Fujiwara Kei

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the Japanese director and actress, see Fujiwara Kei (director) .

Fujiwara Kei ( Japanese 藤原 啓 ; born February 28, 1899 in Bizen , Okayama Prefecture ; † November 12, 1983 ) was a Japanese potter and ceramic artist. It was declared in 1970 as a living national treasure for the important intangible cultural asset “ceramic production”. His two sons Fujiwara Yū and Fujiwara Kyōsuke are also potters. While the older Yū was also named a living national treasure following the tradition of Bizen ceramics , Kyōsuke is breaking new ground with the fusion of Bizen and Shino ceramics .

overview

Kei Fujiwara was born as the third son of the farmer Fujiwara Isaburō. Having a talent for haiku and storytelling, he initially wanted to become a writer. He therefore applied to the Hakubunkan publishing house in 1915 and went to Tokyo in 1919 to work in the editorial department of the literary magazine Bungaku Sekai ( 文学 世界 ). During this time he wrote poems that were influenced by Masamune Hakuchō , who also came from Bizen, and Tokutomi Roka . On the side, he attended Waseda University as a guest student for about a year and familiarized himself with Shakespeare, Russian and German literature. In 1922 he published his poetry collection Yūbe no nakashimi ( 夕 の 哀 し み ), in 1928 together with the poet Shungetsu Ikuda a volume with translations of Heine's poems. In 1930 he left the publishing house to become a writer, but then returned to his homeland in 1937.

Entrance to the museum that opened in 1976 in memory of Kei Fujiwara.

The following year, Fujiwara started apprenticeship with Baike Mimura on the advice of Atsuo Masamune , who lived in the neighborhood , a scholar of the national school and brother of the poet Hakuchō Masamune, in order to learn pottery at the age of 39. In 1948 he completed his training and was trained and instructed further by the ceramic artist Tōyō Kaneshige and the versatile Rosanjin Kitaōji . Fujiwara dealt with the ancient Bizen pottery, which had been revived by Kaneshige at that time, and focused on the Momoyama period , whereby he achieved a contemporary design of the pottery. At the mediation of Rosanjin, Fujiwara exhibited his ceramics in 1954 in the Takashimaya department store in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo. In 1962 he was awarded the Prague Art Pottery Prize.

On April 25, 1970, Kei Fujiwara was named the Living National Treasure for his Bizen ceramics. In 1972 he received the Order of the Rising Sun (merit class officer). In 1976 he was made an honorary citizen of the city of Bizen; In the same year the Fujiwara Kei Museum ( 34 ° 43 ′ 59.4 ″  N , 134 ° 12 ′ 7.4 ″  E ) opened, in which, in addition to his works, pieces of the old Bizen pottery can be seen.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} 藤原 啓 . In: 美術 人名 辞典 at kotobank.jp. Retrieved March 20, 2015 (Japanese). 

Web links

• About Kei Fujiwara. Fujiwara Bizen.com, 2001, accessed March 18, 2015 (Japanese). 
• 藤原 啓 （ふ じ わ ら け い): 備 前 焼 の 人間 国宝 . 日本 伝 統 文化 ス タ イ ル, 2015,accessed March 18, 2015(Japanese). 

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Fujiwara is the family name, Kei the first name.