Japan's Craftspeople

The Future of Japan's Master Artisans

Throughout its history and well into modern times, Japan has been renowned for its attention to detail, not only in its catering to individuals within everyday life, but also in its artistry when creating products. Within Japan, there is a sector of traditional artists called shokunin, or craftspeople, who specialize in and are devoted to their specific region of art. One notable example of this is shokuhin sampuru, PVC food display samples made for restaurants that are intricately painted and modeled to look just like, if not better than the food served. Japan takes this even further, often taking its simplest of items and products, and extending and refining their potential in order to make it the best that it can be, such as with 94-year-old chef Jiro Ono who has gained acclaim in the past from serving exceptional sushi to Barack Obama and Abe Shinzo. Japan's population is further aging, and supplemented by the fact these craftspeople have spent most of their lives fine-tuning their skills to make their art, a fear has come about that these works will soon be lost without proper successors. Takeshi Tashiro, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics solidifies this decline, remarking that the “output of traditional craftsmanship has declined from 540bn yen ($4.8bn) in 1983 to 96bn yen in 2016, according to the Association for the Promotion of Traditional Craft Industries”. However, there has come about an insurgence of younger shokunin that have begun to carry the torch, adapting their artistry for modern times, such as with Yuya Hasegawa, who has elevated shoe-shining to fit the contemporary market. In a similar manner, Yozo Otsuki, whose parents once owned a jazz coffee shop, now runs Kurasu, a specialty coffee shop in Kyoto that sells artisanal coffee and coffee equipment. With this new group of shokunin, artists and business owners alike are widening their markets, selling their products overseas, and even participating in collaborations to entice the public, and to keep the crafts of shokunin alive.