DESIGN

Kokontozai: KASHIYUKA’s Shop of Japanese Arts and Crafts — Letterpress Business Cards

『カーサブルータス』2023年8月号より

August 8, 2023 | Design | KASHIYUKA’s Shop of Japanese Arts and Crafts | photo_Keisuke Fukamizu hair & make-up_Masako Osuga editor_Masae Wako　translation_ Mika Yoshida & David G. Imber

Searching all of Japan for handcrafted items that express its heart and soul, our proprietor, KASHIYUKA, presents things that bring a bit of luxury to everyday life. For this trip she went to Yokohama, in Kanagawa prefecture, to visit a letterpress printing studio, where type is cast in metal and assembled into plates to make printed materials.

Founded 104 years ago, Tsukiji Katsuji in Yokohama does letterpress printing as well as casting the metal type used in the process. “This is where the typeface and font sizes are chosen,” explains KASHIYUKA in a room housing a vast amount of type. She printed this business card herself.

About the time I completed the first tour of all of Japan’s prefectures, it occurred to me that there was something I wanted. It was a business card to greet the various workshops and craftspeople I meet. After searching around I decided that if I were to make one of my own, it should use letterpress printing. What I find so appealing about letterpress is that when you run your fingers over the print you can feel its texture, investing the printed object with a sense of presence.

Purchase No. 63【Letterpress Business Cards】Hand-printed business cards made using metal type.

“Letterpress, the printing method in which plates set with individual pieces of type are used, has been popular in Japan since the late 19th century, when it was mainly for printing newspapers. As opposed to woodblock printing, which uses a plate into which letters are carved, the individual letters in letterpress are set one by one, which gives it the feature of bringing out even the finest lines beautifully,” says Mr. Hiraku Kiichi, president of Tsukiji Katsuji in Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture.
Since its founding in 1919, this is one of the few remaining companies to cast its own type from scratch. The workshop has an archive room in which all the styles are stored, and in which the appropriate typefaces and sizes are selected, one by one.