Warm, organic, and rustic Korean and Korean-style tea bowls, known in Japan as kōraichawan (高麗茶碗), were hugely influential in shaping the visual and tactile aesthetic of Japanese tea culture. As vessels embodying the budding wabi movement of the early 1500s, the visual language of these bowls became embedded in the Japanese aesthetic lexicon, and continues to be used in Japanese pottery today.
The styles of Korean pottery that were loved by teaists in Japan are perhaps some of the most popular and well-known styles of Korean ceramics, although here, I’ll be examining them primarily through the lens of the Japanese tea culture which is perhaps responsible for their preservation and continued popularity. These styles are just some of the many historical and traditional styles of chawan, an overview of which you can read here.
History of Korean Tea Bowls in Japan
Figure 1: Modern Totoya Chawan by Karaku Kiln
Before we dive into any of these styles specifically, let’s explore how Korean ceramics even became part of Japanese tea culture in the first place.
Tea and tea drinking culture were introduced to Japan from China in the 8th or 9th centuries, and thus many of the original implements and utensils used to prepare and drink tea were imported from China if possible, or if not, they were locally made replicas of Chinese originals. Chief among these being the tenmoku: the original matcha bowls. From the 800s through to the mid-1500s, this Chinese aesthetic dominated tea culture in Japan, especially among the wealthy nobility and warriors who could afford Chinese antiques, and for the zen temples who had direct links to China. Even the peddlers selling tea on the streets were using bowls made in imitation of Chinese tenmoku and celadon. Although Japanese ceramic technology was not yet able to perfectly replicate China’s wares, the presence of a ‘replica’ market shows how valued these expensive imported wares were, at the top of an aesthetic pyramid with replicas beneath them and domestic styles at the bottom.
Figure 2: Yuteki Tenmoku, Song Dynasty China
The movement away from the expensive Chinese aesthetics began sometime in the late 1400s with the earliest beginnings of wabicha (ワビ茶 - wabi tea). The most famous figure associated with this early period is Murata Jukō (村田珠光 ; 1423–1502) of Nara. The aesthetic philosophy of wabi is an extremely deep and nuanced subject, but for our purposes here, it represents a break from artifice and extravagance and an embrace of natural beauty—the imperfect, the humble, the withered—finding beauty in that which strives to achieve perfection but fails. An example of this is Jukō purported preference for defective dull yellow celadon instead of the glorious jade-coloured pieces that are typically prized. This defective ‘Jukō Celadon’ was still imported from China, so it held a somewhat high cultural esteem, but lower than the top-grades of celadon. Even so, this departure from the classical Chinese aesthetic order began to open the door for tea enthusiasts to use whatever suited their tastes.
Rustic Korean ceramics, which were imported into Japan in relatively small numbers at this point, soon came to encapsulate the budding wabi tea movement. Compared to the rigidity, regularity, and perfection of tenmoku and celadon, Korean wares had naturalistic glazes, softer clay, looser shapes, imperfections, and vivid individuality—much more suited to this new aesthetic philosophy. As they were still imported from the continent, and were forms and styles not yet reproducible in Japan, they were still relatively high in the classical aesthetic pyramid, but much lower than tenmoku—right in the middle of Chinese wares at the top and Japanese wares at the bottom.
Figure 3: Ko-Mishima Chawan named Nitoku
Wabicha’s early popularity was mostly centred in Kyoto, Nara, and Sakai. Today, Sakai is effectively a suburb of the city of Osaka, but in the 1500s, it was an autonomous port city that was perhaps the richest in Japan, filled with wealthy merchants profiting heavily off of trade. It is these among wealthy merchants that wabicha became extremely popular. These merchants probably had access to Korean ceramics as Sakai was one of the ports where Korean ships came to trade. One of these rich merchant families, the Matsuya, kept a record of their tea gatherings (松屋会記 - Matsuya Kaiki) and it is in a 1537 entry in this record that we find what is typically cited as the first mention of a Korean bowl being used in Japan for tea.
酉9月12日朝
一京都十四屋宗伍ヘ 久政壱人
床ニ北礀ノ文字
台子ニ平釜 天下一ホウノサキ 蟹蓋置
上ニワケ（曲）盆ニ 高ライ茶碗トヤラウト置合テ
勝手ヨリ小餌籮持出テ 台子ニ置テ 茶立候也
茶過テ茄子持出テ 御ミセ候也
September 9th, 1537
At the residence of Jūshiya Sōgo in Kyoto: [Matsuya] Hisamasa, solo guest
In the alcove: writing of Hokkan
On the daisu: hira-gama, best in the world hō-no-saki kensui, crab futaoki
On top: Kōrai Chawan and Yarō arranged on a curved tray.
A small efugo mizusashi was brought out from katte and placed on the daisu.
After tea was served, a nasu chaire was brought out and shown to the guest.
Since there was no mention of Korean ceramics in the Kundaikansōchōki (a manual for formal decoration from the late 1400s-early 1500s which contained a ranking of pottery for tea), we can be reasonably sure that the early 1500s, around 1537 was actually the first time that these bowls began to be used in Japan.
However, while researching for another topic entirely, I came across a reference to korean chawan in a lesser known text dating to 1523.
