The Japanese name “kawara” is a Japanese word for “kawara”, and the Japanese name “kawara” is “kawara”. It is made by baking mud. It is made by baking mud to cover the top of a house. It is the place where Yomogoshi made it. Kahara is said to be a Sanskrit word, but what do you think? The origin of the word probably derives from the Korean language of the time. The manufacture of roof tiles in Japan began in 588 (the first year of the reign of Emperor Soshun) with the arrival of the Baekje Manamonnu Kimonryo Kimonryo Kimon Sakka and the Imi Abumigawara doctors Manamonnu, Yang Kimonryo Kimonryo Kimonryo Kimonryo Kimonryo Mukashi Mamiya. As indicated by the fact that they were accompanied by temple builders and the lotus flower patterns on the armor tiles of the time, they were the first to use Baekje technology, which was essential for temple construction in the wake of the rise in prosperity following the arrival of Buddhism. Later, as the trend of temple building became more and more prosperous, tile-making techniques from Silla were also introduced, leading to the rise of tile production. Emperor Shomu issued a decree in 724 (Jingi era) that those of fifth rank and above and commoners whose livelihoods were not affected were to have their roof tiles thatched and painted with tan (reddish brown). This was followed by the construction of Kokubunji and Kokubun Nunji temples in 741 (Tempyo 13), which led to the widespread production of roof tiles throughout the country. The tile style at that time consisted of flat tiles (hira-gawara), cylindrical tiles (marugawara), and tiles (tomoe-gawara), with two flat tiles thatched together and a marugawara tile under the thatched edge. Later, the use of Ugawara (arabesque tiles) for the thatched edge of the flat roof tiles was adopted, and in rare cases, the Shibi style was abandoned in favor of the Onigawara of later times. According to the Engishiki (Engi Shiki), the weight of hani was 11 kg (6.6 kilograms, or 6.6 kg). The Engishiki (Engi Shiki) describes the making of a single tile from a single loaf of clay (6.6 kg, one loaf is equivalent to 600 grams), while nine loaves (5.4 kg) are used to make a tube tile, 18 loaves (10.8 kg) to make an u-gawara, and 15 loaves (9 kg) to make an abiri-gawara. The size of the hani can be inferred from this. The amount of sand to be mixed into the clay and the amount of firewood required per 1,000 tiles as fuel for firing are also noted, which indicates the establishment of tile-making technology at that time. The tiles produced from the time of the arrival of the tile doctor until around this time were all hard and blue-gray in color, and they also have traces of nunome (fabric) since they were made of commercial fabric. The lapis lazuli tiles used by Emperor Shoutoku for the Toin Royal Palace in 767 (Jingo 3) and the heki-tile used by Emperor Kanmu for the Daigoku-den Hall in 794 (Enryaku 13) are exceptional examples. Later, hiwadabuki roofing became popular, and in 1030 (ChÅgen 3), Emperor Goichijo issued an edict forbidding anyone below the sixth rank to make hiwadabuki roofing. The occasional products were of inferior quality. In 1576, when Oda Nobunaga built the castle of Azuchi, he commissioned the Chinese tile craftsman Ichikan to make Ming-style tiles, which gave rise to a new tile-making technique known as nunome-gawara, the first smoked tile in modern times. In 1592, when Ujisato Gamo built the castle of Aizu Wakamatsu, he invited Bunzaemon Ishikawa from Harima (Hyogo Prefecture) to make these tiles. In Edo, it is said that a certain Takiyama roof tile was made in 1601, but the “Takemae Nenpyo” mentions that a certain Terashima and others burned tiles for the first time in Edo in 1645, so it was probably around this time that general roof tiles were first made. However, in 1657, just after the Great Meireki Fire, a decree was issued that “all houses with tiled roofs must be stopped even if they are owned by the feudal lords of the country.
