A Visit with Akira Watanabe Edo Sashimono Craftsman

This past week I had the pleasure of visiting the workshop of Akira Watanabe, an Edo Sashimono craftsman. I have come across Watanabe-san’s work online a few times, and after arriving in Tokyo a few weeks ago I got wind that there would be a small Sashimono exhibition nearby. So my wife and I ventured off to see the exhibit, and it was there that we met Watanabe-san. Together we chatted with Watanabe-san and after a bit of prodding he agreed to let us visit his workshop.

When we arrived at Watanabe-san’s address, the first room we entered was a small gallery he has set up on the street level of his home. His work is incredibly well made and refined. The details are so finely crafted and the joinery so clean that it’s mind-boggling to learn that aside from general lumber milling all the joinery and detail work is done by hand.

Watanabe-san is a third generation Sashimono craftsmen, and his father and Grandfather before him all worked out of the same workshop. He had a great photo hanging on the wall from when he must have been a teenager, showing all three of them working side by side. His main work area is a small space upstairs where he showed us his tools and told us a bit about his process. Below you can see a cushion on the floor where he sits within easy reach of his hand planes and drawers full of other tools behind him.

Here is Watanabe-san demonstrating how he cuts a set of hidden mitered dovetails:

He started cutting the angle for these dovetails without any reference line to follow, so I had to ask how he knew where to cut. He replied that after cutting so many of these over the past several decades he just knows the angle by heart. That’s some serious skill!  Pretty much any Edo Sashimono case piece is held together by hidden mitered dovetails. Of course none of it is visible aside from a clean miter, a detail that speaks to the level of hidden craftsmanship that goes into these pieces.

Watanabe-san’s bench is a nice wide slab of maple with a few simple stops dovetailed into the end. Using his body to hold work against the stops instead of clamps or a vice really allows for fluid work and makes it easy to quickly adjust the position of whatever he is working on.

Many Edo Sashimono furniture pieces use highly figured woods on the show face, including doors, drawer fronts and all exposed edges. In the photo and video below Watanabe-san is planing down some edging of highly figured Tamo ash.

Here Watanabe-san is using a jointer plane to clean the face of the edging:

No discussion would be complete without talking about tools. Here are Watanabe-san’s well loved and well used chisels, some of which come from a local blacksmith working nearby in Tokyo:

He also has a huge collection of kanna 鉋 (Japanese handplanes) including a few boxes of tiny hand planes called mameganna 豆鉋. I’m no expert on Japanese translation but one meaning for Mame 豆 is bean, so I think of them as “little bean planes”.

I love these little planes, and was curious how handy they can really be. In my own work I have never really had any occasion to use such small planes. But Watanabe-san explained that he uses them all the time to shape curves and to ease edges. They are cool little tools:

Here’s one more photo showing boxes of mameganna 豆鉋, and a example piece showing hidden mitered dovetails, all cut by hand:

Watanabe-san was pretty honest when talking about the business of Edo Sashimono.  It’s a tough business, and no one is getting rich doing this. He mentioned that 50 years ago, in the same shop where he works today, there were 5 craftsmen employed making furniture full-time. But tastes change and over time traditional furniture has fallen out of use in favor of more modern styles. Watanabe-san also mentioned that apartments and houses in Tokyo have also gotten smaller, so many people simply don’t have space for larger pieces of furniture. A lot of Edo Sashimono craftsmen have tried to weather the changes by making smaller household items such as serving trays and tissue boxes. But these small items still demand a high price due to the craftsmanship involved, and so they are still difficult to sell.

Watanabe-san has been able to survive due to the fact that his family has been in the business for so long. He has a reputation and customers who follow his work. That being said he is still one of only a handful of Edo Sashimono craftsman left.

The future seems a bit grim, and I ventured to ask how he felt about it. Surprizingly he answered that he wasn’t worried about the craft dying. Even though it’s getting harder and harder to carry on a full time business, many hobbyist woodworkers are taking an interest in the craft, learning the techniques and making work on their own. There are also many exhibitions and shops that specialize in showcasing traditional work like Edo Sashimono, which helps to educate the public and build interest.

Finally our conversation wouldn’t have been complete without a nice cup of tea:

Followed by a some really tasty katsudon… the food in Japan is too good:

I want to say that I owe a huge debt to my wife for translation help. I’ve been working to learn Japanese but have a long ways to go, and the connections and conversations I’ve had so far here in Japan probably wouldn’t have happened without her.

Well that’s all for now, thanks for visiting and stay tuned for more posts from here in Japan!