When it comes to revitalizing regional craft industries in Japan, Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten’s projects are among the nation’s most successful. For the past 15 years, the company, itself a manufacturer of traditional Japanese hemp textiles since 1716, has supported craftspeople through consulting, design collaborations and distribution. Its online store and 60 shops nationwide offer numerous popular brands and products — a list that just keeps on growing.
As o-Bon, Japan’s August holiday to commemorate ancestors and deceased loved ones approaches, On: Design looks at Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten’s latest initiatives that promote ceremonial craft industries and reimagine traditional rituals for contemporary lifestyles.
A glowing lantern industry
This month, o-Bon chōchin (paper lantern) artisans Shiraki Kougei announced the release of Torchin, a series of portable, contemporary lamps crafted under the consulting and production advice of Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten and in collaboration with design unit Tent.
Based in Fukuoka Prefecture, Shiraki Kougei specializes in the regional Yame style of o-Bon chōchin — washi paper-covered lanterns with hibukuro (firebox) frames of spiraled split-bamboo strips or wire. The new Torchin series translates five simple geometric shapes — circle, oblong, oval, square and bell — into three-dimensional firebox forms that echo Yame ellipsoids. A simple cylindrical beechwood stand transforms each Torchin into a table lamp that can also be held like a torch.
Nothing interrupts Tent’s contemporary design of clean lines. The shade’s translucent washi is left white, a touch-sensitive round button is positioned to neatly cover the firebox opening at the top and, as a rechargeable lamp with a running time of up to 35 hours on its dimmest setting, no unsightly cable is needed when in use.
Though modern in aesthetic, every Torchin is still made using time-honored Yame chōchin techniques. Single lengths of wire are hand-wound into frames and attached to vertical supporting threads before locally produced kōzo fiber washi paper is manually pasted on top and meticulously trimmed segment by segment. The craftspeople are predominantly young, hired and trained from scratch as part of Shiraki Kougei’s efforts to help revive the Yame lantern industry, which it says has declined from 29 companies in 2005 to just 11 in 2024.
Shiraki Kougei has also launched Tocco, o-Bon versions of Torchin, in collaboration with Buddhist altar purveyors Yagiken. Like traditional Yame lanterns, these are delicately hand-painted with Buddhist motifs of cherry blossom, lotus blooms and quaint depictions of typical o-Bon decorations — a horse made from a cucumber and an eggplant ox.
For spirits in the sky
While Torchin broaches the chōchin industry’s need for a different market, another Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten project addresses the decline of traditional o-Bon rituals in today’s homes. Since preparing decorations and family altar offerings can be challenging for those with busy lifestyles and small, urban living spaces, it has released an Obon Decorations set designed to represent two key rituals of the event in a compact interior decor form.
The set includes models of a horse to swiftly bring ancestors to Earth for o-Bon and an ox to return them to their celestial realm at a leisurely pace. Traditionally, these spirit creatures are made from fresh vegetables — a cucumber for the horse and an eggplant for the ox, each with amusingly spindly chopstick legs. Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten’s set, however, is hand-carved by artisans in shina wood, a material notably used for Buddhist altar carvings, and is designed to be reused each year.
The figures are made in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, a region known for its distinctively blocky and brightly painted Yawata-uma horse carvings. For the Obon Decorations Set, artisans created a minimalist, plain wood version of the Yawata-uma sporting a satin-finish golden saddle and a few brushstrokes of white patterning to match its blonde straw mane and tail. The ox is of the same style, and the set is completed by a handcrafted hemp replica of an orange Physalis (Chinese lantern) calyx, an o-Bon symbol representing a guiding light that is customarily created by small bonfires lit by families to welcome spirits home and then see them off at the end of the celebration.
