Traditional Crafts
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A Company That Lasted 1,400 Years Nearly Went Bankrupt. Why? The Rise and Fall of Kongo Gumi, the World’s Oldest Company
Kongo Gumi has been building temples since 578 AD. It survived wars, typhoons, changes of regime and the suicide of one of its heads. What finally pushed it to the brink of bankruptcy was something mundane: jobs taken on for ¥500 million that cost ¥600 million to build.
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Japanese Ikebana Is Obsessed With Vases. Why Did a Grand Master Arrange Flowers in Rubber Boots? Atsunobu Katagiri’s Eight Months in Fukushima
In Japanese ikebana, there are rules even for the angle of a single flower. When the grand master of an ikebana school walked onto a coast devastated by a nuclear disaster, with no vase and no room to display flowers in, what was left of those rules?
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After Stainless Steel Took the Market, How Did a 700-Year-Old Blade-Forging Town Survive? The Story of Takefu Knife Village in Fukui
In 1993, ten family workshops in Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, that forged and sharpened blades each took on about 30 million yen in debt, shut down their own workshops, and moved into a single building that anyone could walk into and watch. More than 30 years later, it has become a…
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Why Is the Lacquer Used to Restore National Treasures Ending Up on Skateboards? A Century-Old Kyoto Lacquer House Finds a New Path for Japanese Urushi
A long-established Kyoto shop that supplies natural lacquer for restoring Nikko Toshogu Shrine is coating skateboards, surfboards and bicycles with it. It isn’t a gimmick. It’s a new path for Japanese lacquer after demand fell by 90%.