With space and extreme heat experienced this past weekend by Hakuto 1, a lunar lander developed by Tokyo-based venture company 'ispace' hoping to becoming the world's first of its kind and algae developed by a Japanese research team for extracting gold from hot spring water, thoughts now turn to older innovations that once made a pottery town on the southern Aichi coast of central Japan the very epicenter of modern innovation, from the surface-scratched ceramics and the pottery kilns of Tokoname which fired ceramics on the incline of a slope.

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