Seto

Seto, near Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture, is one of Japan’s Six Ancient Kilns and historically the odd one out among them: the only one of the six to develop applied glazes rather than relying on unglazed, wood-fired surfaces. Ash-glazed pottery had been made in the wider Seto area since around the 10th century, but the technique fell into decline before being revived in the early Kamakura period, in the late 12th century, when the potter Kato Shirozaemon Kagemasa, who had studied ceramics in China, began producing glazed ware known as Ko-Seto.

For much of the medieval period, Seto was the only region in Japan producing glazed pottery at all, and its output became so central to everyday Japanese life that “setomono” (瀬戸物), literally “Seto things,” became the generic Japanese word for pottery and tableware in general, not just ware from Seto specifically. The region also produces porcelain today alongside its pottery, one of a small number of Japanese ceramics regions, along with Mino, that make both.