Three-tiered Jūbako (Food Box)

This three-tiered glazed porcelain jūbako (重箱, stacked food box) is a substantial functional object that places Kawai Kanjirō's Mingei vocabulary in conversation with one of the most ritually charged forms of Japanese domestic ceramic production — the multi-tiered lacquered or ceramic box that holds the prepared foods of the New Year (osechi-ryōri) and other formal household occasions. The piece consists of three nesting compartments of identical footprint that stack one above the other, surmounted by a flat lid, and is finished in a single coherent glaze treatment across all four elements so that the assembled tower reads as a unified sculptural object. The porcelain body — rather than Kawai's more characteristic stoneware — and the deliberate evocation of the formal New Year jūbako tradition mark this as a more elaborated piece than the daily-use bottles and dishes of his Mingei middle period, and align it with his last fifteen years of work, in which he repeatedly tested the boundary between domestic function and sculptural ambition. The piece is held in the Honolulu Museum of Art (accession 6351.1a-d, the suffix indicating the four separately catalogued stacked components) and has been released to the public domain under a Creative Commons CC0 dedication.