Japanese bowls 碗

What are the main types of Japanese bowl?

Chawan, donburi and kobachi cover most of what turns up at a Japanese table. Chawan is the individual rice bowl, typically around 11 to 12 centimetres across, sized to sit in one hand for the length of a meal. Donburi is deeper and wider, built to carry a full meal of rice with a topping on its own, from a simmered beef bowl to a bowl of ramen. Kobachi is the small bowl for a side dish, generally 6 to 12 centimetres across, deep enough for dressed vegetables or simmered greens without the sauce running off a flat plate.

Why do you lift some bowls and leave others on the table?

The bowl decides, not a rule you have to memorise. A vessel meant to be lifted has a carved foot ring on the underside, called a kodai, which lifts the hot base away from your fingers, and it stays light enough to hold through a meal: a ceramic rice bowl runs to roughly 350 grams full, comfortably under the 500-gram mark that separates a one-hand bowl from a table-bound one. A full donburi clears about 1,300 grams and a full ramen bowl runs to about 1,600 grams, so both stay on the table while you eat, lifted only at the end for the last of the broth. Eating from a lowered bowl with your head bent over it is called inu-gui, dog eating, and it reads as poor manners; the habit traces back to meals eaten seated on the floor from a low individual tray, where lifting the bowl was the only way to eat without folding all the way over.

What are ours made from?

What we carry spans a handful of kilns rather than one house look. Mino ware, from the pottery district of eastern Gifu, supplies a Snow Shino donburi with a soft white glaze, a Tenmoku net-pattern bowl sized for rice or soup, and a shinogi-carved ramen bowl with hand-scraped grooves that improve the grip. Arita ware contributes a hand-cut Yoraku-pattern dessert bowl worked into a lace-like pattern of cutout holes, hand wash only though the listing says the microwave is fine. Kutani ware supplies a set of five small hand-painted bowls, each carrying a different pattern, with the same hand wash and microwave-fine split. Ichiyama's Horizon rice bowl and Kakunaka's Jussou flat bowl round out the everyday sizes.

What about the matcha bowl?

A matcha chawan is a different object from a rice chawan, despite sharing the word: our own Asahido listing sizes it for whisked matcha, not for the hand-through-a-meal job a rice bowl does. Our Asahido matcha bowl, made by Tao in the Sakura design, comes from a Kyoto workshop rooted in the Kyo and Kiyomizu ware tradition and ships in its own paper gift box. If you already own one, our guide to cleaning a matcha bowl and whisk covers the rinse-straight-after-use routine the bowl and whisk both need.

Do all our bowls go in the dishwasher and microwave?

Mostly, with one notable exception. The Mino Snow Shino donburi, the Tenmoku net-pattern bowl, the shinogi ramen bowl, Ichiyama's Horizon rice bowl and Kakunaka's Jussou flat bowl are all listed as dishwasher and microwave safe. The Asahido matcha bowl is the outlier: the listing rules out both the dishwasher and the microwave, and hand washing is the only routine given. One general caution carries across the whole shelf: the fine web of cracks that sometimes shows up in an old glaze, called crazing, comes from the glaze and the clay body cooling at different rates, and a sudden change in temperature, such as cold water straight after the microwave, can bring it on faster. Let a hot bowl cool before you rinse it.

Quick answers

These are the questions people ask us most often about Japanese bowls, answered briefly.

What is the difference between a chawan and a donburi? A chawan is the individual rice bowl, held in one hand; a donburi is deeper and wider, built to carry a whole meal of rice and topping on its own.

Why do Japanese people lift their rice bowl but not a dinner plate? A rice bowl is light enough, about 350 grams full, and has a foot ring built to be gripped; a flat plate has neither, so it stays on the table.

What is a kobachi? A small side bowl, generally 6 to 12 centimetres across, used for pickles, dressed vegetables or simmered greens.

Can a matcha bowl go in the dishwasher? Not ours. Our Asahido matcha bowl is hand wash only, with the microwave ruled out too.