MORIHIRO HASOKAWA

From Politics to Land: An Aesthete’s Silent Quest

Morihiro Hosokawa, born in 1938 in Tokyo, belongs to a prestigious lineage that has left its mark on Japanese history. A former Prime Minister (1993-1994), he was a central figure in Japanese political life for a long time before taking a radically different path: that of creation.

By leaving the political scene, Hosokawa did not withdraw from the world, but chose to explore a more intimate, more essential universe: ceramic art. This transition from the arena of power to the potter’s studio is not a rupture, but a continuity—the quest for harmony and meaning. Clay, which he has been shaping since the late 1990s, has become a language for him, a space for meditation and expression.

Inspired by the aesthetic of wabi-sabi, his pieces celebrate imperfection, sobriety, and the patina of time. Hosokawa creates simple, sometimes raw, forms imbued with a profound poetry. Each bowl, each vase seems to contain a fragment of silence, a trace of fleeting eternity.

From his first exhibitions in Kyoto and Tokyo to his presentations in international galleries, Morihiro Hosokawa’s work stands out for its sincerity and depth. It dialogues with Japanese tradition while bearing the mark of a unique experience: that of a man who has known the tumult of power and who, from now on, finds in matter and fire another way of acting on the world.