A person who created speakers for his city.

A pottery artist based in Asahi city, Chiba Prefecture, Japan – Yasushi Kondo – has been developing a pottery speaker to empower the people in the city when it was damaged by tsunami during the 2011 Tohoku-Iko Earthquake in the eastern part of Japan.

Kondo has been using the local soil “Kabeto” around the Byōbugaura cliff in the same prefecture, as the premier material for his potteries, especially the speaker. He’s been working on the speaker developments through many processes such as shape adjustment, electrical work, unit installation, duct installation adjustment, etc., since before the 2011 tsunami where his studio was half-damaged. Now the four types of pottery speaker have no extra reverberation and produce clear resonance where the quality of the sound has been improved.

The name of the speaker is “Amano Iwabue” after the local’s folktale “Ama no Iwabue Legend”, it means the heaven’s stone that makes a humming sound, to remind the people when the storm is coming.

The crowdfunding to produce the Amano Iwabue speakers in Makuake official website has been successful and Kondo will start selling the approximately this year. The selling price is estimated to be about 30,000 to 70,000 yen for the speaker and about 7,000 yen for a soundboard.

As an industrial designer of a major electronics manufacturer in the past, Kondo has been an enthusiast of pottery and audio speaker for a long time. So when he returned to his hometown in Asahi city in 1989, he then decided to open his own pottery studio in 1993, known as Kaiongama Atelier or Kaion Kiln and opened pottery classes for the locals.

According Tokyo NP, Yasushi Kondo unveiled the pottery speaker at an exhibition held in Chōshi City in November 2009, he gained great reputation and continued his research on his invention since then. He won the Grand Prix at the “Nippon Treasure Project” Chiba Tournament in the same year.

For more information about Yasushi Kondo and Amano Iwabue of Kaiongama ceramic speaker: Website kaiongama.sakura.ne.jp – kaionjuku.squares.net – Facebook Yasushi Kondo (private, I guess) – Instagram @kaiongama – Makuake Crowdfunding Awano Iwabue (closed this weekend)

Sources: Sounds of the sea: East Japan tsunami survivor develops ceramic speakers from marine clay — Makuake activity report-improvement of “Amano Iwabue smartphone stationary type” — <10 years after the earthquake> Miraculous pottery speaker from Asahi, Mr. Yasushi Kondo, a potter — Makuake Crowdfunding of Amano Iwabue .