Like Stones, Like Trees
Kazunori Hamana

On the East coast of Japan, ceramicist Kazunori Hamana spends early mornings and late afternoons working in his rice fields. Since leaving home at fifteen to work the land in Hyogo Prefecture, agricultural labour has been a near constant in Hamana’s day-to-day.

Hamana began collecting tsubos – traditional Japanese vessels used by farmers to store and process crops – long before he would lend his own hand to the Japanese ceramic tradition. Something beyond their workaday purpose attracted Hamana, seeing in them human-like qualities as he began sculpting them at a local community centre.

“Their shapes are formed to contain something, in the same way humans contain something. But you cannot know what is inside from looking only outside.”

Despite the deeper significance that the tsubos have come to represent for Hamana, they remain rooted in their humble, functional beginnings. Handworked, local clay binds them to the landscape in which Hamana farms. Their connection to their surroundings extends further, as Hamana leaves the vessels on his sea-facing balcony, inviting the influence of the elements.

“I feel the connection with nature and feel it is the most important thing for us. When we are strongly connected with nature, we play on it.”

The confluence of Hamana’s work and lifestyle has cultivated within him a reverberative understanding of the rhythm of nature. From this stems a willingness to concede the control we attribute to the maker to forces greater than himself. The sun-bleached, rain-washed patina for which his work is celebrated, is a demonstration of both his – and the tsubos’ – harmony with nature.

The slow, seasonal changes occurring within this process take place against the backdrop of the fields where Hamana continues his daily life as an organic rice farmer. The tsubos are just as dependent on the role of timing and chance, weather and soil, as the crops that Hamana tends.

“We exist in the middle of nature, so things we make should also get used to it – just like old stones or trees sitting there for thousands of years.”