Produced by a pre-war cultural organization in Japan, the film is a work of rare clarity and beauty which follows an entire pottery making cycle as performed in that village for centuries. Mashiko ceramic manufacture is said to date back to 1853, when a potter from a neighboring village came as an adopted son to a Mashiko farming family. The village later became one of the most prolific producers of utilitarian ware for Tokyo; principally jars, mortars, and teapots.

In 1919 Shoji Hamada, potter and central figure of the Folk Craft Movement, chose Mashiko to build his kiln. His presence had a major impact on the village, bringing it to world attention by the1960's. The writings of Bernard Leach contain many descriptions of life and work in Mashiko Village.

The film presents the household of the Sakuma family. This same family gave Hamada his home during his earliest years in Mashiko. Today their descendants continue pottery making at the same site.

Also shown at work is the great painter of teapots Masu Minagawa, described in the writings of Soetsu Yanagi, Bernard Leach and Hamada as a paradigm of their "mingei" (folkcraft) philosophy. Minagawa was an illiterate itinerant painter of patterns on Mashiko teapots who travelled among the kilns in the village with her brushes, hand-made from local dog hair. It is said that Minagawa decorated up to one thousand teapots a day.

Film restored by Marty Gross

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