Technology | Shards of Ceramic Grenades in Japan

Humanity hasn’t created a material yet that they haven’t at least tried killing someone with. Nowhere is that truth more plain than on the banks of a stream in Kawagoe, Japan, where shards of the short-lived ceramic “Type 4” grenade remain as a haunting reminder of the desperation of World War II.

The Asahi Shimbun recently ran a feature story about the odd stopgap weapon. Masaaki Kidachi, a professor of archeology and ceramic engineering at the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, told the reporter that the grenades were produced in 1944. Japan lacked the metal to produce typical grenades, so they engineered the less-deadly ceramic casings for the weapons. Similar stories are common in war; Germany melted down church bells in World War I to make more bullets when they were faced with their own metal shortage.

Like the bells, the Type 4 grenades diverted material away from art and used it for destruction. Kilns that had created traditional Japanese pottery for centuries were conscripted into the war effort to make these jury-rigged weapons. Potters who trained for years to perfect their craft found themselves making these crude-looking, thoughtless casings by the hundreds.

The waste of it is memorialized on the site of an old factory in Kawagoe. Thousands of the objects were unceremoniously dumped on the bank of a nearby stream soon after the war ended. Although the objects are considered waste and are not likely to be designated as a protected cultural property, educators and researchers with the Grass Roots House Peace Museum use the shards as an opportunity to teach.

“Yasuto Fukui, a researcher with the (Grass Roots) museum, said he makes sure that children visiting the facility touch the grenade pieces.

“’When I tell them that these ceramics look like they have nothing to do with war, but they were actually built as weapons, the children take on a serious look,” he said. “I would like them to understand the horror that these weapons were once mass-produced in their country.’”

In addition to being a sought-after curiosity for amateur war historians, the Type 4 grenade was utilized recently in an art project; the grenades were reclaimed, in a way, by the rich pottery culture they sidelined during the war.

“One ceramic producer that cooperated with Japan’s war efforts is now stressing the importance of peace through a single-flower vase resembling a ceramic grenade.

“Fujihira Pottery in Kyoto created about 300 such vases in 2006, after Tetsuo Sekimoto, professor of 3-D formation at Kyoto University of Art & Design, proposed the project.

“’I suggested the idea of turning a former weapon into a flower vase as a prayer for peace,’ Sekimoto recalled.”

Bill Rodgers is a Contributing Editor at CFile.

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