Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on the life-story accounts of Western nationals who came to practice ceramics in Japan from the 1960s until today. We will see how artists negotiate cultural imaginings of Japan and traditional crafts with their bodily experiences in their communities of reception.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on the life-story accounts of Western nationals who have come to practice ceramics in rural areas of Japan from the 1960s until today. Captived by cultural imaginings centered on craftsmanship and spirituality disseminated from the mid-nineteenth century, Western artists and intellectuals have often seen Japan as a repository of pre-modern traditions, searching in the culture of the "Other" for something beyond the normative patterns of their societies.

Entering the country with a variety of visa categories, goals, and motivations, their trajectories reveal the lifestyle and cultural orientations in contemporary migration, which are still poorly studied from the West to Eastward direction. Furthermore, studies on international migration to Japan have often focused on the dichotomy between low-skilled workers and cosmopolitan elites based on metropolitan areas. This paper aims to add to Japan and migration studies by looking at the personal trajectories and subjective experiences of Western ceramic practitioners living and working in traditional rural crafts communities around the country.

We will look at how contemporary Western migrants practicing ceramics in rural areas around the country negotiate romanticized images with their everyday bodily experiences in their communities of reception, where many engaged in more or less traditional craft apprenticeships. While some experienced a disconnect between ideal and reality, others have found in the possibility of ceramic practice in those communities a source of well-being, self-fulfillment, and self-realization. We will see how images of Japan transmute from nostalgia to utopia through the subjects' alternative modes of living and working that envision utopian futures.