What a Papaya on a Lacquer Dish Can Tell Us About Taiwan
Bananas, papayas and water buffalo appear on the surfaces of Penglai lacquerware. Japanese lacquer techniques helped make these objects possible; Taiwan’s landscape gave them much of their imagery. Looking at the two together is more revealing than trying to assign the finished dish to a single cultural origin.
The history behind it is larger than a style borrowed across the sea. During Japanese colonial rule, beginning in 1895, craft education, tools and production systems in Taiwan changed. Local makers worked within those new conditions, using techniques that could be adapted to local materials, livelihoods and visual traditions. Exchange took place within a colonial relationship, rather than between two equal partners.
When workshop knowledge entered the classroom
Photo credit: Group photograph of Mr. Yamanaka Isao (front row, center) in front of the gate of the Taichung School of Craft Studies ｜ Photo / National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute
Source: https://collections.culture.tw/ntcri_collectionsweb/collection.aspx?GID=M7MRMRMLMD
Much craft knowledge in Taiwan had been passed through workshops and apprenticeship. Formal training institutions added another means of transmission: drawing, material study, coating procedures and production standards could be organized into a curriculum.
The Taichung craft-training institution associated with Japanese lacquer artist Yamanaka Isao is part of that history. Its importance here is the change in how knowledge could be recorded and taught. A procedure no longer depended solely on being learned within one workshop; it could become a subject for a class.
That did not make the older forms of learning irrelevant. It added an institutional structure with different priorities, including standardization and industrial production.
A different tool changes the action
Some changes were as immediate as the direction of a saw stroke. Japanese-style pull saws cut toward the user, placing the blade under tension. That permits a relatively thin blade and a narrow cut. Introducing such a tool involves learning a different way to position the body and control the work.
The useful comparison is specific: a push-cutting tool and a pull-cutting tool ask different things of a maker. Those differences can remain in a workshop’s habits long after the history of the tool’s arrival has faded from view.
A kiln is also a production system
Climbing kilns brought another kind of change. Built along a slope, their connected chambers allow heat to rise and be reused. Their design supported sustained high-temperature firing and the organization of production across multiple chambers.
In places including Beitou, Miaoli and Shuili, kiln technology was part of the development of ceramic industries. The consequences went beyond a pot’s surface: fuel, firing schedules, output and the division of work all depended on how a kiln operated.
Photo credit: Climbing kiln (noborigama) ｜ Authorized by: Miaoli County Government Culture and Tourism Bureau. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Taiwan and later versions (CC BY-NC 3.0 TW+).
Source: https://cmsdb.culture.tw/invisible/F1A96A92-69D7-4A1A-A42F-B4D78AF51F6D
Penglai ware makes the mixture visible
In Taichung, Yamanaka introduced Japanese lacquer techniques, while local imagery entered the work. Penglai ware drew on tropical plants, agricultural life and Indigenous patterns. Bananas, papayas, coconut trees and water buffalo appeared alongside methods such as maki-e, which uses sprinkled decorative powders, and chinkin, which fills incised lines with gold.
Photo credit: Kuo Shuang-fu Collection: Penglai lacquer square dish with clipped corners, carved and painted with Taiwanese landscape motifs ｜ Photo / Authorized by: Taichung City Cultural Affairs Bureau. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Taiwan and later versions (CC BY-NC 3.0 TW+).
Source: https://cmsdb.culture.tw/object/A70406CA-190C-4C5E-9A54-045E87A2E4D8
The resulting objects record both a technical transfer and choices about how Taiwan would be pictured. They resist a simple reading as Japanese lacquerware reproduced elsewhere. Their surfaces make a local landscape part of the work, even as their production belongs to the more complicated history of colonial institutions.
From household work to export trade
Sedge weaving in Dajia and Yuanli, and bamboo weaving in Guanmiao, connect craft to a different scale of history. Household goods and supplementary work became part of larger commercial systems through inspection, standardized production and export channels.
Here, craft history includes who organized the orders and how products reached a market. An object can carry regional identity and still be the result of trade, specifications and division of labor. These are part of its cultural story, too.
Ordinary goods became worth another look
A separate line of influence concerned how everyday objects were valued. Yanagi Soetsu visited Taiwan in 1943 to survey local craft. The mingei, or folk-craft, perspective directed attention toward useful objects made by often unnamed makers. A bowl or storage jar could warrant close study without an artist’s signature or elaborate decoration.
That attention to the beauty of use influenced figures in Taiwanese craft, including Yen Shui-long. It offered a way to take ordinary goods seriously on their own terms, rather than treating them only as evidence of an industry or as candidates for fine art.
What makers do with the inheritance now
Japanese-style timber joinery remains relevant to the restoration of Japanese-era buildings in Taiwan and has also informed contemporary woodcraft and landscape projects. In ceramics, local firing materials—including acacia wood—can produce ash effects and flame marks shaped by the conditions of the particular kiln.
Interest in kintsugi, repair with lacquer and metallic powder, offers another point of contact. The repaired line can remain visible. Its appeal brings a Japanese technique into Taiwan’s contemporary conversations about care and keeping damaged objects in use.
Photo credit: Kintsugi restoration ｜ Photo / Authorized by: National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Taiwan and later versions (CC BY-NC 3.0 TW+).
Source: https://cmsdb.culture.tw/object/F3E0FE47-8EE1-415A-AFDF-4115EA7B5977
None of these practices has a single meaning simply because it came through Japan. A tool is learned, a kiln is operated, a repair is chosen for a particular object. Those decisions keep changing the inheritance.
Return to the papaya on the lacquer dish. Its presence does not resolve the history of how the technique arrived. It does show why the finished object deserves a closer reading: the method and the image belong to the same surface, while telling different parts of Taiwan’s story.