of reinforced concrete, and tiles began to be used in many places for ornament and for reasons of hygiene. In Japan, domestic tile production had tentatively begun a little earlier, and in Tajimi tile-making started in 1914, in the third year of Taishō, though at that time the word “tile” was not yet in use and they were called things like “floor bricks”, “wall bricks”, “decorative bricks”, or “applied bricks”.
As the years moved from Taishō into Shōwa, Japan was struck by the Great Kantō Earthquake and architecture entered a period of transformation. More and more buildings were made of reinforced concrete, and tiles began to be used in many places for ornament and for reasons of hygiene. In Japan, domestic tile production had tentatively begun a little earlier, and in Tajimi tile-making started in 1914, in the third year of Taishō, though at that time the word “tile” was not yet in use and they were called things like “floor bricks”, “wall bricks”, “decorative bricks”, or “applied bricks”.
Amid these currents of change, a man named Yamauchi Itsuzō was born in Kasahara. He went to Kyoto to study ceramics and glazes, then returned home and founded a tile factory.
At first he focused on large decorative tiles for architecture, but the work was slow, the pieces prone to cracking in the kiln, and he began to wonder whether smaller, simpler tiles might be possible. After much trial and error, he succeeded in 1935 in developing glazed porcelain mosaic tiles.
These were small tiles with a surface area of less than 50 square centimetres, easy to produce in uniform batches and well suited to mass production. They revolutionised manufacturing methods, tile factories sprang up across the town, and Kasahara became a key centre of postwar tile production. The mosaic tiles made in Kasahara were loaded onto trains and shipped out in ever greater quantities. At the peak of freight transport in 1970, they reached 12,000 tonnes per month and accounted for around eighty percent of the national market, becoming one of the principal export goods handled at Nagoya Port.
At first he focused on large decorative tiles for architecture, but the work was slow, the pieces prone to cracking in the kiln, and he began to wonder whether smaller, simpler tiles might be possible. After much trial and error, he succeeded in 1935 in developing glazed porcelain mosaic tiles.
These were small tiles with a surface area of less than 50 square centimetres, easy to produce in uniform batches and well suited to mass production. They revolutionised manufacturing methods, tile factories sprang up across the town, and Kasahara became a key centre of postwar tile production. The mosaic tiles made in Kasahara were loaded onto trains and shipped out in ever greater quantities. At the peak of freight transport in 1970, they reached 12,000 tonnes per month and accounted for around eighty percent of the national market, becoming one of the principal export goods handled at Nagoya Port.
Today mosaic tiles have become part of the town’s very identity, and you encounter them wherever you walk. At the centre stands the Mosaic Tile Museum, while garbage collection points throughout the town are adorned with mosaic tile art. Near the museum, the wagashi shop Tōshōken even sells sweets inspired by mosaic tiles. To learn more, read about The Mosaic Princess Tile Enthusiasts.
Hints for exploring the town on foot
- Tōsai no Michi, at the former Hon-Tajimi Station site. https://maps.app.goo.gl/9LjHDNDkRS5khNhM9
- Takirō Shinmei Shrine. https://maps.app.goo.gl/DpBHVR8wT4pymQn86
- Takirō Community Hall. https://maps.app.goo.gl/PBMnaLX2uatxEU5T6
- Takirō Central Park. https://maps.app.goo.gl/D5QMQpa9VkySd7oC6
- A residential pottery-making facility. HO-CA https://maps.app.goo.gl/h5rGUkDeNn6WpAL99
- Hanzōgama. https://maps.app.goo.gl/54WTac2NfdMhq18v6
- Mosaic Tile Museum Tajimi. https://maps.app.goo.gl/hXmKHsDqoeGAvEeZ8
- Kasahara Shinmeigū Shrine. https://maps.app.goo.gl/QTagVKwJHNMJYNsf8
- Tōshōken. https://maps.app.goo.gl/7q53ziWLiDaFdFFL9
