The Kiyomizu slopes of Higashiyama once lay under kiln smoke. This is the home ground of Kiyomizu ware, where several hundred climbing kilns rose in steps along the hill and fired tea ceramics on wood and the natural draw of the incline. Electric and gas took over, and those brick structures were dismantled and buried one after another. Tohei Ceramics keeps one that survived, registered as a Tangible Cultural Property; across the whole district almost nothing like it is left.
So a guest at Tohei sees more than a potter at the wheel, which Kyoto offers everywhere, and stands instead on the physical site of an industry that is going out. Brick chambers more than a century old climb the slope in tiers, and the placement of each chamber and the run of each fire path record what earlier makers understood about how fire moves uphill. The place reads properly as built heritage; as a craft session it is ordinary.
The point is therefore clear. This is not another ceramics studio but the answer to why Kiyomizu ware is Kiyomizu ware. Throwing a piece, then standing in front of a Cultural Property kiln and understanding why so few remain, are the two halves of one Kyoto memory; neither works alone.