Abstract
This contribution takes as its subject matter unearthed lacquer ware of from the Early Modern period spanning the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo eras (from the latter sixteenth through the mid nineteenth centuries). Lacquer ware is often recovered in finds of large quantity from excavations of Early Modern consumption sites for Edo and elsewhere. A piece of unearthed lacquer ware is a fragile composite artifact made up of the three different materials of the wood body, the base coating, and the lacquer coating, and the state of preservation of each component will vary with the conditions in which the item was buried; accordingly these items present many problems at the time of excavation in their detection and in the observations made in situ including drawing, and later in treating these items for preservation, and in their safekeeping. In addition, production sites for lacquer ware are hardly ever discovered in a way equaling that of kiln sites for porcelain and other wares. For these reasons, studies in this area until now have been mainly limited to superficial observations of representative specimens only.
With the aim of examining these lacquer ware materials from the perspective of productive technology (materials and techniques), this study used 16, 578 items of Early Modern lacquer ware unearthed from 135 sites throughout the country for comprehensive scientific investigations conducted to clarify the following: (1) the species of tree used for the wood body, (2) the position from which the wood body was taken from the original timber, with respect to the grain, (3) the technique used in applying the lacquer coat, (4) the pigment(s) used for coloring the lacquer or for sprinkling onto the lacquer surface in the makie technique.
In addition to the above analyses, an investigation was conducted in parallel to reconstruct Edo period lacquer ware production techniques based on old documents and oral traditions, in order to obtain basic data that would enable reasonable evaluations of the analytic results regarding the materials and production methods used for the unearthed materials.
As a result, it was found that the investigation of unearthed Early Modern lacquer ware from the perspective of productive technology provides an appropriate evaluation of the quality of each particular item, and also serves as a useful method for grouping similar items in terms of their attributes. It was determined that the great majority of items were mass produced lacquer ware intimately involved in daily life, made with wood of the Japanese beech (Fagus crenata) or Japanese horse chestnut (Aesculus turbinata), primed in simple fashion with one or two coats of a mixture of persimmon tannin and charcoal powder, and when decorated with the makie technique, done in silver, tin, or orpiment (arsenic trisulphide), rather than in gold. The productive technology of such items went through at least four stages, and it further became clear that regional characteristics existed simultaneously over the broadly defined districts of Hokkaido, Tohoku, the Japan Sea coastal region, and the Pacific coastal region.
Based upon the above results of this investigation, the current contribution makes a broad survey of the production, distribution, and consumption of lacquer ware in the Early Modern period as seen from the perspective of productive technology, and has attempted to provide basic data for further research in this area.
