Raku Family Residence

Raku Family Residence: A Potters' Home Where the Kiln Is Still Lit

The Raku Family Residence (樂家住宅, Raku-ke jūtaku) is the home and workshop of the Raku family of tea-bowl makers on Aburanokoji Street, just south of Ichijo, in Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto; nine of its buildings were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 15 May 2007.

Raku ware began in the late sixteenth century with a potter called Chōjirō, whose black and red tea bowls were shaped entirely by hand instead of on a wheel. The family has passed the craft, and the name, from parent to child ever since. In 2019 the sixteenth head of the house took the hereditary name Kichizaemon.

None of this is preserved behind glass. The family still lives here, and the kiln at the back of the lot is still fired. According to the Raku Museum, the way the bowls are made and fired has not changed since the ware first appeared.

How old are the buildings? The sources disagree. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates all nine to the early Meiji period, while the Raku Museum states that the family's present house was rebuilt in 1855. Nothing published so far settles the question, so both dates are given here.

A Pottery Name That Became a Family Name

The Raku Museum traces the technique back to the three-colour glazed wares of Ming China. Chōjirō's father, recorded as Ameya, is thought to have been an immigrant potter who brought those methods to Kyoto. Chōjirō's earliest surviving piece, a two-colour lion figure, is dated to the spring of 1574; the first Raku tea bowls probably followed a few years later, around 1579.

Those bowls were made for the tea master Sen no Rikyū and carry his taste for restraint, the aesthetic of wabi. At first people simply called them ima-yaki, "ware made now". The later name Juraku-yaki, shortened to Raku, came from the Jurakudai, the palace Toyotomi Hideyoshi built in Kyoto. The museum notes that no other pottery family of the day gave its ware its own surname in this way.

After Chōjirō's death the workshop passed to Jōkei, and every head since has used the name Kichizaemon. The third head, Dōnyū, was a close friend of the artist Hon'ami Kōetsu, and nearly all of Kōetsu's black Raku bowls are believed to have been fired in the Raku kiln. Kyoto City describes the family as the tea-bowl makers among the Senke Jisshoku, the ten craft houses that serve the Sen schools of tea.

Why the Raku Family Residence Stands Here

The family's presence in this part of Kyoto goes back to the Momoyama period. A 1576 subscription list for rebuilding the Hokke-ji temple, kept among the Chōmyō-ji records, names Tanaka Sōkei, who worked alongside Chōjirō, together with Jōkei and Sōmi. Sōkei was then living in Minami Inokuma-cho.

The Raku Museum identifies Minami Inokuma-cho as roughly the area where Rikyū later had his residence inside the Jurakudai grounds, and suggests the family moved to its present site on Aburanokoji Street when the palace was being built. No dated record of the move has been published; it remains the museum's inference.

The house has kept changing with the people living in it. Agency records note that the main house was extended and remodelled in 2006.

Reading the Compound: Gate at the Front, Kiln at the Back

The lot opens to Aburanokoji Street on its east side. The front gate sits in the middle of the street frontage, with a waiting arbor for tea guests to its north and a small waiting room for their attendants at the southern corner, both fitted with projecting lattice windows facing the street. Inside the gate, a middle gate and a fence lead to the main house.

The main house stands near the centre of the site, slightly toward the street. It looks like a Kyoto townhouse from outside, but its interior is finished in the sukiya manner associated with tea architecture. The Sokantei tea room adjoins it on the north, sharing a small building with a Buddhist altar room that opens onto the main house corridor. To the north-west, the main storehouse stands close to the boundary, and the clothing storehouse sits between the two, linked to the main house by an anteroom.

The working buildings are grouped at the back, toward the north-west. The kiln house is attached to the south-west side of the main storehouse and holds both a red Raku kiln and a black Raku kiln. In the far corner, a clay shed is where the potting clay is stored and pounded.

Walk the plan in your mind and a sequence appears: gate and waiting rooms for visitors at the street, living and tea spaces in the middle, clay and fire at the back. The Raku Family Residence fits the life of a tea-craft household onto a single city lot.

The registrations fall under two criteria. The main house, the Sokantei tea room and the kiln house were listed as structures that would be difficult to reproduce; the other six were listed for their contribution to the historic landscape. Each building has its own page.

Protected by the City as Well

Kyoto City also protects the Raku Family Residence under its own schemes. In 2010 it was designated a Landscape Important Building under the Landscape Act and a Historic Scenery Building under the national law on historic town planning.

The city's reasons echo the Agency's: a townhouse frame enriched with fine sukiya craftsmanship, and a street front where the gate and high wall line the road and garden trees show above them. The Raku Museum adds that the house is also a city-designated Historical Design Structure.

Visiting the Raku Family Residence and the Raku Museum

The Raku Family Residence is a private home, and neither the grounds nor the interiors are open. What visitors can see is the street front on Aburanokoji Street: the front gate, the waiting arbor, the attendants' waiting room and the walls. The house sits one block in from the main roads in a quiet residential area, and Kyoto City asks people viewing its designated buildings not to block traffic or disturb the neighbours.

To see the ware itself, go next door to the Raku Museum, opened in 1978 by the fourteenth head, Kakunyū, and holding works by every generation along with tea utensils and family documents. It opens at 10:00 a.m. and closes at 4:30 p.m., with last entry at 4:00 p.m. It is closed on Mondays (open if Monday is a national holiday), during exhibition changeovers and over the New Year. Admission varies by exhibition, no booking is needed, and there are three exhibitions a year.

Four times a year, once each season, the museum holds the Minazuki Sekka tea gathering, where guests drink from bowls in the collection. Places must be booked, and the gathering takes place in the museum's own tea room, not in the family house.

City buses are the easiest way to get there. Get off at Horikawa Nakadachiuri / Ichijo Modoribashi and walk about 3 minutes, or at Horikawa Imadegawa and walk about 8 minutes. From Kyoto Station, buses 9 and 50 run to Horikawa Nakadachiuri. From Imadegawa Station on the Karasuma subway line, take exit 6 and walk about 13 minutes.

Neither the family nor the museum publishes a photography policy. Ask staff inside the museum, and if you photograph the street front, remember that this is someone's home.