Tanshin-gama sits in Oboko, a small hamlet tucked into the hills of Hasami, Nagasaki. A stream runs beside the home and workshop, birdsong fills the air, and it is here, surrounded by nature, that the kiln’s work continues.

Tanshin-gama was founded in 1978, when Yuzuru Nagasaki left his father’s kiln to establish one of his own. Hotaru-de — a technique that creates translucent sections within porcelain — already existed. But Nagasaki saw another possibility. Through years of experimentation, he developed something remarkably different: a transparency that was clear, colorless, and luminous.

Its crystal-like beauty gave the technique its name: Suisho-bori (水晶彫), or “crystal carving.”

The process begins with fine white porcelain made from Amakusa clay. While the porcelain is still soft, artisans carve tiny openings into its surface by hand, one by one. Each opening is then carefully filled with a material made from the kiln’s own secret formula, and the piece is fired twice at around 1,300°C.

It is this painstaking process — with no shortcuts — that gives Suisho-bori its distinctive crystalline clarity and glow.

Rather than simply preserving an inherited technique, Tanshin-gama continues to explore its possibilities, creating new forms for the way we live today.

Light and porcelain, reimagined.

Tanshin-gama continues to create a new expression of Hasami ware.