Clay container for mummified newspapers

Nishimura Yohei is is an artist whose primary concern is less with clay than with the process of firing and the way in which it affects different kinds of objects and materials. He interprets yakimono, the Japanese term for 'ceramics', in the broader and more literal sense of 'burned things'. Given his use of metal, stone, wood, paper and other substances, often without the inclusion of clay, his position in the world of Japanese ceramics is somewhat anomalous. The interests he has pursued since graduating as a student of sculpture from Tokyo University of Education have led some critics to call him a conceptual rather than a ceramic artist. He is, nevertheless, closely involved in the use of clay as a result of teaching ceramics at a school for visually impaired children in Chiba Prefecture to the east of Tokyo.