Yohen Tenmoku Tea Bowl

A Southern Song Tea Bowl, National Treasure since 1953

The Yohen Tenmoku Tea Bowl (曜変天目茶碗, Yohen Tenmoku Chawan) is a Chinese tea bowl of the Southern Song dynasty held by the Fujita Museum at 10-32 Amijima-cho, Miyakojima Ward, Osaka City, designated an Important Cultural Property on 31 March 1953 and a National Treasure on 14 November of the same year. The quantity is one bowl, the category applied arts, and the designation number 00129. It belongs to the Fujita Museum foundation.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives its provenance and standing briefly. A tenmoku bowl originally handed down in the Mito branch of the Tokugawa family, it is counted with the yohen tenmoku bowls of the Seikado and of Ryukoin as one of the three finest examples of yohen. Its yohen is not as vivid as that of the Inaba tenmoku, but this is the only bowl with fine yohen on both inner and outer surfaces, and it has been particularly prized since early times as a work of great renown.

It entered the Fujita family in 1918. The Fujita Museum opened in 1954 to show the collection formed by the industrialist Fujita Denzaburo and his sons Heitaro and Tokujiro.

The Only Bowl with Yohen Inside and Out

Three yohen tenmoku bowls hold National Treasure status: this one, one at the Seikado Bunko Art Museum and one at Ryukoin in Daitokuji. The Agency calls the three the finest examples of yohen.

It then names one thing that separates this bowl from the other two: it is the only one with fine yohen on both inner and outer surfaces.

A tenmoku bowl is normally looked into, and yohen usually appears on the inner surface. On this bowl it extends to the outside as well. Lifted and viewed from without, or looked down into, the mottling and the sheen appear either way. That is what lies behind the Agency's further remark that it has been particularly prized since early times.

The citation also states that its yohen is not as vivid as that of the Inaba tenmoku at the Seikado. The three bowls differ from one another, and the Agency sets those differences out as characteristics rather than as a ranking.

Form and Glaze as the Agency Records Them

The bowl stands 6.8 centimetres high, with a mouth 13.6 centimetres across and a foot ring 3.6 centimetres across. It sits within the palm of a hand.

On its body and form the Agency writes: the body is a grey-black ceramic clay high in iron, over which a strongly lustrous jet-black glaze lies thickly, with the area below the waist left unglazed. The form has a lip turned back at the rim, a waist drawn in, a small foot ring and shallow cutting at the base, that is, the tenmoku form.

Leaving the lower body unglazed prevents glaze running down and sticking to the kiln furniture during firing, and is common to tenmoku bowls of the Jian kilns. The turned-back lip flares the drinking edge slightly outward.

Of the yohen itself the record says: across the jet-black glazed surface granular spots float everywhere, and around them a halo gives off an iridescent sheen. A gilt rim encircles the mouth.

The two-layer structure of spot and surrounding halo is what defines yohen. The gilt rim, a metal band fitted over the lip, is often added to tenmoku bowls.

Fittings: A Pouch and Two Boxes

The record also lists the accompanying fittings. The pouch is of purple crepe silk with purple cords. The inner box is of black lacquer with characters in gold powder by an unknown hand reading Honourable Tea Bowl. The outer box is of paulownia in shunkei lacquer with an inscription in black lacquer, again by an unknown hand, reading Honourable Tea Bowl, Yohen.

Bowl into pouch, pouch into inner box, inner box into outer box. This triple housing preserves the way a bowl of such renown was kept. The inscription on the outer box also shows that it was known by the name yohen.

That the hands are recorded as unknown says something about how the Agency writes. Who wrote the inscriptions cannot be established, but the fact that inscriptions exist is set down.

Seeing It

The Fujita Museum reopened after rebuilding in April 2022. It is open from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., admission 1,000 yen and free for those aged 19 and under, closed over the New Year.

Displays change monthly, so the bowl is not always on view. It is also lent to exhibitions elsewhere. Check the museum's schedule before travelling.

Lighting in the galleries is kept low, and works emerge as the eyes adjust. Low-reflection glass keeps mirroring to a minimum. Yohen changes with the angle of the light, so moving around the case brings out the halo around the spots.

From Osakajo-kitazume Station on the JR Tozai Line it is about two minutes on foot, or about ten minutes from Osaka Business Park Station on the Osaka Metro Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi Line.