This is my first “editorial” style of article in awhile. While I did research these topics, I feel it’s a bit too casual to be called a proper article. This is especially true when I talk about Golden Week and Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989).

I picked up an antique at the Hasami porcelain festival! This is a roughly 80 year old ceramic casing for a Type 4 hand grenade. By far, the least attractive and most roughly finished items for sale at the festival, these come from a unique and desperate time in the nation’s history.

Hasami, like the surrounding towns of Mikawachi, Arita and Imari, became porcelain making centers when their lords returned from the Imjin War (1592-98) with Korean potters that would create fine porcelain for them. The works they created stood apart from other styles of pottery already being made elsewhere in Japan and during the Edo period (1603-1868) were popular exports to Europe thanks to the Dutch trade through Nagasaki.

Craftsman technically occupied one of the lowest rungs of Japanese society, lower than peasants but still better than shifty merchants. These potters worked specifically for their domain lord, so as I learned in Imari, they could be given a stipend and carry swords like samurai, though not possessing that title. Their production methods were highly secretive and their villages were guarded against outside snooping. With the 1868 Meiji restoration and the end of the domain system, their porcelain lost its exclusivity but could now be sold directly to a much broader clientele.

Jumping forward to World War II, Japan’s resources were stretched thin and to save on war materials the Imperial Japanese Navy turned to these potters to produce ceramic grenade casings. In this area, West Kyushu, kilns would hand-make casings and turn them over to the Sasebo Naval Arsenal for finishing. It would be filled with gunpowder, coated in rubber and given a simple fuse, like a cartoon bomb, which would be lit with a match. To get civilians proficient with grenade tossing, the National Resistance Manual recommended they play catch in their down time. Since baseball was already Japan’s national pastime, this wasn’t a big ask.

There was an innumerable volume of these porcelain grenades scattered around the country after the war. Many were buried, including complete ones, or discarded. Just three months ago on January 15, 2025, the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper shared photos of broken pottery grenades on the riverbed near Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, which become visible every fall and winter. These things are still out in the wild and popping up!

Locals got ingenious here in Sasebo, painting designs on the empty casings and selling them as souvenirs to American service members. The tradition continues to this day, though using new-make porcelain “grenades.” So finding a box of old ones for 500 yen ($3.50) each in Hasami was unexpected but not surprising. They recommended using it as a flower pot, which funnily enough, I already do with the other porcelain grenade casing I own.

Oh, and yesterday (when I wrote this) is April 29 or Showa Day, which is a national holiday because it was the Showa Emperor’s (Hirohito) birthday. Not every emperor’s birthday stays a holiday after his passing, but when one reigns for 63 years (1926-1989) and it’s a holiday the whole time, I think it becomes institutionalized by default. It’s also in a special position as the first holiday in a string of holidays called “Golden Week” where the nation collectively takes the week off to sit in traffic together. Why ruin a good thing? The holiday actually gets a touch weirder because after his death it was renamed Green Day, as the emperor was passionate about nature and a trained marine biologist. This allowed the holiday to stay while also distancing it from the controversial figure it honors.

In 2007, it became Showa Day to reflect on this long and tumultuous period of Japanese history. Since the nation wasn’t willing to be deprived of Green Day, that day was moved to May 4 to further fill out Golden Week. Technically, the Showa Emperor now has two holidays in his honor. Coming from the country that uses three writing systems simultaneously, I would expect nothing less.