It is March 19th, 1971, and I am 23 years old. It is my first day in Japan. I descend the stairs at Haneda airport. I don’t know what to expect. I step off the bottom step, and something happens when my foot touches the tarmac. There is a click, a shift, a change. As my foot touches the ground in Japan, I sense that this moment is the beginning of something. A door opened in front of me as another closed behind me. It almost seems like a pair of rose-colored glasses have been placed over my eyes, revealing a wonderland I could not have imagined that would touch, stimulate, nourish, comfort, and energize me for the next half-century.

Going through the door of my new apartment in Sendai for the first time was like entering a toy house with its tatami floors, fusuma doors, and shoji-covered windows. My futon bed could be folded up in the closet during the day, and everything I owned could fit into my closets, leaving a spare, minimalist apartment. At night, I could pull my folded futon and blankets out of the closet, and during the day, I kept my legs warm in my kotatsu.

I found many surprises in my compact new kitchen, and my education began when I opened the wooden cabinet doors and found many ceramic styles from kilns all over Japan. Having been raised with fashionable Melmac plastic dishes, I was fascinated to find so much variety before me. There were finely milled wooden bowls coated in what I would learn to be urushi lacquer, the magical substance that the Japanese have been coating functional ware for 9000 years. I went on to discovered one point of ingenuity after another. One drawer contained urushi chopsticks and conventional silverware. Another drawer was filled with gadgets made from bamboo or wood, such as cutters, a whisk for making matcha, basting brushes, spoons, chopstick rests, and containers for spices shaped like gourds. Yet another held tiny plates for soy sauce, ceramic sake cups, sake flasks, coasters, and compact equipment for serving leaf tea.

Japan continued to reveal itself to me in magical ways during the days, months, and years that followed, and my sense of wonder never ceased. Years later, I founded a tour company to present Japan in a way that went deep beneath the surface and explored important nuances while still being easy to digest. I spent the next 30 years leading Westerners on tours of Japan. On every tour, I encountered the same difficulty: the sheer enormity of Japan’s history and culture was overwhelming, with each topic of discussion resulting from centuries (and sometimes even one or two millennia) of honing, refining, and developing.

It took me a long time to recognize an underlying attitude that connects so much of Japanese culture: the Takumi spirit, as a way of being based on intense focus, cooperation with nature, and a kind of humility that begins with learning through trial and error, constant innovation, uncompromising quality, and reaching for an elusive perfection just beyond one’s reach.

Understanding Takumi was especially relevant in understanding Japanese crafts. The often-untold energy of Takumi can be sensed by touching and using a master craft item, so in a way, you could say that the crafts actually “speak for themselves.” We see examples of this kind of commitment to excellence throughout the world, but I venture to say that few places can compare to Japan in scope, with 1,950 crafts within the culture.

After Japan entered the world stage in 1854 after centuries of self-imposed isolation, it surprised the West with stunningly beautiful Master Crafts of exceptional quality, creativity, skill level, and variety. The country was then recognized as a new center of inspiration for craftspeople worldwide. Japan entered the Industrial Revolution much later than its Western counterparts and has remained one of the world’s last great bastions of craft culture. However, the 300,000 Master Craft Artisans functioning here in 1980 are now a mostly aging group of about 50,000. By 2028, we estimate that there will be only about 20,000 left.

In 2025, master weavers, dyers, and embroiderers struggle to survive while machine-printed kimono from offshore are changing the market; lacquerware sales have dropped about 80% in the past 20 years; few young people are joining the ranks of now retiring legendary basket makers; electric nail gun-wielding young carpenters are no longer taught wood joinery. The list goes on. Also disappearing are crucial craft support specialists such as unique tool makers, dye blenders, brush makers, and stencil cutters.

Demand for crafts decreases as Japan’s craft-supporting cultural institutions decline. Buddhism is losing support as the public turns to the corporate funeral industry. Traditional paths such as tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and calligraphy cannot compete with the high-speed culture of on-line games and entertainment. Japanese company presidents no longer function as tea ceremony patrons, turning instead to such pastimes as golf. Master carpenters who build custom wooden houses face crushing competition from large factory-style construction companies. Traditional weavers and dyers are pushed out by the trend-creating advertising budgets of huge clothing brands. Younger Japanese are much less aware about the glories of their own culture than older generations and do not feel the urgency facing crafts today as much as the foreigners who have long admired, studied, and collected them. For example, lack of interest by domestic buyers has made Japanese contemporary ceramics one of the biggest bargains in the international collecting world.

