Heian Tofukuji 平安東福寺 — Kyoto | Bonsai Pot Maker

At a glance

Art name: Heian Tofukuji 平安東福寺
Real name: 水野喜三郎
Dates: 1890 – 1970
Region: Kyoto 京都
First trade: Comb-maker 櫛職人
Turned to pots: c. 1929–30, aged about forty
Working span: c. 40 years, to 1970
Own kiln: None — rented kilns throughout
Known for: Shohin pots; range of form and glaze

01 · 転身 The turn

From combs to pots, at forty

His father came from Seto and made combs; chrysanthemums and bonsai were his pleasures. He followed him into the trade. Then Japan turned to Western dress, the comb business fell away with it, and at around forty he made his hobby his living.

From about 1929 he made pots and nothing else. The span ran roughly forty years, through the war and out the other side, to his death in 1970. He began late and never stopped.

櫛職人から、四十にして鉢づくり専門の陶業家へ。

02 · 作風 The work

Why the work covers so much ground

The first thing anyone notices about Tofukuji is range: form after form, glaze after glaze, at every size. The reason lies in how he fired.

He never owned a kiln. To the end of his life he fired in rented ones — chingari-gama. That was possible because Kyoto had built an elaborate division of labour around its potteries, where firing could be bought as a service. He formed the pots; the firing happened in a shared kiln, a climbing kiln.

So the heat could not be counted on, and glaze tone and finish vary a great deal from pot to pot. Two Tofukuji pots of the same glaze looking quite unlike each other is normal. Kiln-change is frequent enough in his work to be treated as a category of its own — and while the borrowed kiln accounts for some of it, he also appears to have compounded glazes to court the effect.

A pot that shows a tree well.

The pots reward looking at on their own. But the phrase attached to them in Japanese is about use: 盆栽を植えてよく映る — plant a tree in it and the tree looks right. That is the first thing said about his work, and it is why growers rather than ceramic collectors made his name.

釉薬 The glazes

His pots are sorted by glaze rather than by form. What each one is, and what to expect of it.

Glaze	What is recorded of it
緑釉 Green	The glaze he cared most about, and there are many — but it is unstable and turns in the kiln. He was after the deep colour of Heian-period green ware excavated at Kajūji temple. He is said to have left copper plates out in the rain, scraped off the verdigris and added it to the glaze; and to have added brass powder to bring out the crystal speckle. Deep blue-green examples are sometimes called oribe.
瑠璃釉 Ruri	Probably the most numerous of his glazed pots, and a stable glaze. Plain, made for use, is the norm. The colour shifts with the mix: deep examples recall Canton ruri, pale bright ones come close to kin glaze — so a Tofukuji ruri pot can be mistaken for Chinese.
均釉 Kin	Seen from time to time, and not scarce. Most are close to white kin; a bright sky blue is rare. An unstable glaze that sometimes turns.
白・蕎麦・高取 White, soba, takatori	Treat these three as one family: the kiln moves them into one another. His white is often better described as white kin, and can turn the colour of soba. Soba proper takes its colour from iron. Takatori is an ash glaze high in silica that raises white clouding on a tenmoku ground — the same glaze is called kin-nagashi in Seto and seto-nagashi in Izumo. Do not try to separate the three strictly on one of his pots.
泥 Unglazed	The most numerous of all his pots, and rated below the glazed work — but 梨皮泥 nashiji-dei, pear-skin clay, and the hand-built pots are held in their own regard.
珊瑚釉 Coral	Few were made. The account is that he took polishing waste from a jeweller — corundum powder, ruby among it, mixed with abrasive — and used it to colour the glaze. Supply limited the number, and the lustre is said to deepen with the years. These are recorded as true and even in the firing. 桃花紅釉, peach-red, is rarer still.

Moulded is not uniform

He used moulds, but the rim, the body and the feet are each finished by hand and come out differently. No two are the same — so two that match exactly are the ones to question.

