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*''Japanese'': 陶器 ''(touki)'', 焼物 ''(yakimono)''
*''Japanese'': 陶器 ''(touki)'', 焼物 ''(yakimono)''
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[[Kyushu]] yields the oldest pottery in the world - dated at approximately 10-11,000 BCE. As one moves from West to East along the archipelago, the disparity of dates of the pottery and our own time becomes less and less<ref>Delmer M. Brown (editor). The Cambridge History of Japan Volume One: Ancient Japan, Page 57</ref>.
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[[Kyushu]] yields some of the oldest pottery in the world - dated at approximately 10-11,000 BCE. As one moves from West to East along the archipelago, the disparity of dates of the pottery and our own time becomes less and less<ref>Delmer M. Brown (editor). The Cambridge History of Japan Volume One: Ancient Japan, Page 57</ref>.
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While debates go back and forth between whether pottery developed first in China or in Japan, as different sites are discovered, and dated or re-dated, it is widely accepted that pottery in Japan does go back at least as far as several millennia BCE, defining the [[Jomon period|Jômon period]] of Japanese prehistory. The term Jômon, meaning "cord marked," in fact comes from a description of the pottery decoration style of typical works of that period. Jômon pieces were worked entirely by hand, however, without the use of a potter's wheel, a technology that developed or was introduced in the [[Yayoi period]].<ref>Kobayashi Tatsuo, Simon Kaner, and Oki Nakamura, ''Jomon Reflections: Forager Life and Culture in the Prehistoric Japanese Archipelago'', Oxford: Oxbow Books (2004), 77.</ref>
[[Seto wares]] were the dominant form in the late medieval period, up until the late 16th century, when [[Mino wares]] gained in commercial strength. [[Oda Nobunaga]] took steps to protect Seto potters by requiring Seto wares to be made in [[Seto (Owari)|Seto]] - in other words, potters elsewhere in the archipelago were forbidden from copying Seto potters' techniques.<ref>Gallery labels, ''Jidai wo tsukutta waza'' 時代を作った技 exhibition, National Museum of Japanese History, July 2013.</ref>
[[Seto wares]] were the dominant form in the late medieval period, up until the late 16th century, when [[Mino wares]] gained in commercial strength. [[Oda Nobunaga]] took steps to protect Seto potters by requiring Seto wares to be made in [[Seto (Owari)|Seto]] - in other words, potters elsewhere in the archipelago were forbidden from copying Seto potters' techniques.<ref>Gallery labels, ''Jidai wo tsukutta waza'' 時代を作った技 exhibition, National Museum of Japanese History, July 2013.</ref>