Yanagihara Mutsuo (b. 1934) was born in Kochi, on the island of Shikoku, but has made his career in Kyoto. Like several influential potters of his generation, he received instruction from two watershed artists who would become Living National Treasures, Tomimoto Kenkichi (1886-1963) and Kondō Yūzō (1902-1985), through the Kyoto Municipal Fine Arts University, where he graduated in 1960. Yanagihara taught abroad a number of times, at Washington State University in 1966, at Alfred State College in New York in 1972, and also in 1972 at Scripps College, Claremont. In 1980, he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to travel the United States and lecture. His travels made him well aware of ceramic modernities in the West, and he carried a new attitude upon return to Japan. In 1984, he began teaching at Osaka University of the Arts. In 1998 and 2000 respectively, he was awarded by Kyoto for contribution to the arts and to culture. In 2002, he received the coveted gold prize from the Japan Ceramics Association.
Following a foundational ceramist and painter of Kyoto, Ogata Kenzan (1663-1743), Yanagihara was highly tuned to correlations of ceramic forms and their decoration. He brought a modernist attitude to his use of bold colors and luster glazes. hg
http://www.tougei-club.com/topics/yanagihara.html
Born in a doctor's house in Kochi prefecture, he encountered ceramic art in an unexpected way. Mr. Yanagihara spent his school days in contact with the members of the running mud company such as Mr. Osamu Suzuki. Works of modeling, colors, and patterns that cannot be imagined in the sense of Japan at that time have been announced.
The origin of his teacher's modeling is the Sue pottery, which assembles parts molded with potter's wheel and emphasizes a part of it. He changes form and color, but he "blinds" things like "container" and "object", "tradition" and "innovation", and creates works with a critical spirit that includes humor. You are continuing.
Ale from Mr. Yanagihara to an amateur potter
① Make a lot repeatedly. It will be fun if you have a little patience, and it will be practice if you repeat it.
② Enjoy the joy of using it. Please use your own vessel at home and with friends and talk about it a lot.
③ Appreciation of pottery. If you are interested, you will have a deeper perspective on the works and antiques of the museum.
④ Collection. It is interesting to collect while making. A great collection also begins with a single collection.
Born in Kochi prefecture in 1934. He studied ceramic art at Kyoto City University of Arts and received guidance from Kenkichi Tomimoto, Yuzo Kondo, and Yoshimichi Fujimoto. After completing his major, he works as an assistant. From 1966 to 1972, he was a lecturer at three universities in the United States and traveled to the United States three times with the US Government Cultural Arts Promotion Grant Fund. In 1984, he became a professor at Osaka University of Arts. Currently, Professor Emeritus of Osaka University of Arts
(Hereafter, the text contributed by his teacher)
"My Ceramics Resume"
The origin of my ceramics is in the "container" of footwear. However, I would like to make sure that there is no misunderstanding here that "container" does not mean only everyday items that are bound by their purpose or function. It's not just the expensive cooking tableware made by potters. Draw a pottery-like shape with a hollow interior, a jar-like, deep bowl-like "container" in your head. Even the invisible air that hides the darkness inside the shape is what I perceive as a "container" of images or ideas. If you expand the "container" to this point, you can think that most pottery consists of the "container" and the "modeling" that can be seen in the changes in patterns and shapes. It can be said that the two are in a coexistence relationship rather than an alternative.
Mutsuo Yanagihara (MUTSUO YANAGIHARA) "Wind Vessel" 1981
"Wind Vessel" 1981Around 1960, there was a movement to innovate ceramic art in the Japanese ceramic art world, and "container" was regarded as traditional and "modeling" was regarded as innovative, and the tendency to promote only "modeling" became remarkable. For the time being, figurative ceramics that have no purpose or function were collectively called "objects" and spread in museums and art galleries.
This trend is spreading worldwide, partly due to the influence of clay work, a ceramic sculpture that has spread from the United States, in order to escape the traditional Japanese style of ceramic art. At that time, I was working in the United States, so I was able to observe the difference between Japanese object ceramics and American clay work.
There is no metaphysical debate about everyday ceramic art in the United States. There is no custom to appreciate coffee cups, meat plates, etc. After all, there is no world of "tea bowls". Practical ceramic art is in the category of craft design, and it is rarely discussed in museums about the individuality and functionality of the material and whether its price is appropriate as a consumer good. Therefore, the ceramic art as a "container" is poor. In fact, the best practical vessels found in the United States are related to plastic.Mutsuo Yanagihara (MUTSUO YANAGIHARA) "Jomon style, Yayoi form jar" 2001
"Jomon-style, Yasei-style jar" 2001Interest in this new material is high, so beautiful and attractive everyday miscellaneous items are ubiquitous. The culture of everyday life today is one of the best in the world, and America is still a new country. But now that her plastic is the subject of criticism as a craft material, the future is uncertain.

Inevitable big work in ceramic art, "firing" in the kiln remains. The soil is burned in an incandescent flame and all the substances contained in the soil are converted into inorganic "balls". My work is exposed to the scorching flames in the kiln, and the "container" and "modeling" are simply the same and revived as pottery. Destruction and regeneration.
In this process I sometimes see images of life and death. It's hard work that can't be beaten even if it doesn't become crude. At 1400 ℃, the time required is 18 hours, and at this time, "modeling" is certainly supported by "containers", and my ceramic art is established.
