Made in Occupied Japan
A couple of weeks back, tired of the seclusion and needing a change, we drove to Groveland. We have a house there on Pine Mountain Lake, appropriately named Wit’s End. The views across the lake are spectacular but more than that, being there helps to get my mind away from the constant technology hustle of Silicon Valley.
There isn’t much to do in the little town of Groveland — a waystop on the road to Yosemite. We go to the hardware store, keep the economy going by buying random things and I often stop at some of the local shops. There is a charity store called Furniture Barn where I sometimes find pieces for the house and a little tourist store called Serendipity, where I putter around for a bit. The store is a mix of old and new, tapestries, quilts, random decorative pieces, just a bunch of odds and ends. This time, the main store had moved to a new location and they were trying to sell some of their excess inventory in the old place.
Wandering around, I saw some old floral china plates that I thought I could pick up for a friend. I turned them over to look at where they were manufactured. The mark said — Made in Occupied Japan. Slightly garish and not particularly fine china, but the stamp intrigued me so I paid all of $20 for a bunch of plates, a sugar bowl and a milk jug.
Turned out there was indeed an interesting story associated with them. After it was defeated in World War II, Japan was occupied from 1945 to 1952 by the Allied Forces led by the United States. The goal of the occupying forces was to enact military, political, economic and social reforms. In the first phase of the occupation from 1945 to 1947, the main focus was to punish the country by demilitarizing it and getting them to renounce the right to wage war. Subsequently, they also introduced land reforms, wrote a new constitution that empowered the parliament and promoted rights for women.
By 1948, with the emergence of an economic crisis in Japan, the focus turned towards industry and the revival of Japanese manufacturing, with the intent of rebuilding the ravaged economy. Exporting manufactured goods to western markets was part of this economic revival. The products were usually inexpensive toys, tea sets and kitchen items, many of them copying western motifs. All goods destined for the U.S. had to be marked “Occupied Japan” or “Made in Occupied Japan.”
The manufacturer’s mark on the back of my plate was TTK and the pattern name was Gloria. Scouring the internet, I learned that TTK stood for Toyo Toki Kaisha which was established in 1917 by Japanese business men, Ichizaemon Morimura and his brother Toyo.
The Morimura brothers had started in 1876 by establishing a trading company in New York City which imported chinaware, curios, paper lanterns and other gift items. In 1889, Ichizaemon visited the Paris World Exposition and seeing fine French porcelain, was inspired to create similar products for the U.S. market. He opened a factory in Japan, hired experts to learn porcelain manufacture, and by 1904, had established a company, Nippon Toki Gomei Kaisha. He acquired land and built a ceramics factory in the village of Noritake, a small suburb near Nagoya, Japan. The goal of this first factory was to create western style dinnerware.
In 1917, they opened another company, Toyo Toki Kaisha, with the purpose of manufacturing sanitary ware such as flush toilets and sinks, which are made from the same ceramic material. However at that time, sewer systems had not yet been widely developed, and there was not enough demand for ceramic sanitary ware. So, in 1918, the Morimura brothers decided to use the factory to produce porcelain tableware for their other business in Noritake. This factory also produced china for other companies such as Franciscan Ceramics in the 1950s and 60s. After a large quantity of products were manufactured and sent into the world by TTK, ceramic tableware operations came to a close in 1970. The company changed its name to TOTO and now is a top global supplier of sanitary ware.
So that brings me to the pattern, Gloria. Again, dredging the web, I found that my pattern was actually called Maytime. I can only guess that in the chaos of post-war manufacturing, my plates were stamped with the wrong mark. Be that as it may, this chance purchase helped me learn about a period of history that I would otherwise never have done.
