Korean Tea Bowls
Japan and Korea’s relationship has been complicated since the 16th century. At the time, Japan invaded Korea and limited trade in Korea (Hur 7). However, wabicha, a style of Japanese tea ceremony, emerged and became popular. The originator of wabicha, Rikyu, replaced his Japanese porcelain with Korean tea bowls and popularized their use (Hur 4-5). Rikyu is responsible for making Korean tea bowls prestigious in Japan despite a national feeling of disdain for Korea and Koreans at the time. Japanese people could not access the bowls in the open market at the time, so they ordered the tea bowls from Japanese smugglers (Hur 7).
The prestige of the tea bowls made the wealthy want to preserve the custom. As a result, Japanese lords serviced Korean potters and restricted them to marrying within their specialty to prevent the dilution of Korean potters without recruiting more workers (Hur 9). This shows that despite part of Korean culture elevating the status of wealthy Japanese, they still only allowed the “necessary” parts of Korean culture to exist. Korean potters were only valued because they possessed a skill that elevated Japanese status. In fact, the tea bowls’ origin was likely overlooked because it “became” Japanese and Japan was working on eliminating Chinese customs in their society (Hur 16). The Japanese aimed to eliminate Chinese culture from defining the entirety of East Asia–a sentiment that is still prevalent across East Asia because China is so large and prevalent in the global economy–and establish their global presence. Japan wanted to correct the incorrect homogeneous view of East Asia and establish their heterogeneous identity in East Asia.