Mingei and Suehiro

Heiring the heart of precedent owner infinitely loved Mingei

Chuichi Miyake, the previous owner of “Eirakucho Suehiro Honten” was deeply fascinated by miscellaneous wares of unknown workmanship.

Once, sympathized with Muneyoshi Yanagi who had devoted to the beauty of Mingei to develope his own technical art theory, he joined in the Mingei diffusion campaign together with Yanagi, Shoji Hamada, Kanjiro Kawai, and Bernard Leach. He devoted himself in recovery and diffusion of Mingei articles to preserve diminishing traditional skills of artisan. The stage of putting his theory in practice was “Eirakucho Suehiro Honten” opened in the 26th year of Showa（1951）.

The restaurant was styled in a private house. All the table wares were unified in the folk potteries even a coffee cup, and beefsteak was also served　drastically with japanese Mingei earthen ware. He endeavored in raising the quality of service to listen to the guests’ assessment and to instruct the potters to improve their products, and strived himself in recovery of home districts of folk pottery on the other hand. Following to his will properly, wherever possible, we use various Mingei articles produced in each district of origin as the tableware, furniture, and even light furnishings in our restaurant. Many masterpieces worked by Shiko Munakata, a genius woodblock artist with whom our precedent owner promoted association in relation to Mingei, are kept in this house.

We sincerely hope you will spend an affluent time to taste our cordial cuisine as well as to delight your eyes at the number of Mingei articles and the woodblock prints.