The museum exists because one man could not stop collecting. Eiichi Ataka, chairman of the Ataka & Co. trading company, spent decades assembling what became the Ataka Collection: 965 pieces of East Asian ceramics, including 793 Korean works spanning the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties, 144 Chinese ceramics, and additional Vietnamese and other Asian pieces. Ataka's eye was extraordinary -- meticulous, passionate, and deeply informed. When his trading company encountered financial difficulties in the 1970s, the collection's fate hung in the balance. Twenty-one companies of the Sumitomo Group stepped in, purchasing the entire collection and donating it to the city of Osaka. The Museum of Oriental Ceramics opened in November 1982 specifically to house this gift, situated in the quiet greenery near Nakanoshima Park. The Ataka Collection remains the museum's foundation, one of the finest assemblages of East Asian ceramics ever brought together by a single collector.

The museum's collection now numbers approximately 5,700 pieces, but two objects carry the highest honor the Japanese government bestows on cultural artifacts. The Yuteki Tenmoku tea bowl, with its silvery spots suffusing both interior and exterior surfaces, displays a mystical beauty that has captivated collectors for eight centuries. The second National Treasure is a celadon vase with iron brown spots -- a piece whose seemingly accidental decorative pattern was actually the result of deliberate and extraordinarily controlled kiln work. Beyond these two treasures, thirteen objects hold the designation of Important Cultural Property, including stoneware with sgraffito peony decoration, porcelain with carved lotus designs, celadon with phoenix handles, and blue-and-white pieces depicting fish among water plants. Each piece represents a pinnacle of its tradition, selected from centuries of ceramic production across China, Korea, and Japan.

While the Chinese ceramics draw the headlines, the museum's Korean holdings are equally significant. The Ataka Collection's 793 Korean pieces span roughly a thousand years of production, from the elegant celadons of the Goryeo dynasty -- prized for their jade-green color achieved through iron oxide glazes fired in reduction kilns -- through the more robust and varied wares of the Joseon period. The museum's Korean collection was further strengthened by the addition of the Rhee Byung-Chang Collection, a major group of Korean ceramics that deepened the museum's ability to tell the full story of Korean ceramic art. Together, these holdings make Osaka one of the most important repositories of Korean ceramic heritage outside the Korean peninsula, a fact that reflects both the deep historical trade connections across the Sea of Japan and the particular passions of the collectors who brought these works together.

Ceramics demand a particular kind of attention. Unlike paintings, which reveal themselves in a single plane, a ceramic piece changes with every degree of rotation, every shift in light. The museum's galleries are designed around this reality, with specialized lighting systems that bring out the subtle variations in glaze color, the depth of celadon greens, the flash of iron spots, the translucency of fine porcelain. The building itself sits in the quiet precinct of Nakanoshima, a sandbank island between the Dojima and Tosabori rivers that has served as Osaka's cultural and administrative center since the Edo period. The museum has published extensively on its collection, with recent titles including studies of celadon ware, the Rhee Byung-Chang Korean ceramics, tenmoku black glaze, and Song dynasty aesthetics. More than 3,700 of the museum's works have been loaned to institutions worldwide, extending Osaka's ceramic riches far beyond the island where they reside.