Kintsugi is a technique used to repair objects using lacquer and gold. In the mountain village of Yamanaka Onsen, Ishikawa Prefecture, a kintsugi workshop is inundated with repair requests from all over the country. The items include a teacup bought on a honeymoon and a mug used for 40 years. All are imbued with special meaning. For some clients, the golden tracings on the objects hold memories of lost loved ones. We look at the emotional bonds that kintsugi can help to create.
Stories about people, stories about life.
Hometown Stories.
"Why this bowl?" I thought.
It was one of a kind.
Completely unique.
Using lacquer,
I can mend anything.
My main goal is to make
broken pieces usable again.
Mending broken objects revives the memories they've accumulated over the years.
Today, we take a look into the art of mending, in the hot spring town of Yamanaka Onsen.
Over the years, artisans here have refined the use of lacquer.
The area is known for its distinct vessels, called Yamanaka lacquerware.
Lacquer is also indispensable to another craft:
"kintsugi," the traditional art of mending broken pottery.
It's broken?
How many pieces?
Yagi Shigeki is a kintsugi artisan based in Yamanaka Onsen.
People all over Japan send him broken objects with deep sentimental value.
"Please save it."
Kintsugi's most important role
is restoring cherished memories.
This heartwarming story explores the ways in which kintsugi mends objects and relationships alike.
Shigeki receives four to five broken pieces each day.
He works on them here.
Did you take photos
of all of them?
With the help of his parents, Shigeki has been doing kintsugi for over a decade.
A nice box.
It's a kiriko shot glass.
This part is chipped off.
He probably drank
from this every evening.
That's my guess.
I'm sure there's a good reason
why he wants to mend it.
We get ornaments, glasses,
plates, and bowls.
They come in
all shapes and sizes.
All kinds of textures too.
Some are rough, some are smooth.
I can fix pretty much anything.
This is raw lacquer.
This lacquer is the most important element in kintsugi.
It acts as a glue.
I knead it with flour
to make a thick clump.
Lacquer can seep into
all kinds of material.
It's lightweight and sturdy.
You can mold it any way you want.
People are going to use these things,
so I make sure the repair work is durable.
He fills in each gap with lacquer, and lets it dry.
The process is repeated over and over.
And finally, he applies gold dust.
Lacquer work makes up
over 90% of the kintsugi process.
It's all lacquer inside, with just
a thin layer of gold covering the surface.
It takes him over a month to finish mending a single piece.
This kind of salad is a Greek staple.
I make it whenever I have time.
Marios moved to Ishikawa Prefecture from Greece.
This jug always sits on his dining table.
It was repaired by Shigeki.
Marios' father gave him and his wife the jug as a wedding present, when they visited Greece four years ago.
My dad really wanted to give us
something to celebrate our marriage.
He asked us to choose
a piece by a local artisan.
The sea was so beautiful there,
and we saw so many fish.
That's why we got a jug with a fish pattern.
Last summer, their two-year-old daughter accidentally broke the jug.
And then around the same time, he got some sad news.
My sister called me.
She told me that
our dad had passed away.
I wanted to be there to support
my family with funeral preparations,
but it was difficult to
travel abroad due to the pandemic.
Shigeki made the handle sturdy enough to last a long time.
He also made the repair lines on the jug as thin as possible,
to showcase the colors and shapes of the fish.
These cracks become
part of our memories.
Just looking at the jug
reminds me of my father.
Those feelings were renewed
when it was mended.
The jug looks better this way
than if mended back to perfect.
We can embrace the flaws
and move forward.
That's the message
imbued in this jug, I think.
What's that?
Blue fish!
- And this one?
- Yellow fish!
Kintsugi lets you see
traces of the past.
It won't be the same as before,
but the flaws make memories even stronger.
It's as if these pieces
are engraved with history.
After high school, Shigeki decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a lacquerware artisan.
He studied at an institute specializing in lacquerware.
He began his career at the age of 20, making Yamanaka lacquerware.
Five years later, a pivotal moment arrived.
He received an unexpected request at an exhibition.
A visitor was telling me that
one of her lacquer pieces had broken.
She was so surprised
when I said it was repairable.
I guess she didn't know.
I explained that there's a method
using lacquer, called kintsugi.
I knew she'd be happy I fixed it, but
her reaction was bigger than I expected.
I realized that mending could make people
happier than buying a new piece.
It was so surprising.
He began to receive more requests, and eventually started doing kintsugi exclusively.
But, the reactions from some other Yamanaka lacquerware artisans were not positive.
There was no such thing as
an artisan who did kintsugi exclusively.
Not a single person
in our community.
I was worried about his career.
One veteran artisan has high hopes for Shigeki.
Hello there.
- I'm here to learn your tricks.
- I have no tricks.
I worked on this part.
