A kind of enamel ware. The color resembles the seven precious items in Buddhist scriptures, such as gold, silver, lapis lazuli, glass, pearls, and agate (or gold, silver, lapis lazuli, lapis lazuli, conglomerate, agate, coral, and amber), and it was so named because it is brilliant, elegant, and highly prized. The origin of its production in Japan is quite old, but the details are unknown.
However, the production of cloisonne enamel ware is mentioned in the “Taiho Ordinance” under an article by the Ministry of Finance’s “Minister of Finance’s Department of Foundry,” and there is a mirror in the Shosoin Treasury in Nara that is glazed with cloisonne enamel ware cast from hosho-hua (a type of Buddhist image). However, we have not heard of any examples of this technique being handed down and produced in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. There are articles on cloisonne enamel ware in “Kimidai kanjyochoki” and “Kageyoken nichiroku” by Aami, but these articles were probably imported from the Dashoku Kiln and Onikoku Kiln of the Ming Dynasty in China. It is clear that for as long as 1,000 years, the production of cloisonne enamel ware had ceased completely, as there was no one to transmit this technique. However, during the Keicho era (1596-1615), a Kyoto resident named Hirata Michihito, under the orders of the Tokugawa clan, acquired the cloisonne enamel ware manufacturing method from a Korean (or, according to one theory, Dutch) and passed it on to his descendants. In the reign of Enshu Kobori, a goldsmith named Yoshinaga mastered this technique, and in the Kyoho period (1716-36), another master craftsman named Nagatsu Suga was also known as a master craftsman.
Cloisonne enamel ware flourished at the end of the Edo period, during the Bunka era (1804-18), thanks to Tsunekichi Kaji of Hattori Village, Kaito-gun, Owari Province (Tondacho Hattori, Nakagawa-ku, Nagoya City). Tsunekichi had been studying Dutch cloisonne ware for many years, and in 1831 he was finally able to produce a small container, and his fame was finally publicized. Since then, the technique was spread and passed on to Taiji, Shogoro Hayashi, Gisaburo Tsukamoto, Kaisuke Tsukamoto, Jin’emon Tsukamoto, Eimasu Momoi, Matasaburo Yamamoto, the Tokyo Cloisonne Company Factory, Nagoya Cloisonne Company, Yasuyuki Namikawa, Yamanashi Agricultural Products Company, Chubei Takeuchi, Sosuke Tawokawa, Shozo Goto, and Juhei Ando, and in the Meiji Period, new designs were created one after another, which combined to make Japan’s cloisonne enamel art world-class. In 1907 (1907), the export value of cloisonne enamel ware was 146,000 yen, and the main production centers were Aichi and Kyoto. The production methods of cloisonne enamel ware were classified as follows: wired, wireless, with/without wire, heaping up, sanshin, kiln-changing flow glaze, transparent cloisonne enamel ware (Kagome cloisonne enamel ware and scarlet cloisonne enamel ware), and sanshin (thin clay clay ware).
