Cobalt-Blue "Tobe-yaki" Porcelain of Ehime, "Marugame Uchiwa" Bamboo Fans of Kagawa & "Tosa Uchihamono" Forged Blades of Kochi

In the wooded hills of Tobe Town just south of Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture, roughly one hundred independent pottery studios fire **Tobe-yaki**—Shikoku's most beloved folk-art porcelain (*Mingei*). Originating in 1777 when the feudal lord of Ozu Domain commissioned local potters to utilize scraps of local whetstone rock (*Iyo-to*) as porcelain clay, Tobe ware won high praise from Japanese Folk Craft Movement founder Soetsu Yanagi and British potter Bernard Leach. Tobe-yaki is instantly recognizable by its slightly thick, rounded (*potteri*) milky-white porcelain body—engineered to be exceptionally durable and chip-resistant for daily family dining—adorned with hand-brushed cobalt-blue (*Gosu*) underglaze patterns such as the classic scrolling **Karakusa** arabesque vine. Along Shikoku's northern coast in the castle town of Marugame, Kagawa Prefecture, flourishes the centuries-old craft of **Marugame Uchiwa** (*Marugame Flat Bamboo Fans*), which accounts for an astonishing **90 percent of Japan's entire national bamboo fan production**. The craft began in the early 17th century as an auspicious souvenir Bearing the "Maru-kin" crest for pilgrims disembarking at Marugame Port on their way to climb Kotohira-gu Shrine (*Konpira-san*), and was later refined as a side craft by lower-ranking Marugame samurai. Across 47 meticulous steps, artisans split the top half of a single stalk of local *Madake* bamboo into dozens of paper-thin ribs that fan outward while remaining organically attached to the flat bamboo handle, before pasting delicate washi paper or indigo cotton over the frame. Completing Shikoku's trio of designated national utilitarian crafts is **Tosa Uchihamono** (*Tosa Forged Blades*) from Kami and Nankoku cities in Kochi Prefecture. Because rugged mountain forests cover 84 percent of Kochi's land area, local blacksmiths over the past 400 years mastered **Jiyu-Tanzo** (*Freehand Forging without Molds*): heating high-carbon *Aogami* or *Shirogami* steel in pine-charcoal forges and hammering each blade by eye to craft rustic dark-scaled *Kurouchi* chef's knives, pruning shears, and forestry axes prized by professional chefs and woodsmen for their razor edge retention.