Hamada Shinsaku

Shinsaku Hamada 1929 – 2023.

Shoji Hamada’s second son, moved with his family to Mashiko when he was one year old. He studied Art and Craft at Waseda University before becoming an apprentice with his father at his Mashiko pottery.

In 1968, he came to the Leach Pottery with Shoji, before travelling for a year, visiting the USA as an assistant to his father, who was lecturing on ceramic art. They also toured Mexico, Europe, and the Middle East on the way back to Japan. In 1970, he held his first one-man exhibition at the Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi Department Store Art Gallery in Tokyo.

Eight years later, he was appointed a director of the Mashiko Reference Museum, an exhibition Shoji Hamada had created with his personal collection of furniture and other pieces of arts and crafts.

Shinsaku went on to travel extensively, visiting Korea, China, and Taiwan. He participated in a group exhibition with Tatsuzo Shimaoka, declared a ‘National Living Treasure’ of Japan, and Kenji Funaki at Liberty in London, and later visited Indonesia for demonstrations of Togei (Ceramic Art) during ‘Japan Week’, which was sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japan Foundation.

Shinsaku was always keen to distinguish his own work from that of his father, making a conscious effort to resist likeness and to develop an original style of his own. Over the course of his life, he produced vigorous and sought-after work. In 1999, after 50 years of practicing Togei, he celebrated his 30th solo exhibition—once again at Tokyo’s Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi Department Store Art Gallery. He was 70 at the time.

Shinsaku Hamada continued to work and exhibit well into later life. His passing in 2023 marked the end of a significant and influential career in Japanese studio pottery.