Chin Jukan Kiln

Chin Jukan Kiln dates to 1598, when Korean potters brought to Satsuma under the Shimazu clan during the Korean campaigns of the late sixteenth century established the workshop in what is now Miyama, in Hioki City, Kagoshima Prefecture. The family name, Chin Jukan (Shim Sugwan in Korean), has carried through fifteen generations since, with the current master taking the name in January 1999. The kiln's reputation reached beyond Japan as early as 1873, when the twelfth-generation Chin Jukan exhibited at the Vienna World's Fair and helped establish Satsuma ware's international reputation. The workshop still fires in a traditional wood-fed climbing kiln, one of the few still operating in the region, producing the ivory-glazed, finely crackled Satsuma ware body finished with hand-painted nishiki-de brocade decoration — dense, gilded floral and figural patterns built up in multiple firings. Alongside studio pieces sold on site, the kiln keeps a heritage museum documenting its four-century history and a tea room on the same grounds. The fifteenth generation has continued exhibiting internationally, including in Paris, South Korea and Russia, and was named an honorary citizen of South Korea in December 2024 — continuity across four centuries paired with an active, still-showing contemporary practice.