However, in 1674 (Enpo 2), Nishimura Hanbei invented the idea of using small, light shingles, and this prohibition was gradually relaxed, and tiled roofs began to be used. In 1871, the Ministry of Construction’s repair division created the Hikake-zan-gawara tile, and in the early Meiji Restoration, the Ministry of Construction’s repair division created the Hikake-zan-gawara tile. In the early Meiji period, French tiles were used for European-style buildings, but they did not become commonplace. In the late Meiji period (1868-1912), the production of glazed roof tiles to resist freezing cold began to flourish in the Iwami region of Shimane Prefecture, followed by the San’in region and the Hokuriku region. The tiles were fired in climbing kilns, and were initially called “red tiles” because of the reddish-brown glaze used for jars, but black glaze gradually became popular from the late Taisho period. From the end of the Meiji period (1868-1912), the use of pressing and kneading machines began in Aichi Prefecture, and by the end of the Taisho period (1912-1926), a rough-ground extracting machine appeared, finally leading to the spread of mechanized tile making throughout the country. In 1917, the Japan Western Tile Company was established, and it began producing exclusively French tiles, even glazed ones in green, and in 1926, it pioneered the use of salt glaze. In 1923, as a result of the Great Kanto Earthquake, the use of hook-and-latten tiles for buildings in urban areas became the rule. Tile production gradually increased during the boom period after the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, reaching 12 million yen by the end of the Meiji period. Demand increased further during the boom period of World War I, reaching a new record of 48 million yen in 1924, but it declined sharply during the Showa period, reaching only 22 million yen in 1930. Bricks accounted for the majority of this tile production, and in 1927, the Japanese standard for bricks was promulgated with the Japanese Standard No. 30. Enshu, Sanshu, Bishu, Mino, Saikyo, Senshu, Awaji, Izumo, Kikuma (Ehime), and Fukuoka tiles are well known as bricks, while Iwami, Inaba, and Noto tiles are known as glazed tiles. (Nippon Seigawara Taikan, Nippon Kogyo Taikan)
Tiles are made by hardening clay into a certain shape and are used for roofing, but sometimes they are also used for fences and floor coverings. In the past, kawara were pottery with a grayish-black finish, and similar objects are called kawara-towels, kawara-sutras, kawaraki-ware, kawara-inkstone, kawaraban, kawaradolls, kawara-ningyo, kawara-zaru, etc., with the character kawara, but they have no relation to the usual uses of kawara. The earliest examples of pottery tiles are found in Tiryns, Greece, dating to the second millennium B.C., but this is an exception, and tiles were not used in temples in Greece and its colonies until the seventh century B.C. In the sixth century B.C., however, marble tiles were used in the temples of the Greek colonies. However, in the 6th century BCE, marble tiles appeared and gradually replaced the ceramic tiles. In Etruria (present-day Tuscany, Italy), the lack of good quality marble led to the development of roof tiles, which the Roman tiles inherited and further introduced into Europe. In both Greece and Etruria, eave tiles were decorated, but later tiles became simpler. In contrast, in the East Asian world centering on China, a great deal of attention was paid to the production of roof tiles, resulting in the creation of products with excellent formative qualities. Although ancient tiles with characters and patterns are widely collected and highly prized, the study of tiles as a part of buildings, as well as the techniques and production mechanisms involved in their manufacture, is still in its infancy. Tiles used in ancient East Asia came in a variety of forms, depending on where they were used, including round tiles, flat tiles, eaves round tiles, eaves flat tiles, eaves flat tiles, corner tiles, noshi tiles, mendo-gawara, mendo-gawara, onigawara, shibi tiles, kokusaki tiles, and sumiki tiles.
Round tiles are semi-tubular and are also known as “Otoko-gawara” or “tsutsu-gawara.” There are two types of round tiles: gyoki thatched round tiles, which have a gradually decreasing diameter toward the top, and tama-rimmed round tiles, which have a tama-rim at the top. The eaves round tile is a round tile with a decorative circular panel attached to each tile, and is used for roofing the edge of the roof, such as the eaves. The flat tile has a slightly concave shape with a much smaller curvature, and is slightly narrower at one end than at the other. It is described in ancient documents as both a “woman tile” and a “roof tile. The eaves flat tile is made with a thicker wide end face or with a clay slab attached and decorated with patterns or characters, and is described in ancient documents as an u-gawara. The majority of the roof is made of flat tiles with the convex side down, with round tiles over the joints of the flat tile rows, and eaves flat and eaves round tiles are arranged in a row at the eaves. The noshigawara were made by splitting flat and round tiles in two lengthwise, and were used to build the main and lower ridges of the