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Yamanaka: The Town That Turns Wood
In a hot-spring valley in Ishikawa, lacquer begins not with lacquer but with the lathe — how Yamanaka became Japan's great maker of turned-wood bases, grain and all.
There is an old saying in Ishikawa that sorts the region’s lacquer by what each town does best: Wajima for the coating, Kanazawa for the gold, and Yamanaka for the wood. Yamanaka’s fame rests on the part of a lacquered bowl you never see — the turned wooden body underneath. It is Japan’s largest source of these bases, and the reason its own bowls so often wear their grain on the surface for all to see.
Turners in a hot-spring valley
The craft begins in the latter half of the 16th century, when a group of woodturners — kijishi — moved from Echizen, over the mountains, and settled at Masago, a village upstream of Yamanaka Onsen in what is now Kaga City. They came for the timber and made turned bowls and trays to sell to the bathers who came to soak in the springs. Lacquering and maki-e came later, in the Edo period, brought in from Aizu, Kyoto and Kanazawa. But the town’s foundation was, and remains, the lathe.
Cutting with the grain
Yamanaka’s defining choice is how it takes its wood from the log. Most turning regions cut across the grain; Yamanaka cuts with it — tategidori, vertical-grain cutting, orienting the blank the way the tree grew. It is more wasteful of timber, but the wood moves and warps far less over the years, which lets the turner work it thin and true. It is why Yamanaka is trusted with lidded pieces and delicate tea-ceremony ware, where a lid must keep meeting its base for a lifetime.
The decorated lathe
The other Yamanaka signature is kashokibiki, decorative turning. As the piece spins, the artisan presses a hand-forged blade against it to cut fine parallel grooves — suji — into the surface, sometimes several within a single millimetre. There are dozens of named patterns, from sensuji (“thousand lines”) to rice-ear and thread stripes. Finished with fukiurushi, lacquer wiped on and off to leave the grain visible, the result is a bowl that keeps the marks of both the tree and the tool.
Bringing Yamanaka home
Yamanaka pieces are made to be handled — warm to the touch, light, and happiest in daily use rather than behind glass. Wash them by hand, dry them, and keep them out of the dishwasher and the microwave, and they age well for decades.
Browse hand-picked, Japan-shipped tableware on The Table.
Sources & Further Reading
- Yamanaka Lacquerware — Kougei Japan (national traditional-crafts association) — On the 16th-century woodturners, the vertical-grain cutting that makes decorative turning possible, and the 1975 designation as a traditional craft.
- Yamanaka Lacquerware — Visit Kaga (Kaga City Tourism) — Kaga’s official guide: turners who still use the methods of 400 years ago, and the choice to keep the wood grain visible.
- Yamanaka Lacquer Ware — Google Arts & Culture (Ritsumeikan University) — The migration from Echizen to Masago around 1580 and how the region became Japan’s leading maker of turned-wood lacquer bases.