Japanese dishware has quietly infiltrated our living spaces to the point where we don't even think about it. When it's not holding norimaki, your oblong white sushi platter has designer moments with bright-green Granny Smith apples or a trio of lemons. Your blue-and-white bowls, each pattern different, come out of the cupboard one at a time for your morning muesli or as a group for soup with friends. But Michiko Sakata says that in 1980, when she opened Kaya Kaya (2039 West 4th Avenue), it was a challenge to sell angular plates or bowls that weren't part of a set. What's changed is Vancouver's increased familiarity with Japanese food, she observes. "When I opened, it was only UBC professors and people into Asian studies," she says of her customers. "Now it's skateboarders who eat sushi."
Sakata's roots provided the foundation when she began running a store. Born in Nagasaki, a centre of porcelain-making since the 1600s, she had deep connections to what she would one day sell: she grew up with a father who was a major collector; as a child she met "Living Treasures", rare artisans who continue ancient crafts. Initially, Kaya Kaya (named after her son) specialized in Arita ware, typically blue and white, and Imari with its traditional red-blue-gold palette. Sakata then added pieces from the 350-year-old Fukagawa Porcelain Manufacturing Company, who had provided dishes to imperial courts and, now, to most restaurants in Japan, says Sakata.
From fashion to electronic music, western tastes today are far more in sync with Japan's than they were in the early '80s, and that includes our attitude to tableware. Instead of assembling 124-piece dinner sets, we create lively kaleidoscopes that mix Caban or IKEA basics with mom's hand-me-downs, vintage treasures, and souvenirs from travels. Breaking a plate isn't a tragedy anymore; it's a chance to introduce one more newcomer to the party.
If traditional western table settings are clones, Japanese dishes are more brothers and sisters with features, such as colour or shape, in common but with their own individual characteristics. Check out Sakata's set of five blue-and-white mugs ($43), each with its own floral pattern, or a quintet of rice bowls ($90) whose only commonalities are shape and a palette of muted gold, silver, and black. Sakata points out rustic earthenware for hearty country cuisine, and elegant porcelain for more delicate fare.
Nearby, porcelain pieces from the Hakusan company include white oval dishes that narrow to a point at each end (set of four in different sizes, $140). Sakata says the porcelain is fired for 14 hours, and so strong that the company drops pieces on the ground as evidence-a test, she admits with a laugh, that she's never personally tried.
Exposure to global trends inspires today's Japanese designers, sometimes prompting the subtle evolution of centuries-old shapes. In a collection he created for Hakusan, ceramics master Masahiro Mori slightly flattened the classic rice bowl so that it works for dessert. Its decoration is a chevron pattern in inky blue, defined by shiny on matte ($45) or pale blue on white. Especially popular with first-time buyers is Mori's whimsical line of six different tall white cups ($29 each), their dimples and protrusions a comfortable fit for fingers.
Sakata indicates a set of leaf-shaped celadon dishes ($39), which Japan, according to her, produces "a more transparent blue" than other countries. As well as twice-yearly trips to her homeland, she now combs Southeast Asia for tableware and furniture that fit her store's aesthetic. Her travels have equipped her with the design knowledge to point out such niceties as, for instance, the barely discernible difference in proportion between lacquer bowls made in Japan and Vietnam.
In the same way that western and Japanese design increasingly meet mid-Pacific (as in a set of three nesting bowls patterned with English-looking wildflowers [$30]), so does the food on our tables. Where sashimi was viewed as weird a generation ago, it's now a staple of the Vancouver diet. Matcha, Japanese tea, is so popular that even Starbucks has adopted it; meant for whisking the powdered tea in, the earthenware bowls that Kaya Kaya sells (averaging $25) also work for cappuccino.
"Japanese love to mix designs," says Sakata. Why would you want six identical teacups when you could collect one-of-a-kind specimens ($20 each), floral, speckled, swirled, all with handsome red or brown wood saucers? "When you hold it in your hand, it's a really nice feeling," she says of the satisfying dovetailing of flesh and form that is typically Japanese. Flying out the door these days are large noodle bowls ($13 and up). As Sakata notes, they also work for salads, pasta, and all the other one-dish meals we eat, not just ramen. Another word customers wouldn't have known 25 years ago.
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