Shigeki has received guidance from Ooka Yasuji since he was first starting out.
He paints with a brush dipped in lacquer, and finishes his "maki-e" art with gold dust.
Short brushes work better.
Yasuji taught Shigeki the secrets to creating fine, delicate lines.
Brilliant.
In recent years, the industry has been on the decline.
The production of traditional Yamanaka lacquerware is less than half of what it was two decades ago.
The number of artisans is also shrinking.
I didn't work two weeks last month.
- No way.
- I'm not kidding.
Yasuji doesn't want the techniques he honed over the years to be lost.
He hopes that Shigeki's kintsugi work will carry on the legacy.
Shigeki is a skilled guy.
He can do anything.
I would like him to learn well
and steal my techniques.
Even if lacquerware vanishes,
I'm sure kintsugi will continue to exist.
Kintsugi makes use of lacquer.
Although the work itself is different,
I realized that the end goal is
the same as creating new lacquerware.
A unique-looking cup arrived at Shigeki's door on this day.
It's cracked in several places.
Names of places.
Izumo to Kinosaki.
Then Kanazawa to Yamashiro.
Followed by Awara in Fukui Prefecture.
The final word on it is "effort."
I wonder why he wrote that.
The client wrote,
"Please make sure the words are visible.
I'd be grateful if you could make it usable again."
These words were written 45 years ago.
It's so moving when I think that
someone actually wrote these.
Even the destinations on the cup
remind you of a different era.
The word "effort" was written by this man, Okada Tsutomu.
Sitting with him is his wife, Rieko.
It's important to set goals in life.
In order to achieve them, effort is key.
They met 48 years ago, when Tsutomu was attending night school.
It was love at first sight.
He proposed to her soon after, and she accepted.
However, her parents were against the marriage.
They thought the couple were too young.
The parents finally came around two years later.
Tsutomu and Rieko were married in the Izumo Taisha Grand Shrine, and set off on their honeymoon, driving north along the Sea of Japan.
Their first stop was the hot spring town of Kinosaki Onsen, in Hyogo Prefecture.
Next, they went to Kanazawa, where the cup was made.
Tsutomu had grown up in poverty.
In Kanazawa, he vowed to work hard to make his family happy.
Their next stop was Yamashiro Onsen, in Ishikawa Prefecture.
Finally, they went to Awara Onsen, in Fukui Prefecture.
They made unforgettable memories on this five-day trip.
I wanted to foster happiness.
That was the sentiment behind the cup.
I spent my life striving to
be a respectable person.
I have the same expectations
for my children.
Forty-five years had passed since the honeymoon.
Then one day, the cherished cup was shattered.
Their oldest daughter happened to be visiting at the time, and she took the pieces with her.
Without her parents' knowledge, she asked Shigeki to mend it.
I didn't speak much to my dad,
kept conversations to a bare minimum.
Okada Mayuko, their daughter, lives in Osaka.
She had spent years keeping her father at arm's length.
She thought he meddled in her life.
As I grew older, I felt that
he didn't think very highly of me.
I respect him, but find him
difficult to approach.
But deep down,
I want to get closer to him.
Through kintsugi, she hopes to mend her relationship with her father.
I rarely get to have
serious conversations with my dad.
Maybe this cup will give us that opportunity.
He's always supported our family.
I want to let him know how grateful I am.
Let's begin.
I'd like to preserve the original design
of the place names as much as possible.
But I don't want to just
mend the cup with gold lines.
There's more I can do
in the mending process.
I want to go above and
beyond what's expected of me.
In kintsugi, the last step generally involves coating the lines with gold dust.
What special steps will Shigeki take for this piece?
Come in.
- Delivery for you.
- Thank you.
It's probably the cup.
Yeah, it's labeled "fragile."
Amazing.
It's been put back together.
Very impressive.
The gold lines are
where the cracks were.
It's in one piece again.
All mended.
We're so fortunate.
Shigeki devised a way to make the words written 45 years ago stand out.
He painted black lacquer over some gold dust lines.
He repainted the words
on the broken sections.
He went above and beyond.
- This part too.
- How wonderful.
It's even better than before.
- Really nice.
- The gold lines are lovely.
- Delicious.
- Thanks to the cup.
Very tasty.
Hello.
We received the package.
Thank you.
Have you seen it?
Take a look.
Why'd you decide to have it fixed?
I figured you were sad about it,
even though you didn't say anything.
The cup has sentimental value.
Thank you.
Let's take a trip together.
I'll show you
our favorite places in Kanazawa.
Wow, beautiful.
Only kintsugi makes broken things
even more beautiful.
Even the pattern is derived from
the cracks my daughter made.
Don't drop it again.
Let's eat from this today.
So many kinds of feelings,
so many kinds of fractures.
Feelings can't be seen,
but kintsugi makes them visible.