building. Some ancient documents refer to these as tsutsumi tiles. Menda-gawara are tiles used to cover the space created above the flat roof tiles when noshi tiles are placed on top of the rows of round tiles. Onigawara are decorative tiles that cover the edges of the main or descending ridge, and are also called oniita, but the decoration is not always oni-men, and in older times it was called mune-hata-shikita because of the lotus flower design. Shibi” are tiles decorating the ends of the main ridges of palaces and temples, and in the Muromachi period (1333-1573) they were transformed into shachi (or or shachi). Saki-tawara, also called seed tiles, are circular, rectangular, or oval tiles according to the shape of the seed, with a nail hole in the center and decorated with lotus flower, ninpu, or demon mask patterns. Sumiki tiles are used to protect the tip of a corner tree, and there are two types: one covering the top of the tip, and the other a decorative plate hammered into the wood edge of the corner tree. Tiles other than round, flat, eaves round, and eaves flat tiles are called tool tiles. Tawaratoho is the Chinese name for the decorative panels attached to eaves round tiles, and originally referred only to eaves round tiles. The kawaratohoji refers to the characters used to decorate the eaves. From the Warring States period to the Han dynasty, semicircular kawaratoh tiles were used, and these are called hankawaratoh. Eaves round tiles were sometimes called hana-gawara (flower tiles) because floral patterns were often used, and by the end of the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the common name of tomoe-gawara was coined because tomoe patterns were used exclusively at that time, while eaves flat tiles were called arabesque tiles because arabesque patterns were used in many cases. Tiles with characters are especially called character tiles, and there are two types of characters: yang-bun and yin-bun. The characters can be either stamped or written. The content includes auspicious phrases, the name of the building, the year, the place of production, the name of the tile kiln, the name of the county or township responsible for the production of the tiles under the jurisdiction of Kokubunji, and the name of the donor. Glazed roof tiles are called “shikko-gawara” (glazed roof tiles). Nunome-gawara refers to tiles that still retain traces of the cloth used in their production. This name is used to indicate that the tiles are old, especially for flat and round tiles that do not have a kawara-tomen, which is useful in determining the age of the tiles. Both round and flat tiles usually retain the cloth grain on the concave surface. The names of roof tiles are historically quite confusing. In some cases, eaves flat tiles and eaves round tiles were interchanged because the names handed down from the old Edo period were not used correctly. This confusion continued until 1930 (Showa 5), when Shigesaku Ishida confirmed the correct old name when he published “Kogawara Zukan (Illustrated Book of Old Tiles)” and restored it. The names were “male tile,” “female tile,” “kawara,” “u-gawara,” and “tsutsumi tile” as described in the “Shosoin Documents. Tokomaro kawara shibi Because of the inconsistent basis for naming these ancient names and the history of confusion they carry, Adachi Yasushi proposed a few years later that the names round tile, flat tile, eaves round tile, eaves flat tile, etc. be used. Both of these names are used today. Although eaves round and flat eaves tiles were named for their placement at the eaves, Kazuo Fujisawa argues that they should be called edge round and edge flat tiles based on the fact that they are used at the edge of the roof, since these tiles are used not only at the eaves but also on the mini-kou and other parts of the roof. Tile production methods also developed mainly in China and spread to surrounding countries. Tile production in China began at the end of the Western Zhou dynasty, and the tile-making method was established during the Eastern Zhou dynasty, and this method has continued to the present day without major changes. The process can be reconstructed by referring to the Song dynasty’s “Yeongzou Hou Shiki,” scroll 15, and the Ming dynasty’s “Tian Kou Kaimono,” which describes the production process as follows: a rotating vat is placed on the vat, the vat is covered with clay plates wrapped in cloth, the clay is beaten with a beating board made of wood with a grid pattern or a beating board wrapped in rope, and the clay is removed from the vat, dried, cut into four pieces for flat tiles, or into two pieces for round tiles, and then placed in a kiln. The clay is then dried, cut into four pieces for flat tiles and two pieces for round tiles, packed in a kiln, and fired. In the Okinawan tile making method, where the old technique has been preserved, both flat and round tiles are fired in cylindrical form with dividing lines, and after firing, they are vibrated to make four flat tiles and two round tiles, and this technique was also used to make round tiles in some parts of the Heian period. Cylindrical roof tiles with a line at the gap between the tiles have been found in a tile kiln at Furuyama, Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture.