Mutsuo Yanagihara (MUTSUO YANAGIHARA) "Kaze no Yakata" 2018
`` Kaze no Yakata'' 2018Mutsuo Yanagihara (MUTSUO YANAGIHARA) "Sai-to-Kanki" 2004
"Sai pottery / anti-ware" 2004I would like to conclude my sentence by quoting a passage from the famous "Sentence of the Heart" of the tea ceremony ancestor "Murata Juko" (1423-1502).
“The important thing about this road is to distract the Japanese and Chinese people, what should be done”
“Utsuwa” and “modeling”, inside and outside of the shape, Japanese and Western, Japan and the United States, and recently Japan South Korea, it is essential to reexamine these relations from the ground up and to dispel the conflict.
Dr. Frederick Baekeland, Robert Moes, et al. "Modern Japanese Ceramics in American Collections". New York, Japan Society. 1993,
His biomorphic, abstract, colorful and decorative work was partly shaped by direct exposure to modern Western art during two stints in the United States. As early as 1958, when he joined and exhibited with the Modern Art Society, and before he had completed his training in ceramics at Kyoto Art University (B.Z. 1958; M.F.A. 1960), he had already committed himself to ceramic sculpture. In a mere eight years his frequently exhibit5ed work had won him several prizes (Modern Art Exhibition, 1960; Modern Japaneses Ceramics Exhibition, 1962).
The early 1960s were a period when Yanagihara seriously considered giving up ceramics altogether for other forms of sculpture as he kep experimenting in search of a personal style. His mostly monochromatic and always subdued pieces reflected not only foreign influences such as the futurism of Umberto Boccioni (1872-1916) and the surrealism of Jean Art, but also others closer to home such as Isamu Noguchi, Tsuji Shindō and Yagi Kazuo. Then in 1966, he left Japan for a teaching position at Washington State University and had a number of one-man shows dominated by works with soft, corpulent forms. Returning home in 1968 [note, the year of the Lynn Irabo vase), he decided to become nonaffiliated, resigned from the Modern Art Society and became an assistant professor at Osaka Art Univeristy, where he became a full professor in 1984. In 1972 he again left for a two-year period of teaching in the United States at Alred University and Scripps College. By 1971 Yanagihara had evolved a stable style which he has mined effectively ever since. On the face of it, his career, marked from 1961 to 1985 by a number of prizes, forty-one one-man shows and participation in 104 group exhibitions, seems the epitome of success. It would appear, however, that in a society still overhwlmingly dominated by functional ceramics, his sculpture is accepted more favorably abroad than at home. Thus, of his work in fourteen public collections, nine of these are foreign, and twenty of his forty-five sallies into competitive exhibitions have been abroad. It is noteworthy not only that many of his sculptures can double as vases, but also that he mankes many conventially shaped, albeit abstractly decorated, functional pieces. [again ref Lynn Irabo vase]...
Yanagihara Mutsuo, "Eyes of the Imagination", The Studio Potter, Dec. 1992, vol 21, no. 1.
"I came to American in 1966 at the invitation of the University of Washinton. I was an instructor in the ceramics department together with Robert Sperry and Howard Kottler. As to the problems and pleasures I encountered in the States, I would have to say that, other than language problems, it was a complete pleasure for me. I especially enjoyed the sense of more freedom of self-expression, with less attention to the confines of tradition that one feels in Japan. In America I felt anything was possible.
Concerning the influences of American ceramics on my work, I would like to quote from an article by Kenji Kanedo:
"(The) first experience in America had the greatest impact on Yanagihara. He had planned to abandon ceraics and launch himself into a new world. Having arrived at the peak of the Pop Art period, however, he found himself taking a new look at himself through waves of being attracted to and repelled by the powerful currecnts of American culture in which he was immersed. What he discovered was his Japanese identity and an awareness that, as a Japanese person, he found ceramics most familiar and accessible. He decided to redefine himself as a ceramic artist. That introspective approach gradually led Yanagihara to a discovery in the theory of forms: that Westner and Japanese persons see differently. Westerners look for clear-cut visual differences in forms, while Japanese care less about the visual aspect of ceramics but see them with the half-closed eyes of the imagination.
Yanagihara then began searching for forms in Japanese ceramics that possessed that quality of viusal clairyt. What he found was Sueki ware, particularly Sueki footed jars. Yanagihara selected that technique and combined it with the collage and assemblage techniques that he had found interesting in contempoary art. The result was works such as dark blue glazed vases with gold and silver decor (1971). There has been extensive discussion of the erotic forms and dramatic colors of this group of works. Those observations are valid, but the most basic points-- that the works enfold interior space and that they have mouths-- must not be forgotten. Enfolding space, which Yanagihara described as his work's function, is a point that he has consistently insisted upon...
When he made his second trip to the United States, his experience there led to creating works that excluded vessel-like qualities, (such as) his Sky series (1976). He himself, howe3ver, does not think highly of them; they do not really work.
His third stay in the United States seems to have confirmed his understanding of Japanese ceramics. Instead of being stimulated there, he returned to Japan convinced he should be a "hardworking potter" far from the U.S. art world. It was then that he created his Cylindrival Vase, Overlapping Vase, and Smiling Vase series. These works boldly assert their enfolding of space. He underplays their suitability for firing and creates satisfying spatial forms that experess "all sorts of images of my own"...
He calls these works not the more concrete Keitai bu the more abstract Keijo (both terms meaning shape or form) and not visual (shikaku), but tactily visual (Shokkakutekishikaku)."
As to the future of ceramics, because I don't know what the future will bring, I am working very hard now.