Having had intimate experience with crafts and craft culture in Japan for my entire adult life, I found it difficult to watch it disappear so rapidly. I needed to do something, so I gathered like-minded friends together, and we created an organization called JapanCraft21, to make a difference by attempting to save Japan’s craft culture. We are now a functioning NPO in Japan with about 200 supporting members. Early on, we decided on a simple approach—to identify one problem at a time, create a suitable strategy for solving it, and implement it. For example, when we learned that young carpenters were no longer taught Japanese master joinery, we started a school to train them. When aging silk dyers in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s had no one to take over and learn some of the world's most rarefied techniques because they couldn't afford to support apprentices, we created a program to cover apprentice living expenses while they trained. We also created an international outreach program to promote Japanese crafts and culture online. The world must be told that this extraordinary powerhouse of Master craftsmanship, representing the pinnacle of achievement of the human hand in Japan and is a treasure belonging to everyone on earth, is about to disappear.

For our next project, rather than trying to identify the problems craftspeople face and their possible solutions, we launched a series of Japan Traditional Craft Revitalization Contests and let the contestants give us that information. We raised the necessary funds by significantly increasing our Japanese and international membership base. Then, we joined together with the Asia Society of Japan, a highly respected international cultural institution, as our co-sponsor. We just completed our 4th annual contest. The contests look for exceptional individuals with talent, track records, and passion for revitalizing crafts in the 21st century. The first-place Ronnie Prize winner is awarded ¥5 million in targeted funding to be applied toward realizing their projects.

We knew that it takes more than the ability to create beautiful things to revitalize a craft genre. Therefore, we decided to hold an idea contest instead of a craft contest. The winner must be involved with traditional Japanese craft methodology, have excellent fabrication skills, and have a clear strategy for revitalization. Their crafts must be relevant to our lives and thus promise future development. They must be functional crafts. Our judges pay particular attention to the design and scalability of the work.

We believe that simply awarding a prize is not enough to ensure the revitalization of a craft, so following the award ceremony, we focus our energy on supporting and promoting all of our contest finalists by making them part of our Craft Leader Program.

With a firm commitment to preserving Japan's rich cultural heritage and traditional crafts, JapanCraft21 continues to make significant progress in fostering a new generation of artisans and promoting the appreciation of these priceless crafts worldwide. One of our Craft Leader Program success stories began after choosing kimono designer and producer Asako Takemi as a finalist in 2021. The near meltdown of Kyoto’s once-booming kimono industry over the past twenty years has seen the disappearance of world-class dyers from the job market. Working with Takemi-san, we assisted her in creating an apprentice program where the rarefied skills of ten of Kyoto’s most highly skilled dyers, now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, who have volunteered to pass on their knowledge to four highly motivated dyers in their 30s. By choosing four apprentices who already have extensive dye work experience, the required training time is significantly reduced. By guaranteeing their living expenses, they are able to quit their unrelated day jobs to concentrate full time on training their way to mastership.

We continue to find ways of promoting Takemi-san’s designs for both kimono and Western clothes through exhibitions and personal introductions. Her work has been very well received, and the prospects of providing work for the four apprentices in training are excellent.

Future plans for JapanCraft21 include many more funded apprenticeships. We have four so far and hope to have fifteen within one year. We want to expand our training of young carpenters in advanced wood joinery. Our affiliate Gion Naito Komuten is now completing the construction of the first authentic wooden, nail-less machiya in ninety years, with eco-friendly modern conveniences. We are expanding our research on Japanese traditional crafts to include a credible analysis of the viability and sustainability of Japanese crafts made throughout the country. We hope our Craft Leaders group of thirty-six members will continue to grow, each sharing the spirit of hand craftsmanship appropriate for modern living.

The crafts of Japan are an international treasure that have enriched and inspired people around the world for over 150 years. This heritage belongs to all of us. This may be the last chance to ensure their future. We are hoping to show that even a small, private organization can leverage its resources and truly make a difference. Let us continue to remember that masterfully crafted functional works connect us both to nature and the people who made them and bring us great fulfillment through use. They are made with the human hand and heart and are the perfect answer to sterile, AI-produced goods. We hope that careers in master craftsmanship will once again hold great promise and appeal to talented young people. We also hope that our efforts will give attention to people who are geniuses with their hands and give them the proper attention and admiration they deserve.