A New Mold: Mori Yūsetsu and the Genealogy of the Banko Brand

Since at least the seventeenth century, genealogies of famed ceramics workshops such as the Raku and Eiraku have directly impacted the market value of their wares. These lineages were built on a system of inheritance in which a father would train his biological or adopted son in the family’s style, before passing on the titles of master artisan and family head. Through these carefully crafted genealogies, artisans conveyed that their works were not merely the creations of individuals, but rather links to a historic family and illustrious past.

In some cases, artists created their own historical legacies, harnessing their contemporary work to an adopted predecessor. In the 1830s, the merchant Mori Yūsetsu (1808–1882) set out to revitalize the defunct Banko ceramics workshop, which had been founded several generations earlier by the merchant and potter Nunami Rōzan (1718–1777), but waned in popularity after his death. Yūsetsu’s workshop employed a host of techniques to recreate the Banko brand including the production of wares in Rōzan’s style and the use of a “Banko” seal. His marketing campaign was sufficiently successful that by the late-nineteenth century, he was widely considered to be Rōzan’s legitimate successor despite the significant timespan between their activities. This study of Yūsetsu’s workshop and marketing practices will suggest that, to the Japanese consumer, ideas of artistic legacy and lineages were not contingent on concrete connections but could include imagined and adopted notions of inheritance.