Japanese Craft Products in the Limelight

You are invited today to a pleasant stroll in Tokyo's modernistic town of Omotesando. It's Tokyo in miniature where stores of all sorts line up along the avenue leading to the Meiji Shrine.

One of them is the latest addition to a 300-year-old shop "Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten" home-officed in Nara, unique for its magnificent history dating back to the Yedo Period and the line of merchandise displayed. Today's episode has to do with this shop and how it has built its brilliant profile.

Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten is today a show window of Japanese craft products. The shop is visited today by customers from all walks of life, young and old, looking for some cool pieces of woodcraft for their daily use. 

Now, for daily use is the key point, folks. We are unaware how we are used to tools of plastic or other synthetic materials and so seldom do we turn to wood for raw material. One obvious reason for that is that wooden tools are often dearer than plastic variants.  Wood is for the Japanese, what brick is for the ancient Egyptian. The modern Japanese are reawakening to wood for its warmth and utility. 

Mr. Atsushi Nakagawa, the shop's 11th-generation owner, looks 5 years back to the Great East Japan Earthquake and comments:

"The disaster sure made us realize how vital it is for us craftsmen to review our concept of Japan's craftsmanship, its history and quality, and a need for utilizing woodcraft for every purpose. We have done our effort to make available tools and gears made of wood."
His shops, totaling 45 across the nation, feature not only woodcraft but all combinations of hemp fabrics for which the shop is famed for three centuries.

"Traditional craft must evolve to breathe in everyday life. We strive to refresh the old and blow life into Japan's craftsmanship", says Mr. Nakagawa.

News Source: Nikkei Shimbun