The hand-built pots are finished with the fingers

A tool mark on one of his hand-built pots is the exception; the fingers alone are the rule. It is worth photographing the marks they leave.

A slight warp is characteristic

Pots a little out of true are counted as part of the appeal rather than as a defect. The exception is the coral glaze, where being true is the norm.

He did not paint his painted pots

Tofukuji did not do his own decoration. On every painted pot of his the body is his and the painting was put on by an outside decorator. He had no particular wish to make them, so apart from commissions there are very few.

“Large” meant something else then

Bonsai were smaller in his lifetime, and anything much over 20 cm across was called a large pot. What is called large today — about 45 cm up — is scarce in his work. The largest of his pots with a photograph is 66 cm; a green-glazed oval of 77 cm is recorded as existing.

03 · 落款 The seals

Seven recorded marks, and the script matters

At least seven types of mark are documented for him. Tofukuji signed in seal script, in running script, in a gothic face, in a mincho face, and sometimes by scratching the raw clay with a nail. He also used multiple marks on a single pot — examples carrying many more than two are not rare.

So identification turns on the style of the writing as much as the characters themselves.

#	Mark	Script & frame	Note
1	平安東福寺	Square seal, tensho (seal script)	The formal mark.
2	東福寺	The kaede (maple) seal	Set within a maple-leaf outline. The mark most associated with him.
3	東福寺	Round frame, gothic face	Even, blocky strokes inside a circle.
4	東福寺	Kugi-gaki — nail-scratched	Incised by hand into the raw clay, not stamped.
5	東福寺	Mincho face	Serifed, printed-type character.
6	複款	Multiple marks together	Pots carrying considerably more than two marks are not unusual.
7	平安東福寺＋東福寺	Square tensho with oval-framed gyosho (running script)	A specific paired combination.

Two pots that carry no Tofukuji name

安楽園喜三. This mark is recorded on an early Tofukuji work. He took the art name over from his father and worked as 東福寺窯元安楽園喜三; whether it also appears on his father’s own pots has not been established.

もくべ Mokube. A customer’s private mark, not a maker’s. The account is that in the Shōwa 30s (1955–64) an Osaka restaurant owner had several hundred small pots made to give away, marked with his own name. So a pot of his can carry someone else’s mark and none of his own.

What the marks will not tell you

Which years a mark belongs to is not established. With some makers a mark will place a pot in time — Gyōzan’s commemorative inscriptions name the occasion. Tofukuji has nothing of the kind. The one exception is the early 安楽園喜三.

And more than one mark on a pot is normal for him, not a warning sign.

Telling first from second generation

His successor inherited these marks. To separate the two, the second generation added 二代 (“second”) or 勇 (his given name, Isamu). A mark alone does not separate the two generations; the addition does. See Tofukuji II.

04 · 陶号 The name

A borrowed name, and the temple that actually mattered

Tofukuji is the name of a great Rinzai Zen monastery in Kyoto, and it is tempting to read a connection into it. There is almost none. He took the name because he lived nearby. The monastery has some association with viewing stones; with bonsai and pots, effectively none. The name was borrowed, and that is all.

The temple that shaped his work was a different one — 東本願寺 Higashi Hongan-ji, seat of the Otani branch of Jodo Shinshu. The link was a man: Tsutazo Kawai 河合蔦蔵 (1886–1962), among the foremost bonsai connoisseurs of his day and founder of the Kyoto nursery Kosoen.

Kawai's ties to the Otani family ran deep enough that he built a house inside the temple's inner grounds and lived there. He was closest to the twenty-third abbot, 大谷光演, whom bonsai people call by his haiku name 句仏; the bonsai he looked after were those left by 大谷光瑩, a great collector in his own right.

