Raku: Chojiro and 14 Generations of Kichizaemon Successors

Raku Museum

This event has ended.

It was about 450 years ago when Murata Juko (1423-1502) founded the early wabicha style of the tea ceremony, which was later developed into more specifically defined wabicha, wabi way of tea, established and advocated by Sen Rikyu (1522-1591), who commissioned a single potter to produce a teabowl embodying his tea taste and spirit. This newborn teabowl that remained anonymous in the beginning but gradually gained popularity and recognition among people. The potter was Raku Chojiro (d.1592), the founder of Raku ware. The ongoing history of the Raku dynasty and Raku ware goes back to this fortunate encouter between Sen Rikyu and Raku Chojiro.
Raku Chojiro’s successors are 14 generations in line to the current 15th, who all assumed the name Raku Kichizaemon: each Kichizaemon has his own time and period to live with and each has his own creative world to build up but none imitates nor reproduces what he has inherited from his predecessors.
This exhibition showcases the individual creative nature and stylistic characteristic unique to each generation reflecting the realities of his epoch. The exhibits cover a selection of works by each generation, including a black Raku teabowl named Omokage, one of the most noted works of Raku Chojiro, a black Raku teabowl named Kuroki by the second Jokei, a red cylindrical teabowl named Sanjin by the third Donyu as well as a black Yakinuki style Raku teabowl named Joka by the current head Kichizaemon XV.
‘Suki’ as written in the tea vocabulary has the same phonetic sound as the Japanese word for ‘like’. The origin is the same: to like or appreciate something. If you could choose your favourite teabowl among the group of works made by all 15th generations from the founder to the current highlighted in this exhibition, then that would be a threshold to an unconfined world of Suki-goto, a joy of connoisseurship.