Through examining the multiple ideals of craft in Japan, and extracting fundamental data from description and depictions in tourist guidebooks, it is possible to view the social milieu surrounding Japanese craft (in particular, ceramics ) in the last century. Art policies in Meiji era Japan attempted to sub-divided craft into artistic and industrial modes. However clear differentiation couldn't be realized, and eventually, the conceptualization of craft metamorphosed into a concept with aspects of both. Through this paper, I attempt to re-think such ideals of craft with regard to geographical location research. Japanese geographical studies of craft have frequently investigated it solely from an industrial perspective, particularly on a local scale, and the chief focus of these studies is economic in nature. However this is only one side of craft practice and ideal, and it is important to include the artistic side of craft as well. In this paper, my investigation focuses on the role of craft in tourism instead of local industry, capturing the cultural and artistic side of craft. In particular, I deal with ceramics of Kyusyu as an example, tracing their depiction in tourist guidebooks, through looking over guidebooks of Kyushu published for the last 10 decades (Table 1). As a result, I can distinguish 64 kinds of ceramics in the Kyushu area (Figure 1; Table 2). And I reveal a non-economic side of craft from Table 2 as a fundamental data.
