柳 詩郎
Shiro Yanagi
A young driving-force in Japanese Urushi industry.
Working among the most senior urushi forestry experts, is a very collected young artisan named Shiro Yanagi. Here is the story of Yanagi's journey as an urushi cultivator / forester.
Without "Urushi Kakite" (urushi hand-scaping cultivators),
there will be no urushi lacquer.
Without urushi, there will be no lacquer craft.
Japan home-grown urushi makes up of only 2%-3% of the industry's demand with extremely few artisans working in the industry. Master urushi cultivators like Mr. Tobita and Mr. Nidaira possess a wealth of knowledge that needs to be passed down in order to preserve their exquisite skills. We have witnessed in real-time that many important traditional crafts in Japan simply vanished for the same reason.
Why is it important to tell the story of young artisan
Shiro Yanagi?
Urushi lacquer is small-yield and high-priced. A tree has to be cultivated for 10 years under a lot of care before yielding urushi lacquer.
Urushi cultivators are not paid nearly enough for the time needed in maintaining the forest and harvesting the precious tree sap.
We need more young faces like Yanagi, who is driven by passion and courage, to find new break-throughs for this important craft of Japan.
WHY SUPPORT US?
BECAUSE most of you have never heard of Ibaraki Prefecture
and no one ever will unless YOU learn of its value and
be its global voice
Become the global voice for this little-known forestry town, please tell the story of Daigo urushi,
the most beautiful gift from mother nature.
Shiro Yanagi Urushi Forester . Maker
A Tale of Two Towns
Yanagi was born into a ceramist family in Kasama, a historic pottery town. While searching for his own Maker's path, he discovered lacquering crafts and raw lacquer cultivation industry from nearby Ibaraki Prefecture. Concerning about the decline of young artisans in the industry, he decided to become a urushi kakite (lacquer-scraping artisan) in the rural village of Daigo in 2017.
With access to 2 beautiful natural material resources, Yanagi wants to combine these gifts of nature and has since been exploring creation of CERAMICS LACQUERWARE.
Now he spends most of his time in cultivating Japanese urushi and maintaining the forest, while making pottery, doing wood carving and urushi applications.
He plans on owning his own plot of urushi forest like his beloved mentors and continue producing home-grown high-quality lacquer.
Yanagi working in Daigo as urushi forester, apprenticing under the wings of some of Japan's most reputable experts in urushi cultivation.
Lacquered Wood Craft
Lacquered Pottery
Hand-collected, the Sakarihen urushi, a premium lacquer is gathered during a prime three-weeks of the season when the trees yield the highest urushiol content.
USING Sakari-hen Urushi
We recommend using this product on final coat of kintsugi repair, lacquer staining (fuki-urushi), and maki-e painting. This product gives you the highest sheen and durability as compare to other urushi product.
Premium Ki-Urushi
Support a young Japanese artisan's non-conforming journey.
Simply for the love of nature and his passion to sustain the urushi heritage.
Mottainai of
Urushi wood
If I continue to scrape lacquer and cut down trees for a year, I can harvest over 100 lacquer trees annually. I felt a sense of loneliness and frustration seeing the lacquer trees I had carefully nurtured for 10 years being stacked up without any purpose.
I want to create products using lacquer trees.
*Mottainai is a common word referring to regretfulness of wasting resouces.
Japan's Reality
Yanagi started apprenticing in 2017 under the wings of Master Tobita. And in 2019, Watanabe moved to Daigo and joined the Regional Revitalization team. They are the 2 latest and youngest urushi foresters in Daigo. However, there are currently too few lacquer trees to hit higher target, and the slow-growth low-yield makes it challenging to survive solely through lacquer scraping.
This will remain a major challenge for Japan's urushi production industry. We will continue to explore revitalization opportunities and the first step is to raise awareness.
Do you love our story and this precious gift of nature? Send us your thoughts! SUPPORT Japan-grown urushi!
December 2024
Join us in Daigo and meet Shiro Yanagi!
December 2024, we will be hosting a unique travel workshop in Daigo, where you will have exclusive access to the urushi forest and meet with a few urushi foresters including Shiro Yanagi!
Not to mention, you'll get to experience kintsugi craft and lacquer craft at the source of urushi lacquer.