This textile design company that calls upon the skills of traditional weavers and dyers is now being celebrated in a book of photographs. Published in 2021, the book Nuno, Visionary Japanese Textiles showcases over 300 creations from the company Nuno (‘textiles’ in Japanese). Founded in 1984 by designers Junichi Arai and Reiko Sudo, it built up a…

Ukiyo-e gradually became the dominant Japanese art form following a devastating fire that was also the birth of Tokyo. The West underwent a similar transformation almost simultaneously According to legend, sometime during the first half of the fifteenth century in Edo, Japan, a young girl came into possession of a kimono. This would not be…

She is Mazda Colour and Trim Designer Mai Utagawa. He is ikebana artist Mario Hirama. In a perfectly proportioned, uncluttered corner room in a post-and-beam house built with wood joinery in the hills of Kobe, Japan, the two have come together to explore the concept of space as they create an ikebana flower arrangement. Soft…

This solo exhibition commemorates Honma Hideaki’s 35th year as an artist. Born in 1959, Honma is his generation’s leading sculptor in bamboo art. Honma Hideaki’s uncle, the pioneering bamboo artist Honma Kazuaki, had no children, so he adopted Hideaki (who loved to draw and work with his hands) as his son, student, and heir to the family’s…

Japanese candles are not made of beeswax or paraffin like Western candles; they are made from a unique fat pressed from the seeds of a tree that today is grown mainly in Kyushu and on Shikoku. Japanese candles — called warōsoku —are different in almost every way, including how the wick is constructed and how…

The West was quick to integrate Japanese techniques into its culture, adapting it to its own worldview, while the Japanese are still reserved about integrating the West unquestioningly. “Homeward bound! / Beneath the light of the moon / the Ohara maidens / rest their heavy burden / in the shade of flowers.” This is the…

If like me you have an appetite for exploring all things related to Japanese design and crafts, Irwin Wong’s introduction to Handmade in Japan will surely prompt you to investigate further. Wong is a well-known commercial photographer based in Tokyo, so on the book’s announcement I knew it would be filled with evocative images of Japan and…

Japanese ceramics are highly sought-after by pottery lovers everywhere. One of the many reasons for their enduring popularity is the sheer variety of ceramic art in Japan, with almost every region producing their own specialized works (see our A-Z guide for more). Kutaniware, or kutaniyaki, is one of the most fascinating. What’s so special about…

Textiles artist Maki Aizawa’s original line of kimono-inspired jackets are featured in the prestigious Santa Fe International Folk Arts festival this month. She’s humbled to be sharing kimono-making techniques which she applies to the modern-designed jackets, her way of giving visibility to what she describes as “a dying art form.” But despite designing and sewing…

From the February 2022 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. About 400 years ago, the first sparks of a new art-form could have been seen just five minutes’ walk from where I now sit writing in Kyoto. The date was almost certainly 1603, though it is not clearly recorded. It was probably a blazing…