DESIGN

Kokontozai: KASHIYUKA’s Shop of Japanese Arts and Crafts — Tsuzura

『カーサブルータス』2024年6月号より

June 6, 2024 | 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. Here she visits the area of Tokyo called Nihonbashi-Ningyōcho, a place made famous by its active trade in fine kimono. She encountered an artisan there known for the tsuzura, the beautiful box built expressly for storing kimono, which he crafts by hand.

“And so it was Tokyo where the costume storage box that protects the kimono from humidity and insects was born,” observes our shopkeeper KASHIYUKA, who visited Iwai Tsuzura-ten, Tokyo’s sole maker of tsuzura,. The business began some 160 years ago as a basket-making shop, and she’s with Mr. Iwai Ryoichi, the fourth-generation head of the shop since establishing itself as a maker of fine clothing storage boxes.

For a few years now I’ve been getting into wearing the kimono left to me by my grandmother. When it appeared I’d be needing a special cabinet to store them I began thinking about the traditional tsuzura.

“Tsuzura is a box with a lid, made of a woven bamboo basket covered with a pasted layer of washi paper. It’s finished with kakishibu (persimmon tannin) and urushi lacquer.

“It was invented sometime back in the Genroku era [1688-1704] by a merchant in olden Tokyo known as Tsuzuraya Jinbei. From the late nineteenth-century Meiji era his idea was adopted by people of all classes as the proper storage for their fine kimono,” says Mr. Iwai Ryoichi, fourth-generation head of the shop, Iwai Tsuzura-ten, whose store resides in the Amazake Yokocho section of Tokyo’s Nihonbashi-Ningyōcho neighborhood.

Purchase No. 73【Tsuzura】Safekeeping for precious clothing, born of old Tokyo, crafted of bamboo, paper, and lacquer.

“After the war there were as many as 250 tsuzura makers in this eastern region of Japan, but with the rise of Western clothing, need for them dwindled, and now we’re the only tsuzura maker in Tokyo. But lately there’s been a boom among younger Japanese people favoring kimono, and that has brought a rise in interest.”

Indeed, room sizes in today’s houses and apartments make them an easy fit. Washi and bamboo absorb humidity, the kimono’s primary enemy. At the same time, urushi is a substance that “breathes”, and so airflow is never impeded.