[rooster crowing]
[light music]
Ooh. Easy there.
Okay, how about this? Sure.
[light music]
MAN: You probably could even put one of mine in.
That was the idea. Ooh, good idea.
[people laughing]
My name is Hiroshi Ogawa.
I have been a potter professionally for 50 plus years.
Oh, this is mine.
How come this isn't in here [laughing]?
I invite eight other potters besides myself to fire with me.
And for one week we work as one.
MAN: Josh's plate stack can go here, right?
It's like 16.
[light music]
Loading the kiln is a very intense process.
[light music]
And you do have to visualize how all of this is gonna go in.
What else do we have left?
Just that one plate stack?
HIROSHI: Once loaded, we put up the door
and then we have this little ceremony
at the beginning.
[gong ringing]
We all hit the gong to let the dragon kiln know
that we are here and ready to fire again.
We sprinkle salt around the kiln for good luck and purity.
Hopefully we'll have a good firing.
We'll try to keep the smoke down, okay?
[group laughing]
Kampai! Kampai.
[glasses clinking]
And then we build a fire right at the front
and we go very slow.
[fire crackling]
[light music]
The pots are affected by the slow moving flame.
We do sort of paint with flames.
The color of the ash changes a little bit too.
It also changes with the kind of wood you use.
We use all alder and oak.
This pot was leaning on its side like this in the kiln.
And so, this is colors that aren't hit except by flame.
But, it was like this and so this part is all ash.
And so, that's part of how the flame
and ash work in the wood kiln.
I was born in California in '41 before the war.
And for the first five years of my life,
it was spent in Gila Bend, Arizona in a concentration camp.
Back in the 60s,
I left for Japan and studied religion and Buddhism,
which turned out to be a lot more difficult
and harder than I thought.
The head minister said,
"You could take up flower arranging, calligraphy, pottery."
And as soon as he said that, I said, "Oh good,
I'd like to do that."
And so, I studied pottery while there
and learned for a couple of years.
And I just sorta went on my own, just being a potter.
[light music]
And then I got sort of successful,
made pretty good money, but it quickly got,
I don't know, old.
And so, we moved up here in '81.
I feel Oregon is a very good fit.
I could build an Anagama wood kiln
and I could do things that I really wanted to do.
The clay is a natural part of Elkton.
It's just about quarter to half a mile away
in my neighbor's pond,
which we can dig and you can work with that.
Instead of cutting this smooth and even,
I often leave it just like this.
[light music]
It's part of philosophy
in that nothing is perfect with nature. [laughing]
I don't know.
That's the way I tend to make things.
[chopping]
Give me those two too.
Okay, good.
I gave my kiln a name, Hikarigama
Hikari means light or illumination.
Gama is kiln.
So, it's the illuminated kiln.
The flame runs through the kiln all the time.
It is really awe inspiring
when you pull that middle plug in the side of the kiln
during the third day of firing
and you see all the flames coming through
and they're just dancing through just so slow
and it's beautiful.
The kiln, to me, is a sort of a living entity.
It breathes and belches smoke.
The wood will start crackling.
[light music] [wood crackling]
And then it'll slowly quiet down
and you listen and it quiets down,
it's time to stoke again.
And so, it's just constantly feeding the kiln.
It is hard on us over a long period of time
of four or five days as we stoke.
The heat gets to us.
It requires a lot of dedication, but to me,
that's what it takes.
Just try to absorb what is around.
It is a process of the soul.
You know?
[light music]
I have 10%, maybe 5% control,
and 90, 95% is up to the dragon. [laughing]
And we need to be at peace with it and at one with it
so that hopefully it will perform its miracles.
[gong ringing]
We do a little ceremony at the opening
to let the kiln know that we have finished our test.
Then we pull pots out of the kiln.
So Josh, is this supposed to be a sculpture
of a person or something? Sure, why not?
[group laughing]
JOSH: Oh, that's really nice.
WOMAN: Wow, oh my gosh.
It's beautiful.
Absolutely stunning.
My God, that is amazing. Wow.
Look at that. That's fantastic.
What?
It's gotta be one of the better bowls I've ever seen.
That is amazing. Aw.
It is.
When I was in Japan and being very frustrated
with my studies and everything,
I had a minister just tell me to relax
and to absorb all that is around me.
Take it all in.
The quietness, the walk, the meditation, anything.
And so, that is one of the things that I do try
to tell new people that come here and in their firing
that just observe and try to soak in
as much as you can of this kiln
and the process so that all of it can become
a part of your soul.
I don't know.
It all leaves a circle. [laughing]
[light music]