Asahido 朝日堂

Who is Asahido?

Asahido was founded in 1870, when Asai Kunijun received the name "Asahi" from Prince Yamashina and opened a Kiyomizu ware shop at the approach to Kiyomizu Temple, Higashiyama, Kyoto. The shop's own history page tells the story proprietor by proprietor rather than as one continuous company: Kunijun ran it first, and it passed down through his sons from there.

What did the shop survive?

Two disasters interrupt that family timeline. The Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed Asahido's Tokyo branch on 1 September 1923, and rather than rebuild it, the family closed the branch outright; Kunijun's second son Kunimi took over as the third proprietor in 1927, at 16. The Kyoto shop itself burned down completely in an early-morning electrical fire on 28 August 1957. The family rebuilt the main shop the following year and incorporated the business as a stock company in 1960.

What does Asahido sell today?

What we carry from them runs almost entirely to Kiyomizu-yaki ceramics: a large cat bowl cut with an ukiyo-e print, a bamboo and sparrow teacup, small seasonal-glaze bowls such as the plum-glazed bowl, plus more mugs, sake sets and teapots. Two pieces break that pattern on purpose rather than by accident: the crystal-carved porcelain teapot and its matching teacup are from Hasami, Nagasaki Prefecture, rather than Kyoto, cut with the seigaiha, blue-wave, pattern straight into the porcelain. Browse the Asahido collection to see the current range, since what is on the shelf shifts as pieces sell through.

What marks Kiyomizu-yaki?

Kiyomizu-yaki is not one kiln's output the way some regional wares are; the shop's own craft pages describe it as ceramics with no single fixed style or technique, made around Kyoto's Higashiyama and Kiyomizu Temple district by many different potters and painters. That is why an Asahido shelf can hold cat-motif mugs beside plum-blossom bowls beside a crystal-carved teapot from another prefecture entirely: the shop's own identity sits in the address and the family running it, not in a single fixed technique.

How do you look after it?

Wash Asahido porcelain the way you would any glazed tableware: by hand or on a gentle dishwasher cycle, avoiding sudden temperature changes that can crack a glaze. The crystal-carved Hasami pieces are porcelain under a cut-glass overlay rather than cut glass throughout, so our cut-glass care guide covers the glass half of that piece; treat the porcelain body itself the same as the rest of the range.