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Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park

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Shiga · Koka

34.8843°N, 136.0576°E

Shigaraki is one of the six ancient kilns of Japan and its clay is unusually coarse, full of feldspar that bursts through the surface as white grit and iron that scorches red in the fire. Big things are what it does best — water jars, garden pots, and the raccoon-dog figures that stand outside shops across Japan and were popularised after a 1951 imperial visit here.

The Ceramic Cultural Park is the town's public face: a hillside of woodland holding a ceramics museum, an industrial exhibition hall selling work from the local kilns, and residency studios where potters from Japan and abroad work for months at a time. The park itself is free. Around it, a marked walking route threads the kiln district, past brick chimneys and the sloping climbing kilns that are still fired.

Essential Information

Opening Hours

9:30 AM – 5:00 PM (last entry to the museum and exhibition hall 4:30 PM)

Closed: Closed Mondays (the following day if Monday is a public holiday) and over the new year

Entrance Fee

Free (park and industrial exhibition hall) | Ceramics museum special exhibitions priced individually

Best Season

Year-round | Early October for the Shigaraki ceramics festival

Visit Duration

2–3 hours including the kiln walking route

Getting There

Access Information

Shigaraki-cho Chokushi 2188-7, Koka City. About 20 minutes on foot from Shigaraki Station on the Shigaraki Kohgen Railway. Open 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM, with last entry to the ceramics museum and the industrial exhibition hall at 4:30 PM. Closed Mondays, opening the following day if Monday is a public holiday, and over the new year. Entry to the park and the industrial exhibition hall is free; the ceramics museum charges for special exhibitions, priced individually. The kiln walking route runs through the town from Shigaraki Station.

Insider Guide

Premium

**The park is free and the museum is not.** Entry to the grounds and to the industrial exhibition hall costs nothing; only the ceramics museum's exhibitions are ticketed. **Walk the kiln route in the town.** A marked circuit past chimneys, workshops and climbing kilns, most of it on ordinary streets and most of it free to look at. This is where Shigaraki actually is. **The clay is the point.** Coarse, feldspar-flecked, iron-rich. Shigaraki ware is prized for what the fire does to that body rather than for glaze, and unglazed pieces are the ones to look at first. **Tanuki figures are a twentieth-century thing.** The town made them before, but the boom came after Emperor Showa visited in 1951 and wrote a poem about them. **The Shigaraki Kohgen Railway is a single-carriage line.** Fourteen kilometres from Kibukawa through the hills, and it is a better approach than the road. **MIHO MUSEUM is 30 minutes away.** Same town, entirely different proposition, and the two make a full day if you have a car.

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