japanese potters: shigeki sakamoto

The tiny hamlet of Onta sits deep in a forest about ten miles by narrow road from the nearest country highway. Eleven families have been making traditional folk pottery here for the past 300 years -- the Japanese government has declared the entire village a "Living National Treasure." Mr. Sakamoto has been working for some sixty years in the same room, adorned only by a calligraphy that aptly sums up Japanese functional art: "Beauty. Use." You can't have one without the other.