Out of Our Hands

Out of Our Hands is a lyrical account of the lives of craftspeople and makers in Hokkaido, Japan’s wildest island, those who work, writes Willie Jones, with ‘arrested fire and awakened stone’.

Willie Jones describes how he and Hisashi Urashima first met, and the research trips they undertook in rural Hokkaido. The ‘bright-eyed, boyish founder and principal of a local language school’, he discovered, was also the publisher and editor of Northern Lights, a magazine advertised on the masthead as ‘the land of the pioneers’. (The pioneers were the tonden-hei, the soldier pioneers sent by the Meiji government to colonise Hokkaido). Willie Jones mentioned to Hisashi Urashima that he had bought, in a Sapporo coffee shop, some pots made by a Mr Sakata.

Out of Our Hands is a deeply-informed account of the craftspeople who live and work in Hokkaido, in the volcanic landscapes of Japan’s wildest island. Drawing on fifteen years of journeys and conversations, Willie Jones brings to life a world of sword-smiths, potters, painters, glass-blowers, weavers, dyers, etchers and wood-carvers, describing with lyrical precision their lifelong dedication to their craft and submission to the materials they work with — to the power of arrested fire and awakened stone.