Japanese metal work from ancient times to the Medieaval Age developed mainly as one of the fields of Buddhist art. With the fall of aristcracy in the Early Modern Age (16th-19th centuries), Buddhist temples earlier partronized by particians lost their financial support, and their religious activities were also restrained due to suppression on Buddhism by warlords. The Early Modern Age, theirfore, did not turn out mentionable metal work objects for Buddhist religious purposes. On the other hand, the rise of the commoners' class in the society caused flourishing activity of the art connected directly with every day life, resulting in extensive manufacture of tea-ceremony kettles, standing lanterns, blonze mirrors, stationery pieces, architectual fittings, etc. The leaders of the new age who rose from the newly risen stocks discarded the intelligent, sensitive mode of life which had been enjoyed by the nobility and chose to pursue the joys of practical life. This attitude of life led people to be in favor of gold, which was the symbol of power and which appealed strongly to them with its beautiful gleam.
Just at the time the gold mines at Kurokawa in Kai Province (the present Yamanashi Prefecture), at Fuji and Umegashima in Suruga Province (Shizuoka), and, the biggest of all, the one at Sado in Echigo Province (Niigata), were opened. It was a Golden Age in the literal sense of the word. It was in this period that kimpeki shohei-ga (colorful paintings on gold leafed panels of walls, sliding-doors, folding-screens, etc.) in the field of painting, nui-haku (embroidery and gold-leaf imprint) in textile art, and maki-e (gold-lacquer) in lacquer art, became fashionable as never before, and tea-ceremony objects and sword mountings of gold began to be made. Esteem of sensuous appeal also caused people to love polychromy. In the field of metalwork, inlay of gold and silver on iron or brass ground, and shippo (cloisonne or champleve) in which enamels of red, white, blue, green and other colors were fused on a copper ground, came into wide faver.
In contrast with this aesthetic sense in faver of brilliant beauty, the wabi-cha (wabi-style tea-ceremony) created a new realm in which wabi and sabi* were held as the most elevated ideals of beauty. (*Wabi and sabi: It is hard to translate these terms, but they may be roughly understood to mean soberness, quietude, simplicity, absence of ornament, naiveness,etc.--Translator.) Great tea masters such as Rikyu, Oribe, Enshu and Yoken had kettle casters working for them respectively, whom they instructed to cast tea-ceremony kettles of iron instead of gold. Iron tea-ceremony kettles had earlier been manufactured mainly at Ashiya in Chikuzen Province (Fukuoka Prefecture) and at Temmyo in Shimotsuke Province (Tochigi Prefecture), but after the end of the Muromachi Period (early 14th-middle 16th century) they began to be cast also in Kyoto. During the Momoyama Period (middle 16th-early 17th centuries) the kama-za (guild of kettle factories) was established at Sanjo, where Kyo-gama (Kyoto kettles) were cast in quantities.
According to documentary evidences there were at the time as many as seventy-two kettles factories at the Sanjo Kama-za. Though called kama-shi (kettle casters), the casters did not limit their jobs to tea-ceremony kettle exclusively. The kyo-habutae published in 1685, in an article listing shops and stores along the Sanjo Street, contains the following statement: "Casters. Making pans, bath furnaces, temple bells, etc." It proves that they were engaged in casting kichen utencils, temple bells, lanterns, and other sundry iron goods. Out of them appeared such eminent tea-ceremony kettle makers as Nishimura Dojin, Nagoshi Yoshimasa, Tsuji Yojiro and Onishi Seiwemon to add to the fame of Kyo-gama.
Manufacture of bronze mirrors, though now included in the category of metal casting, was in those times a speciality of craftsman called kagami-shi (mirror makers). They organized the kagami-za (guild of mirror casters) at approximately the same time as the kama-za. The Ao family was the head of the guild. Mirrors of the Early Modern Age were chiefly e-kagami (mirrors with handles). The knob, which used to be at the center of the mirror back, disappeared, and mirror back ornaments, earlier designed centering around the knob, were replaced by free-style ones composed of oversized flowering plants, birds, human figures and other motives in unrestricted arrangement. The mirror faces themselves tended to be increasingly larger.
Translation by Shigetaka Kaneko