If you are looking for the meaning of the marking on your favorite Kutani piece, at first you should have a quick look on the following documents.

• Basic rules for Japanese Marking
• Basic rules for English Marking
• Type of Marking

Once you have understood these basic rules, you may want to know more and find out if your marking already exist in the Kutani database.

If you do not know anything, but at least can read the kanji in the proper direction (not upside down!), you can select "search by type of marking". You will then get a list of all corresponding marking available in the database. It can be quite long for the list "by kanji marking".

The database provides several search capabilities:

• by type of marking :
• by Kanji :
  
  This search by Kanji has a particular capability. Just select few kanji you can recognize and go for search. The database will give you all the marking which contain the selected Kanji. It’s very powerful but you have to select kanji which are not generic such 九,谷,製,造 otherwise you may just get most of the database.
• by kiln/trading
• by Potter Family Name
• by Potter Pen Name
  
  If you already know the name of the potter, the kiln or the trading shop, you can select "search by potter, kiln/trading". You will then get the list of all marking available in the database for the requested name. This is interesting to check various marking of the same potter or kiln.