Around 1938, at the abbot's instigation, Kawai founded a society for making pots: Nento-kai 拈陶会. Its kiln stood inside the temple garden beside Kosoen. Tofukuji joined, and so did Kozan. Kawai's eye and Tofukuji's hand met there, and of everyone involved it marked Tofukuji most deeply. The kiln ran about six years, until a wartime clearance closed it in 1944.

禅刹の名を借りただけ。真に関わったのは東本願寺である。

05 · 系譜 Lineage

What came after, and alongside

Successor

Tofukuji II

二代平安東福寺

Mizuno Isamu (1917–1995). Took the name after the first Tofukuji died, at fifty-three, and spent ten years reaching toward it.

Ally

Heian Kozan

平安香山

Workshops close by. At a time when Chinese pots dominated the market, the two fought together for the standing of Japanese ware.

Recorded copy

Shuho

秀峰

Yoshimura Tōen records a Tofukuji copy — 東福寺写鋲打楕円, 45 × 32 × 7 cm. The assessment on it is that the form, the finish and the glaze together give it a character beyond a mere copy.

06 · 代表作 Recorded works

A selection, with sizes

Not for sale — works recorded for this maker. Sizes in centimetres.

Work	Size	Note
Green glaze, rectangle, outer rim, with fixed ring ears	15 × 11.5 × 4.8	A noted piece. The deep blue-green is sometimes called oribe.
Green glaze, rectangle, everted rim, indented corners	23.5 × 17.5 × 7	Marked difference in glaze between the lower band and the body. Today a mid-size pot; when it was made it counted as a large one.
Ruri glaze, rectangle, outer rim, with fixed ring ears	12.2 × 9 × 6.7	Corners very slightly indented. A ruri-glazed example.
Kusa-kin glaze, oval, outer rim	27.6 × 19.3 × 6.6	An unusual colour, and long admired. Lower body and feet left bare.
Soba glaze, rectangle, straight-sided	10.4 × 7.4 × 3.1	Fine gold crystal speckle on a black ground.
Soba glaze, kiln-changed, rectangle, outer rim, indented corners	15.1 × 11.6 × 6.5	The two faces are quite different, and which is the front is a matter of taste. Recorded as a takatori glaze taken too high in the firing.
Nashiji-dei, rectangle, outer rim, panelled	8.6 × 7 × 4	Moulded, after an old Chinese pot — and the rim, body and feet are each finished differently, so no two are alike.
Shidei, hand-built, oval	9.8 × 8.5 × 3.2	A tool mark is visible on this one, which is unusual — his hand-built pots are normally finished with the fingers alone.
Shidei, rectangle, outer rim	10.5 × 8.4 × 3.5	Slightly out of true, and counted as part of the appeal.
Nanban copy, square	36.5 × 14	Placed before the war, on the marks, the clay and the form. Carries the early 安楽園喜三 mark.
Coral and peach-red glaze, rectangles with rounded corners — a pair	10.5 × 7.7 × 2.8	Violet and vermilion together.
Enamelled, imperial-carriage design, rectangle, outer rim	11 × 8.5 × 5.5	Held among the very best of them. Three exist in the same form and design in different sizes.
Kin glaze, hand-built, round	7 × 4	Carries the もくべ mark and no Tofukuji mark at all.
Ruri glaze, oval, straight-sided	66 × 41 × 3.5	Probably made to order for a group planting. Unusually true for him. The largest of his pots with a photograph.
Green glaze, oval water basin, straight-sided	49 × 33 × 3.8	Among the largest of his green-glazed basins.

Reading a mark

What we can — and cannot — tell you

A resemblance to one of his marks is not always imitation. Shūzan (舟山, 1928–1988) used a tiny maple seal of about a centimetre that is recorded as resembling this one. We do not list a pot unless we are confident in it.

Send a clear photograph of the underside and we will tell you what the mark says and which of the documented types it corresponds to. We do not issue authentications, and where a mark is beyond what we can read, we will say so rather than guess.

Ask what a mark says