Attractiveness of Japanese traditional industrial arts and crafts

 Japanese traditional arts and crafts are usually very expensive. However, it also means they have the values equivalent to the price shows.

There are many craftsmen who use their own skills to produce those crafts – most of the time each product is hand-made, not using machines like mass-production. There are various skills of making arts and crafts, such as porcelain making, weaving on a loom, fabrics dyeing, chasing, and so many others. Each process of making arts and crafts is manufactured by master craftsmen who have gone through years of apprenticeship and practice, and the products are inspired by those craftsmen.

Of course, all processes are operated based on craftsmen’s years of experience and by their hands. So each product has subtle differences from each other, for example, finish tone in color and in shape. It means each product has its unique “face”. These are the very attractiveness of Japanese traditional arts and crafts.

 However, it is also true that they are so valuable that it takes long time to make a hand-made product by those expert craftsmen, and thus those products are expensive.

In the mean time, there is a market where many people prefer products that are made under mass- production, which are much economical. You can easily find and buy those products all over the world. However, you can say this is the other market for the products of day-to-day use like consumables.

Value in uniqueness is the key word for those arts and crafts, which are different from ordinary mass-manufactured products that totally look the same from each other.

We aim for introducing the true values of hand-made Japanese traditional arts and craft around all over the world.

Written by Yabuuchi