[ Craft x Tech Lecture Series Vol.2]“Sendai Tansu x Studio SWINE” @ The University of Tokyo

Craft x Tech is an initiative to bridge the gap between traditional Japanese craft and contemporary technology. Our goal is to create a novel and unique body of artworks that express both the history and future potential of these beautiful materials and techniques. With this in mind, we have selected a group of designers and artists whose work we respect and admire and who we believe will bring new and meaningful insights to these centuries-old master crafts traditions. For its inaugural edition, 6 traditional crafts from 6 prefectures of the Tohoku region and 6 designers/creators collaborated. Furthermore, as part of this project, the participating creators and craftsmen are invited to hold a special lecture series.

For the second lecture, we invited Rikiya Yunome from the Sendai Tansu Cooperative Association, and designer, Alex Groves (Studio SWINE). Mr Yunome gave a lecture on the history of Sendai Tansu and its challenges, and Mr Groves explained his art projects as Studio SWINE and A.A.Murakami. Both showed a huge passion for their collaboration.

*The history of Sendai-Tansu goes back to the Edo Era. Originally born as cabinets for samurai and shops to store important items such as swords, kimonos and testimonies, its robustness and security was important. In the Meiji Era, it became more popular, and with the addition of artistic decorations such as beautiful lacquerware and gorgeous metal fittings, it has achieved its own development.

Lecture by Rikiya YUNOME

Rikiya Yunome
Secretary-General of the Sendai Tansu Cooperative and Executive Director of Yunome Kagu Co., Ltd. Sendai Tansu, a traditional craft from Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, has been produced since the late Edo period. Yunome Kagu Co., Ltd., established in 1871 (Meiji 4), recognized the need for greater awareness and preservation of this craft following the Great East Japan Earthquake. The company has worked diligently to obtain the designation of "Traditional Craft of Japan" to elevate its recognition. As a bridge to tradition, the company and its skilled artisans continue to embrace new challenges.

Sendai Tansu developed in Sendai, the City of Trees

Sendai is a castle town developed by the warlord Date Masamune, who built Sendai Castle between 1600 and 1602. Masamune encouraged the planting of trees, and Sendai still boasts a rich natural environment for a city with a population of 1.09 million. Many places in Sendai still retain the names of traditional craftsmen’s towns, but recently, due to the increase in residential areas, craftsmen have moved their workplaces to county areas far from the city centre to avoid noise and odour problems during the work.

Our company, Yunome Kagu Co., Ltd., was established in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, in 1871. We are currently in our 152nd year of operation, with my older brother serving as the sixth generation to run the family business. I am told that the founder, Rinpei Yunome , trained as a woodworker and started his own furniture shop. When the furniture makers of Sendai City set up the Sendai Furniture Association in 1907, Rinpei became the first chairman. Inheriting the spirit of the first generation, until my grandfather, the president of the company ran the business while working as woodworker. Due to this background, we, the Yunome family, established the Sendai Tansu Cooperative Association in 2008 and the Sendai Tansu Museum of History and Crafts in our company in 2011. We aim to preserve and promote the technique of Sendai tansu

A sense of crisis that urged to promote Sendai tansu

Sendai tansu is the crystallisation of craftsmanship in three areas: woodworking, lacquering and metalworking. The beautiful grain of the wood seen through the layers of lacquer and the three-dimensionally hammered metal ornaments are the hallmarks of this craft. We often use locally vegetated trees such as zelkova, chestnut and cedar for timber.

There have been many difficulties in maintaining the tradition, such as changing lifestyles and the accompanying changes in demand, but the biggest shock for me was during the Great East Japan Earthquake in 11 March, 2011. I saw a pile of old Sendai Tansu discarded in a nearby park amongst the household rubbish, including furniture and electrical appliances, known as ‘earthquake rubbish’. When I saw this, I felt a great sense of crisis that if nothing was done, Sendai tansu would disappear. For such reason, we opened the Sendai Tansu Museum of History and Crafts inside our company, Yunome Kagu.

Meanwhile, we have received many requests to repair damaged chests in the earthquake. Each chest has been cherished for more than 100 years and should be regarded as the identity of the family. As we respond to various requests, such as those who want to keep just the shape of the chest without the lacquer treatment, or to make it a little smaller because they live in a flat, we have realised that local traditional crafts are still important part of our daily life and culture. We don’t want to let the traditions that the craftspeople have passed down to us die out in our generation. We want to preserve the Sendai tansu somehow.

Challenges facing Sendai Tansu

Firstly, demand has been declining since the Taisho period (1912-1926). Lifestyle has changed, particularly the westernisation of housing and the disappearance of Japanese-style rooms, which means that chests no longer fit into rooms. Also, cabinets used to be in demand as wedding chests, but these are being replaced by wardrobes.

Secondly, due to technological progress, simpler and stronger materials and techniques have emerged. These include plywood furniture, which is less prone to warping and splitting and easier to process, and urethane coating instead of lacquer. The cost of Sendai Tansu, which require more labour, is higher than these.

The third point is the training of successors. The number of craftsmen is decreasing. There are now only about fifteen people. There are seven woodworkers, five lacquerers and three metalworkers. Some people want to become Sendai Tansu craftsmen, but it is difficult to find companies and traders who can hire new craftsmen. We are wondering if our association can take action.

