The pattern is cut by letting a blade chatter against a turning pot. The kilns of Koishiwara run along a road through the hills, and in the workshops you can watch tobikanna and hakeme being applied. Tobikanna works by holding a springy blade against the pot while the wheel turns: the blade skips, and the marks it leaves come in a continuous chain. Nobody is carving them one at a time, which is what most visitors assume at first.

Hakeme is white slip drawn on with a coarse brush, again against a turning pot, so the streaks it leaves are also a function of speed. In both, the speed of rotation determines the spacing of the pattern, so the decoration is a record of how fast the wheel was moving at that moment. Asakura is about forty minutes away by car, notices seeking successors are posted at the kilns, and the winters are cold in the way mountain valleys are cold. The same tool at a different speed produces a different count of marks, which is why the fineness of the pattern varies slightly from kiln to kiln, and why people who know the district can often name the workshop.

A technique in which speed decides the pattern cannot be corrected afterwards. Once the blade is engaged the marks run on continuously; stop partway and the interruption stays visible, and the only remedy is to shave the surface back and begin again. Everything is settled inside one revolution of the wheel, and the decision is made before it can be examined. That is the condition these potters work under, several hundred times a day, without any of it being described in the workshop as difficult.