Soon after, he proposed to his childhood friend Naoko, now 86, and they moved to Goiânia, a city in central Brazil, far away from São Paulo’s heightened political climate. The couple made their home on an abandoned ranch, where Yuasa built his first stone kiln and learned through trial and error. His early works were mostly terra cotta, but later he began incorporating glazes with unconventional elements like iron filings and rice husks. After Yuasa staged his first show in Goiânia in 1968, he and Naoko eventually returned to São Paulo, where he gained gallery representation and earned praise from one Brazilian newspaper for single-handedly “renewing the forms of ceramics.” Exhibits in the 1975 and 1977 São Paulo Biennials followed.