In both texts, the Korean bowl is called a kōraichawan (高ライ茶碗) and this is still the term in Japan for Korean or Korean-style tea bowls. Kōrai (高麗) is the Japanese reading of Goryeo (고려), the ruling Korean state from 918-1392 (coincidentally, this is also where we get the name Korea in English: kōrai, goryeo, Korea…). Although the Goryeo state had already collapsed and had been succeeded by the Joseon, people in Japan still used the term kōrai to refer to objects from Korea.
Figure 4: Ido Chawan, Kizaemon, 15th Century Korea
These early kōraichawan included some of the most famous styles: namely Ido, komogai, oku-gorai, mishima, hakeme, and kohiki. All of these bowls were, as best we can tell, originally made for purposes other than drinking tea, i.e. soup, rice, etc. This practice of recontextualising a non-tea object for use in the tea ceremony became known as mitate (見立) and has since become a staple of Japanese tea aesthetics.
As wabicha’s popularity exploded in the 1500s, demand for Korean chawan rose with it. In the Yamanoue Sōji-ki, a treatise on tea culture written by Yamanoue Sōji one of Rikyū’s disciples in 1588, Sōji writes that
Regarding tea bowls in general: Chinese tea bowls have now been set aside. In our times, it is Korean tea bowls, Ima-yaki, and Seto-yaki bowls that are used.
In just 40 years, Korean tea bowls went from being unmentioned to dominating the aestheics of Japanese tea culture.
The rapid rise in Kōrai chawan’s popularity quickly outpaced the small supply arriving in Japanese ports, so starting around the 1590s, teaists in Japan started sending chawan designs to the Korean kilns around Busan, placing orders for custom-made pieces, and marking the second generation of Kōrai chawan. Some of these bowls were continuations of the original styles, while others were new creations. These commissioned chawan are often called gohon chawan (御本茶碗), referring to the books (御本 - gohon) used to place the orders. Confusingly, this term is now more often applied to a glaze effect that was commonly seen on these bowls. Additionally, there is a great deal of overlap and confusion in styles between these two generations of kōrai chawan: the first being non-tea bowls that were adapted for tea use in Japan, and the second being bowls explicitly designed and ordered for tea purposes.
IMAGE [gohon]
During the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592 and again in 1597, some Korean potters were taken hostage and brought back to Japan where they were instructed to produce Korean-style bowls on Japanese soil, leading to the founding of Hagi-yaki and Karatsu-yaki pottery traditions among others in Kyushu.
Now, with this in mind, let’s look at this story from the other side, from the perspective of Korean Ceramics.
Korean History
Figure 5: Deombeong Buncheong Bowl, 16th Century Korea
During the Goryeo period, the most esteemed style of pottery was celadon (청자 - cheongja), first imported from China then produced domestically. At its peak in the 12th century, Goryeo celadon was prized for its jade colour, elegant shapes, and intricate inlay patterns featuring cranes, flowers, and dragons. This inlay technique, known as sanggam (상감) in Korean or zōgan (象嵌) in Japanese, became one of the defining styles of Korean ceramics. These celadons became the official ceramics of the Goryeo court. As the Goryeo dynasty withered in the 1300s, so did its celadons’ quality and popularity, until production eventually ceased in the early Joseon dynasty. Instead, the new Joseon court preferred the pure white of porcelain, which replaced celadon as the official court ceramic. In 1466, an edict was passed that named certain kilns as Imperial Kilns, permitting these kilns to fire porcelain for the Imperial household and forbidding other kilns from producing any porcelain. Without Imperial patronage, the remaining kilns in Korea began to experiment with new styles for a different customer: the general populace.
Figure 6: Inlaid Goryeo Celadon Bowl, 13th Century Korea
Though Goryeo celadon was no longer being produced during the Joseon, many of its techniques were carried on in these new styles. Today, these styles are retroactively grouped together under the term Buncheong ware (분청사기 - buncheong sagi). As these were everyday ceramics produced at a larger quantity, not high-grade Imperial court pottery, the emphasis of the workshops leaned towards efficiency and practicality, leading to an evolution of earlier techniques.
Achieving the glamorous green of Goryeo celadon requires thick glazing and long firing, which in turn consumes a lot of fuel and requires careful temperature control. As priorities changed, this jade green gave way to an easier-to-make and less resource-intensive dull blue-grey, made with shorter firing tames and glazes less than half as thick as before.
Similarly, the precise and time-consuming inlay techniques of Goryeo celadon evolved into a host of individualistic and highly expressive surface decorations, each one a time and effort saving alternative. Of these, one of the most common was white slip inlay, as I shall explore below. As pure white porcelain continued to reign supreme in court ceramics, Buncheong ware responded to this aesthetic with wares coated entirely or partially with white slip, in imitation of porcelain.
Neither the intricate celadon nor the pure porcelain were of particular interest to the wabi chajin of Japan, but instead this more rustic and expressionistic Buncheong ware became highly coveted and that is where the three styles of mishima, kohiki, and hakeme originate.
Figure 7: Modern Kohiki Chawan by Yōhei Nakamura
Buncheong ware’s heyday lasted barely longer than a century, put to an end both by the aforementioned Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s, and by the more widespread adoption of white porcelain. While Buncheong aesthetics survived to the present day in the form of Japanese tea ceramics, they only recently received a revival in Korea.
In future posts, we'll look more closely at some of the most popular and enduring styles of kōraichawan.
Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIlJf1LJVY
Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art
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