The sound of clay being pounded carries down the whole valley. At Onta the clay is crushed by karausu, water-driven trip hammers fed by the stream, and their knocking is audible everywhere in the settlement, all day and all night. The mechanism uses the weight of collected water to raise the pestle and let it fall, so the clay is broken down slowly and without electricity, at a rate the stream decides.

There are about ten kilns in the settlement, and the number has not changed for a long time. The techniques are passed within families under an inheritance practice that keeps them in the household, so it is not a place an outsider can move to and begin working, whatever their skill. You can watch pots being cut with the springing blade of tobikanna. Hita's town centre is about thirty minutes away by car, and the settlement has stayed small. Because pounding the clay takes as long as it takes, the quantity that can be made is limited before anyone touches a wheel.

This is a district that chose not to grow, and wrote the choice into its rules. Keeping the craft within families means the number of kilns does not increase; letting the trip hammers set the supply of clay means output does not increase either — two separate arrangements pointing the same way, which is unlikely to be accidental. The tempo of the sound in the valley is, quite literally, the ceiling on what Onta produces in a year, and it has not been raised. A visitor hears atmosphere; what is actually being heard is a production limit, running at the speed of a stream.