"Anyone can make beautiful things," says Kawai san. "The capacity for expression and creation is in everyone, but not all of us realize this. We work and produce inspite of ourselves. The unknown self drives us on always."
"It is ultimately faith that lies at the bottom of all my work," he said to me one day. "We do not work alone. Man can make a bowl of clay. He can make it round and smooth, but until it is fired it cannot be used. Man can lay the fire and light the flame, he added, "but it is the fire itself that really completes the bowl. And that fire is something bigger and more wonderful than any man."
He paused reflectively and puffed at his pipe. "No" he said " We do not work alone. We never work alone." And he has expressed this thought in one of his poems which reads simply, "Who is moving this hand of mine?"
Kawai san knows what it means to work, he is happy because his work is everything to him. He and his work are one. "I want to see a new self," he says, "I work." Then he adds, "Man doesn't seek work. It is the work which waits, seeking man."
some thoughts by a remouned Japanese potter, Kanjiro Kawai. He worked in Kyoto. compiled and translated by Yoshiko Uchida.
"It is ultimately faith that lies at the bottom of all my work," he said to me one day. "We do not work alone. Man can make a bowl of clay. He can make it round and smooth, but until it is fired it cannot be used. Man can lay the fire and light the flame, he added, "but it is the fire itself that really completes the bowl. And that fire is something bigger and more wonderful than any man."
He paused reflectively and puffed at his pipe. "No" he said " We do not work alone. We never work alone." And he has expressed this thought in one of his poems which reads simply, "Who is moving this hand of mine?"
Kawai san knows what it means to work, he is happy because his work is everything to him. He and his work are one. "I want to see a new self," he says, "I work." Then he adds, "Man doesn't seek work. It is the work which waits, seeking man."
some thoughts by a remouned Japanese potter, Kanjiro Kawai. He worked in Kyoto. compiled and translated by Yoshiko Uchida.
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