Old Seto Yellow Glazed Guardian Dogs

Two Small Lion-Dogs in Amber Glaze

Most of Japan's komainu, the paired guardian lion-dogs that flank the approach to a shrine, are cut from stone or wood and stand at human scale or larger. The pair kept at Katori Jingu in Chiba Prefecture breaks that pattern on every count. They are ceramic, they fit in the palm of a hand, and they wear a translucent glaze the colour of dead autumn leaves. The open-mouthed figure measures 17.6 centimetres tall; its closed-mouthed partner, 17.9. Both were shaped entirely by hand and fired hot enough to vitrify the clay into something close to porcelain.

This is the Ko-Seto Oyu Komainu, a pair of yellow-glazed lion-dogs designated an Important Cultural Property in 1953. Ceramic komainu of this age survive in only a handful of examples across the whole country, which is much of what makes the Katori pair worth seeking out.

Born in the Seto Kilns

The name Ko-Seto, literally "old Seto," points to where the pieces were made: the kiln district of Seto in present-day Aichi Prefecture, several hundred kilometres west of the shrine that owns them. Seto was one of medieval Japan's great ceramic centres, and among the old kiln regions it held a particular distinction. While potters elsewhere produced unglazed stoneware, Seto's workshops were applying lustrous glazes in imitation of imported Chinese ceramics. Ko-Seto refers specifically to the glazed wares that left these kilns during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods.

The glaze on the Katori lion-dogs is an ash glaze that fired to a warm, transparent amber. Beneath it lies a hard, pale grayish-white semi-porcelain body. The underside of each figure was left bare, a small practical detail that tells you where the potter set the piece down before firing. Across the glazed surfaces runs a web of coarse crackle, the fine network of cracks that forms as glaze and clay cool at different rates. The firing temperature is estimated above 1,300 degrees Celsius, hot enough to push ordinary clay toward the threshold of porcelain.

Why They Matter

Komainu are set out as an A and Un pair, a convention borrowed from Sanskrit: "a," the first sound, made with an open mouth, and "un," the last sound, made with the mouth closed. Together they stand for beginning and end, the whole of existence bracketed by a single breath. Guardians in this pose are everywhere in Japan. Glazed ceramic ones from the medieval period are not.

When the Agency for Cultural Affairs designated the pair in March 1953, it recognised both their rarity and their quality. Comparable Ko-Seto komainu are known from only a few places, among them Fukagawa Shrine in Seto itself and the Nezu Museum in Tokyo. The Katori pair is reckoned among the finest of that small group. Their fame reached an unusually wide audience when the open-mouthed figure was chosen, according to the shrine, as the design for a 250-yen definitive postage stamp, putting a medieval lion-dog into the pockets and letter-boxes of ordinary postal users.

Looking Closely

Small as they are, the lion-dogs reward slow attention. The potter built each one by hand rather than pressing it into a mould, and the surface still carries the evidence. Ridges of mane and the lines of the eyebrows were drawn into the soft clay with a spatula, in strokes that are quick and slightly irregular. The bodies are lean, almost gaunt, and the expressions are sharp rather than cuddly. Where later guardian figures can look stylised and tame, these two keep a feral edge, as if the maker cared more about energy than polish.

The amber glaze pools a little thicker in the recesses and thins over the raised mane, so the colour deepens and lightens as the eye travels across each figure. The crackle catches light in fine lines. Seen up close, the pair reads less as a matched ornament than as two animals caught mid-snarl, one calling out and one holding its breath.

The Shrine That Keeps Them

Katori Jingu is no minor country shrine. It is the head of some four hundred Katori shrines nationwide and the first-ranked shrine of the old province of Shimosa. Before the Meiji era, only three shrines in Japan were permitted the title jingu: Ise, Kashima, and Katori. The deity here is Futsunushi-no-Okami, a god of swords and martial prowess, and the shrine has drawn the devotion of warriors and the court for well over a thousand years.

The present vermilion gate and black-lacquered main hall both date to 1700, built under the fifth Tokugawa shogun, Tsunayoshi, and both are Important Cultural Properties in their own right. The grounds spread across a low wooded hill within a sweep of old cedars known as the Katori Forest, one tree said to be roughly a thousand years old. Near the inner precinct sits the kaname-ishi, a half-buried "pivot stone" that folklore credits with pinning down the giant catfish believed to cause earthquakes. Katori forms one of the so-called East Country Three Shrines, together with Kashima Jingu across the Tone River and Ikisu Shrine.

The shrine's single greatest treasure is not the lion-dogs but a bronze mirror: a sea-beast-and-grape mirror of Tang Chinese origin, ranked among Japan's three most celebrated mirrors and the only National Treasure craft object in all of Chiba Prefecture. The komainu have shared their home with it in the shrine's treasure hall.

Around the Shrine

The lion-dogs are normally housed in the Katori Jingu Treasure Hall, a small museum near the worship hall that opened in 1967 and holds the shrine's collection of mirrors, documents, and ritual objects. A word of caution for anyone travelling specifically to see the pair: the treasure hall has been closed for an extended renovation, and even in normal times the displays rotate and the celebrated mirror has at times been shown as a reproduction. Confirm the current situation on the shrine's official site before planning a visit around the ceramics.

The shrine pairs naturally with Sawara, a short ride away. This old merchant quarter of canal-side warehouses and Edo-period townhouses has kept its historic streetscape and is often called the "Little Edo" of the region. Travellers working through Chiba's cultural sites frequently link Katori with Kashima Jingu, just over the river, to complete the old circuit of the three shrines. For those whose real interest is the ceramics, the related Ko-Seto komainu at Fukagawa Shrine in Seto and at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo offer other chances to meet this rare type.