Hagiyaki is a ceramic tradition of Yamaguchi Prefecture, long valued for its undecorated, softly textured surface. The clay body is slightly porous. As a piece is used over months and years, fine crazing develops in the glaze — and tea, sake, or water seeps gradually into these fissures, shifting the color from within. The object that comes out of the kiln is not yet finished; it finishes itself in the hands of whoever uses it. Zenemon Sakakura relighted a kiln that had gone cold in his grandfather's generation, and what he makes from this tradition looks nothing like what most people expect.
His best-known works are ceramic fish — anatomically precise, surface-detailed, built in a style entirely at odds with Hagiyaki's rustic reputation. Alongside these, he makes cups and tableware glazed with material derived from the red shale of the Akama inkstone, a traditional craft material of Yamaguchi Prefecture, which produces a deep matte black surface. He is interested in what happens when an ordinary act — drinking coffee, water, sake — is done with a cup that carries this kind of weight. Not ceremony. Just attention.
