Yamato jino ezukushi, Wazuku Iron Kettles: Boiling Hot Water for Tea. Photo: National Diet Library Digital Collections

Japan has had an active and time-honored history of iron casting, which has not been limited to producing kettles for the Way of Tea, but was also used in making a greater variety of items than one could imagine, from swords and cooking pots to hoes and innumerable others items. In the past, the iron used was called wazuku and was composed of “sand iron” or satetsu. This satetsu was quarried from the mountains and refined through smelting by craftsmen known as murage.