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Visit the workplaces of Japan’s artisans while staying at home

Apr 20, 2020 | News On Japan

Apr 20, 2020 (Japan Times) - For traditional Japanese crafts and their contemporary iterations, On: Design is taking a look at four Japanese channels that introduce some of the nation’s artisans through visually stunning shorts.

As a project by the Tokyo Metropolitan Small and Medium Enterprise Support Center, Tokyo Teshigoto has been focusing on rejuvenating interest in artisanal crafts by promoting contemporary lifestyle products. Its multilingual website (in Japanese, English and Chinese) offers information and photos of 57 artisans and their work, in the fields of textile printing and dyeing, rattan weaving, lacquerware, glassware and metalware, while a dedicated movie page features individual clips about each craftsperson. Often whimsically named, the shorts include personal comments from the artisans (subtitled in English), closeups of their designs and footage of their crafting processes.

In “Story 15: I cannot carve further than this” (featured above), Masaaki Yamada of Yamada Glassworks showcases his Mizutama-mangekyo — colorful kiriko-cut glass tumblers cut with oval motifs, a design that is notoriously difficult to carve with such precision. Why do it? “Why not,” Yamada says, “It’s cool.”

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