Keeping Traditional Japanese Crafts Alive

President of Shokuninn.com, SAKURAI Shinya

Shokuninn.com, a bilingual English/Japanese Web business founded by president SAKURAI Shinya in September 2004, acts as a bridge between traditional Japanese craftsmen and artisans, and anyone around the world who has an appreciation of quality Japanese arts and products.

“As most Japanese traditional craftspeople do not speak English, are not very Internet aware and do not have the means to promote their products beyond local markets, they have a great deal of trouble finding buyers for their goods,” Shinya explains. “Therefore, the main aim of the business is to help promote and sell these traditional products and modern goods and keep these traditional crafts alive.”

Shinya says crafts tend to be of two types: “There are traditional products like kimono, bamboo weaving, noh masks etc., and modern items of clothing made from traditional materials using traditional skills, such as jeans, caps, shirts, bags etc. using either new or recycled kimono materials, or tee-shirts and jeans with traditional hand-painted yuzen designs on them.”

To launch the business, Shinya built the website in Japanese, photographed and uploaded the product descriptions, then went about the business of finding customers through advertising. As more and more traditional craftspeople became involved with Shokuninn.com, the customer base within Japan continued to grow, and in September 2005 Shokuninn.com became a bilingual site.

With the aid of six bilingual staff, Shokuninn.com sold 12 million yen of products for various Japanese artisans in 2005. “This was basically subsistence level for us to keep going as a new business,” Shinya explains. “However, already 2006 is looking to be a big step up on that with a 37% increase in turnover during January 2006 alone. So far that is almost exclusively from customers within Japan.”

So, who is buying and what is selling? “Customers are generally people who have a strong interest in Japan and quality Japanese goods, whether these are Japanese nationals or overseas buyers,” Shinya explains. “Mizra jeans are very popular both in Japan and abroad even though they are very expensive. They’re handmade in Japan. Hand painted yuzen teeshirts are very popular as are pen-cases made from Japanese tabi socks. Hunting caps handmade from Oshima-tsumugi kimono material are also very popular items.”

What have been some of the biggest hurdles Shinya has experienced while running shokuninn.com? “Finding customers initially, although thankfully more new customers and continued repeat customers means Shokuninn.com is expanding nicely,” he says. “The next great hurdle is building up a solid overseas customer base. Our biggest problem has been space. As more staff joined, we ran out of room, so we moved to new larger offices in February 2006.”

The high point of running the business occurred in Christmas 2005 when all the craftspeople came together as a group for the first time for the ‘bonenkai’ and they realized what they were doing has great value. “All the craftspeople are making a living from their traditional skills, even the young newcomers,” Shinya says. “The low point was definitely April 2005 as we had a 90% drop in business that month. The main artisan on our books at that time went out of business and it affected our company badly. However. now we support a diversity of craftspeople so we are not as exposed as before.”

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