Most of the flat tiles are estimated to have been made of four pieces, but a flat tile with three pieces, equivalent to one-third of the circumference in terms of its arc shape, has been found at the site of Kawahara-dera Temple in Takaichi County, Nara Prefecture. It is speculated that the Kawahara-dera temple, built in the 60s of the 7th century, may have already used the single-ply plain tile technique, but this tile-making method became more common after the 8th century, and by the Heian period, this single-ply technique was the mainstream. This technique is consistent with what is described in the Engishiki (Engi Shiki) Mokko-ryo Shiki, and is thought to have been made by placing clay slabs on a convex mold stand and pounding each piece into place. For eaves round tiles, a wooden mold is used to make the base, to which the round tiles are then joined. The same is true for eaves flat tiles. The oldest tile in China was found in the late Western Zhou layer at the Hakushu pressure site in Chang’an County, Shaanxi Province. The original shape of the tile cannot be reconstructed, but it is a gray slab tile with traces of the Jomon ware pattern on the surface and cylindrical tile nails or tile rings on the inner and outer surfaces. During the Warring States period (1467-1568), the main tile-roofing method using a set of round and flat tiles was invented, and it became practice to attach a kawaratate to the eaves of the round tile. The half-tile patches are decorated with patterns, animals, and tree motifs. After the Qin and Han dynasties, round kawaratate became the norm. The most prominent examples are those with four equal sections and auspicious phrases such as “Senju Banzai” and “Choraku Mio” written in seal or clerical script, but by far the largest number are decorated with Warabi-te patterns. The majority of the tile patches excavated from the ruins of the Rakunamido-jo castle are decorated with this pattern. In this period, no decoration had yet been added to the part of the plain tile that corresponds to the eaves of the roof. During the Nanbokucho period (1392-1644), the use of tile decorations with inscriptions was still prevalent, but with the arrival of Buddhism in China from the West, lotus-shaped tile decorations appeared, and from the latter half of this period through the Tang dynasty, they became the predominant type of tile decoration. The period from the Northern and Southern Dynasties to the beginning of the Tang Dynasty was a turning point in the history of tiles, with the appearance of shibi, the production of eaves flat tiles to replace round eaves tiles, and the use of green-glazed tiles, which led to a period of glamorous buildings. The Goguryeo Dynasty began using these tiles in the 4th century, when the capital was located in Juan, Jilin Province. The patterns on eaves round tiles are mainly lotus flower patterns that draw from the Northern Wei lineage of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, but there are also some that belong to the lineage of Warabi-te, Shi-ha, and beast face patterns that were popular during the Han dynasty. Then, eaves flat tiles were used as decoration by lining the lower edge of the end face of ordinary flat tiles with indentations made by rope-rolling plates and finger-heads. In Baekje, which learned tile-making methods from Liang of the Southern Dynasty in the mid-6th century, eaves round tiles with an eight-petaled single-petaled lotus flower design were the main type of tile. The same type of tile was also found in Silla during the Three Kingdoms period, but once the Korean peninsula was unified in the mid-7th century, Silla’s tiles underwent remarkable development, especially in Gyeongju, the capital. This is one manifestation of the general intake of Tang culture, but it surpasses Tang tiles in the abundance of types of tile decoration and the splendor of expression. The eaves round tiles have lotus, fowl, and bird and animal designs, while the eaves flat tiles have flying heaven and fowl and animal designs in addition to arabesque designs. Japan learned the tile-forming method from Baekje, along with the temple construction method. The first full-scale temple, Asukadera Temple, used single-petaled eaves round tiles with a single-petaled lotus flower design of Baekje origin at the time of its construction. However, a small number of tiles with lotus and beast-face designs of the Koguryo lineage were used in temples of the Asuka period. In the early Nara period, eaves flat tiles with heavy arc or arabesque patterns were used.
In the early Nara period, eaves flat roof tiles with heavy arc or arabesque patterns became common, and it became common practice to produce eaves round tiles and eaves flat roof tiles as a set that shared some similarities in pattern expression. During this period, many of the tile designs were of Baekje origin, while others were of Goguryeo or Silla origin, and some designs are thought to have been learned directly from the Tang Dynasty. The styles that were established at the end of this period were followed from the late Nara to the early Heian periods. The custom of using glazed tiles came to Japan during this period, and it is well known that green-glazed tiles were used in the palaces of the Heijo Palace and Heian Palace. Recent excavations at the Heijo Palace have also uncovered two- and three-color glazed tiles in addition to green-glazed tiles, indicating that the palace architecture was quite lavish. Tile production became crude and declined in the late Heian period (794-1185), but was revived in the Kamakura period (1185-1333), and a new style was established in which eaves round tiles were decorated with Tomoe patterns and eaves flat tiles with arabesque patterns, which was carried over to the Muromachi period (1333-1573). In the Azuchi-Momoyama period, Ming dynasty craftsmen brought in eaves flat tiles with pointed lower edges, and gold leaf was stamped on the eaves tile. (Kobayashi Yukio, “Sequel to Ancient Technology,” Umehara Sueharu, “On the Old Tiles of East Asia,” Shina Archeology Novel,” Sawara Makoto, “Making Plain Tile Tubs,” Archeology Magazine, 58-2)
