Through the Eyes of the Consul General of Japan in Detroit

 

January 2, 2025 was a Thursday so the Cranbrook Art Museum, located just a 20-minute walk from my residence in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, was offering free admission. After trudging through the snowy path, I arrived to find a signboard for the Toshiko Takaezu exhibition. I had never heard of her before. With no particular expectations, I entered and was struck by her exquisite sense of beauty. It reminded me of the experience I had when visiting the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York, with my wife a few years ago. The reason for this connection became clear later.
 
Toshiko Takaezu was born in Hawaii in 1922 as the sixth of 11 children to parents who had immigrated from Okinawa. She became a ceramic artist after dropping out of high school to work in a pottery factory to help support the family. She later came to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1951 to be mentored by Finnish ceramic artist Maija Grotell. Takaezu later spent eight months in Japan, and the feeling of "Japan being both near and far," experienced from the perspective of a second-generation Japanese-American deeply influenced her style. This was similar to Isamu Noguchi, who spent his childhood in Chigasaki. Noguchi, after teasing passing foreigners with comments like "You smell like butter," later realized that he, too, was one of those "butter-scented" people. Their sense of self as boundary-crossers was fundamental to their identities.
 
Takaezu’s signature series, "Closed Form," was born by accident. One day, she placed a small fragment of clay inside a piece before firing it in the kiln. After the firing, when she picked up the piece, she was pleased by the pleasant sound of the fragment rolling around inside. She then intentionally started adding small clay pieces inside her work. In the exhibition room at the Museum, the sound of the rolling fragments served as the background music. A space that could only be recognized through the sound made by the clay pieces—this is "Closed Form." I believe that Takaezu's obsession stems from the aesthetic consciousness rooted in Japanese culture.
In her later years, Takaezu worked on many large pieces, which came to be known as the "Star Series." For works that were taller than herself, she would shape them from a platform with the assistance of an apprentice spinning the potter’s wheel. "When you look inside from above, the entire universe seemed to spread out," she said. It is reminiscent of Sen no Rikyū seeing the universe in the ash of a brazier.


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This is my first piece of my personal writing about the virtues of Michigan and Ohio, the states for which the Consulate General of Japan in Detroit is responsible. I arrived in Detroit from San Francisco on December 10, 2024, as Japan's new Consul General. Although I have lived in the U.S. for a long time, from Washington D.C. to New York, it is my first time in Michigan and Detroit. Detroit had a bad reputation due to its 2013 bankruptcy, high crime rates, poverty, and the decline of the automobile industry. But  discovering the ceramic artist Toshiko Takaezu here is a stroke of good fortune (I, too, am a ceramic artist who has practiced pottery in Switzerland, Thailand, and Egypt so they call me Jimmy Potter).
I believe there are still untapped attractions in Michigan and Ohio that are unknown to the Japanese. Through the eyes of the Consul General of Japan in Detroit, I will try to share the charm of the American Midwest in the coming months and years.