A Quick Guide to Arita Porcelain Town, Arita, Japan

In the forested mountains of western Saga is a small town called Arita, which is known for its porcelain. Every Golden Week, it hosts one of Japan’s largest ceramics fairs, where visitors can browse a variety of discounted wares. But on an ordinary day, it’s a quiet, sleepy place, the kind that makes you feel like you’ve stepped through a portal into a hidden world. And for a while, wandering around on an early Sunday morning, I was the only one in it. But that’s the charm of small-town Japan: it leaves you be.

Arita’s 400-year history dates back to Japan’s 16th-century invasions of Korea. As the story goes, a potter named Yi Sam-Pyeong was brought to Saga by the army of Nabeshima Naoshige, the lord of the Saga Domain, and was tasked with developing porcelain production in the prefecture. In 1616, he found a kaolin deposit in Arita, and the production of Arita-yaki, or Arita porcelain, began. For this, he was allowed to take the Japanese name Kanagae Sanbee and became known as the father of Japanese ceramics. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).