Past challenges and towards the future collaboration

Surprisingly, Sendai tansu has a history of being exported abroad from the very beginning. From the late Meiji to Taisho periods (1880s to the late 1910s), exports became popular as business for foreigners made success in Yokohama. There are stories of people going to Yokohama to sell Sendai tansu carrying design books, and I am told that our family received orders from German customers. Taking this initial history of the Sendai tansu, we are also seeking to sell it abroad.

In 2016 we first exhibited it at a design fair in Paris to get honest feedback. In January 2023 we did a test sale in London and Paris. We are now making progress on one case. In discussions, buyers told us that we should make Sendai tansu simpler because it is too massive. We wondered what to do, because we felt the traditional Sendai tansu, which we thought was the best we could offer, was denied. However, when you think about it, the time when Sendai tansu were used was the time when people lived on tatami mats. On the other hand, nowadays people sit on sofas and chairs. Thus, in order to make the chests match our lifestyle, we have tried to make them look lighter by attaching legs to make it float, and we have tried to reduce the number of metal fittings. In addition, the colour of metal fittings used to be black, but we changed it to champagne gold. Thanks to these trials, we finally started to receive special orders. When we held a sales event in Tokyo for coloured chests, it was difficult to get the colour we wanted with lacquer, so we used urethane partly. We were happy to see the delighted customers.

We have not yet collaborated with designers, but the history of the Sendai tansu shows that there is a good chance that they could be used by foreigners. Through this collaboration, we hope to add a new dimension to Sendai tansu.

Lecture by Alex Groves

Studio SWINE
A design collective by Japanese Architect Azusa Murakami and British Artist Alexander Groves. Their work straddles between the spheres of sculpture, installations and cinema, blending poetry and research into immersive experiences. They are represented by the world renowned Pace Gallery, and their works have been collected by MoMA New York and Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Social and environmental gaze and exploration of materials

After Murakami and I graduated from the Royal Academy in London, we went to São Paulo, Brazil. We didn’t know anyone there, so we walked around every day to see how life was run in this city. Eventually, we became interested in how waste was collected because it was not being collected in an organised way, but individuals were collecting and selling recyclable items.

From observation, we found out that these people were walking around with carts made from old car parts, collecting aluminium cans, which were the most profitable. So, as our first project, we built a mobile furnace that could melt the aluminium cans collected on the spot. We used only scrap found at a waste centre and powered by car batteries. We then collected the actual aluminium cans, took sand from the construction site and made moulds for our artwork.

This is how our Adventure Project proceeds: we go to the site, learn from the site, set up the project, produce it and take a video as a series of steps.

Fordlandia: an example of the Adventure Project

In 2015, we launched a project, Fordlandia. This is a place in the Amazon rainforest, named after the car magnate Henry Ford. It is a place that takes a lot of time and effort to get to, with multiple plane connections and a boat ride up the river. Ford bought this part of the Amazon in 1929 to source his own rubber for his car industry, and pioneered and built the town. The design was to build American-style housing and even a hospital and golf course – in other words, to bring American civilisation to the Amazon rainforest. However, nature has its own ways. The biggest problem is that rubber trees were planted as if they were planted on plantations. To begin with, rubber is a plant that grows naturally in the Amazon, but by planting it as a plantation, things like pests and diseases spread to all the trees. In addition, the local workers could not bear to work in the American-style, from 9am to 5pm, in a very hot climate, and riots broke out. In the end, the project was abandoned.
However, Ford himself was a man of vision, as summed up in his words, “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business”. He was a vegan, wore suits made from soybean-based fibres and made cars from plastic made also from soybeans. He was a man who wanted to integrate agriculture and industry.

So we decided to actually try Fordlandia as a project. Amazonian rubber is of high quality. It has not yet been possible to achieve this quality with synthetic rubber. Furthermore, it is important to keep the rubber trees as primary forests, so the price for the product should add value to protect the forests. The problem is that rubber is only used for some of the less expensive items – rubber straps in car engines and tyres. So, when researching what rubber was used for before the invention of plastic, we came across a material called ebonite. It is a very hard, shiny material used in fountain pens and musical instrument mouthpieces. We wondered if we could use this material to support the wild rubber industry. The idea of using a material from the Amazon, and the inspiration from the automotive industry, led to the Ford Ranger collection. We designed furniture in Tropical Modernism style, a Brazilian interpretation of European modernism.

Focusing on digital art installation

A recent new initiative is the fusion of natural phenomena and digital art. This installation involves hitting an interactive digital screen with a ring of fog, which causes a change in the digital wave image. We developed the technology to physically generate a fog ring and at the same time project its digital image onto the seascape on the screen. The moment the physical fog ring hits the screen, the digital fog ring image appears and causes a wave. The message is that the future of technology is not restricted only to the screen, but also in the fleeting moments when we are in contact with nature.

Towards the collaboration with Sendai tansu

We love this craft tradition and how it fits beautifully into architecture. We are excited to create a modern piece with this project that fits in with today, while studying how the square shapes seen in Japanese ukiyo-e prints create dynamic compositions and also referencing designs such as the Supergrid from the 1970s.

[Event Details]
Date:  December 11, 2023
Venue: ENEOS Hall, The Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology
　　　 1st Floor, South Wing, Building 3, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo
Speakers: Rikiya Yunome and Alex Groves/Studio Swine