Meiji Era craftsmen lived in a world of divergent influences: Galle glass, French bronzes, Art Nouveau designs, Chinese celadons and tenmoku tea bowls, as well as their own traditions, whose product was at the crossroads between being an industrial export or the aesthetic vision of the individual artist.

Exposure of ceramic art at international expos, such as the one in Paris in 1900, changed the way the government viewed the ceramic world. It concluded that antiquated designs couldn't match the new Art Nouveau motifs that were winning praise in Europe. Works by two highly individual potters, Seifu Yohei III and Kozan Miyagawa I, were praised and awarded prizes there. That acclaim set the wheel in motion, allowing a potter to shed his industrial logic and begin to shape a whole other world: that of the studio potter.

These Meiji potters were taught the importance of individual design as well as form from these overseas influences, and the government started to accept their works for official exhibitions beginning in Taisho 2 (1913) with the Noten, a design and applied arts exhibition sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce.