Nine kilns. That is all there are, and all there will be. The Sarayama valley in the mountains above Hita City has produced Onta ware for three hundred years from these nine kilns, each passed from father to son, the techniques transmitted within families and not outside them. The number nine is not a policy; it is the natural consequence of a tradition that does not recruit. The clay is crushed by water-powered mills — wooden hammers driven by the stream that runs through the valley, the same sound that has defined this place for centuries. The glazing techniques — brush decoration, dripped glaze, combed patterns — are specific to Onta and recognizable once you have seen them. The wood-fired kilns produce the particular variation in surface that only wood firing achieves. Yanagi Soetsu, the founder of Japan's mingei movement, called Onta one of the most beautiful villages in Japan. The description holds. The valley is narrow, the kilns are visible from the road, the sound of the mills is constant. You can watch the potters work, and you can buy directly from the kilns. The experience of acquiring an Onta bowl in Sarayama — rather than in a craft shop in a city — changes the object. It becomes a place as much as a thing.