Excerpt from 'Miyazaki: Between Shrine and Sea'

In ancient Japan, places were named after the specific characteristics of the lands they inhabited. Miyazaki Prefecture was once known as Hyuga no Kuni, ‘the country that faces the sun’. It is widely regarded as the birthplace of Japan, a highly symbolic place where mythology, ritual, and daily life converge to honour the Shinto gods. In Shinto, the sun is a sacred entity, a reverent, tangible expression of a living kami...

‘You can see the way the bowl is fired, how much oxygen is in the air’, Yuji mutters, gesturing carefully towards the middle shelf. A dappled ceramic plate is glazed russet red. Its surface is cracked, like cooled magma, holding minuscule fractures of time. ‘The less oxygen there is in the air, the deeper the colour’, he continues, ‘a plate like this is fired at 1250 degrees Celsius for over 24 hours.’