{"id":66587,"date":"2026-07-31T00:22:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T00:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/66587\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T00:22:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T00:22:21","slug":"timber-land-inside-japans-hida-furniture-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/66587\/","title":{"rendered":"Timber Land: Inside Japan’s Hida Furniture Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hida region of Japan has roots in woodworking that stretch back to the 6th century, when 100 of its master craftsmen \u2013 the Hida no takumi \u2013 travelled every year to Nara (and, later, Kyoto) to build temples in Japan\u2019s earliest capital cities. Hida is still 93 per cent forested, more than any other region in Japan, and its dense beech forests formed the basis of a modern furniture industry that took root in 1920 and now employs more than 2,000 people in and around the small city of Takayama.<\/p>\n

Since 1951, Takayama has hosted the annual Hida Furniture Festival, a showcase for local makers that opens up the town\u2019s workshops and showrooms to visitors. It\u2019s a long journey for anyone coming from Tokyo: two hours on a bullet train to Nagoya, then nearly three hours on the Wide View Hida, a train that hugs the Hida River as it leaves concrete Japan behind for trees, steep hillsides and clear waters. Pulling into the wooded city of 90,000 people, it isn\u2019t difficult to see how furniture became so important here. Today there are 25 companies in the Hida Woodworking Federation whose collective annual sales are \u00a519bn (\u20ac142.5m).<\/p>\n

\u201cTakayama people are very proud of Hida furniture,\u201d says Atsushi Morino, sales director for Hida Sangyo, the oldest (and biggest) of Takayama\u2019s makers. \u201cIf you add in everyone in woodworking and their families, 10 per cent of the population is involved in the business.\u201d When Hida Sangyo launched, its founders focused on replicating bentwood beech chairs from Europe and then exported them from a country that didn\u2019t yet know how to live with western furniture. Today, as it approaches its centenary in 2020, the company is the elder statesman of the industry, leading the way in using native woods in designs to suit Japanese lifestyles.<\/p>\n

The main venue for the furniture show is on the outskirts of town, a concrete structure rendered unexpectedly inviting by the interior designer Mitsuko Kuroda, who took this year\u2019s hotel theme and transformed the centre into a lounge and dining area, complete with oversized fireplace and (fake) roaring fire. Using pieces from Takayama\u2019s big five companies \u2013 Hida Sangyo, Kashiwa, Shirakawa, Nissin and Ibata Interior \u2013 she created separate living areas. Familiar pieces from the brands\u2019 catalogues were made over in pale wood and fresh fabrics by Danish company Kvadrat. Kuroda added Moroccan rugs and local antique lacquerware. To complete the scene, Kuroda borrowed some spectacularly large paper lanterns by Isamu Noguchi (his \u201cAkari\u201d paper lights are still made in this area) from the Hida Museum. \u201cI wanted people to be able to experience the furniture and show how it works in real-life situations,\u201d says Kuroda.<\/p>\n

\"KashiwaKashiwa furniture company\u2019s Takayama showroom and workshop<\/p>\n

\"ATakayama<\/p>\n

\"MerinoMerino oak dining chair by Keita Watanabe<\/p>\n

\"CivilCivil chair designed by Toshihiko Ushimaru for Kashiwa<\/p>\n

\"AtsushiAtsushi Morino<\/p>\n

\"ModernMitsuko Kuroda-designed lounge<\/p>\n

\"AerialMain festival venue<\/p>\n

\"HidaHida Earth Wisdom Centre<\/p>\n

\"AerialShirakawa village<\/p>\n

\"WoodenBoards by Hida Collection<\/p>\n

\"ElfinElfin stools by Hiroyuki Matsufuji of Hitokei<\/p>\n

\"KatsunoriKatsunori Shirakawa<\/p>\n

\"RitaRita wooden light by Moare<\/p>\n

\"NewNew Awase sofa in beech by Hisae Igarashi for Hida Sangyo<\/p>\n

\"KinoeKinoe dining set by Ibuki Kaiyama for Hida Sangyo<\/p>\n

\"DesignerDesigner Keita Watanabe<\/p>\n

\"H+H+ standing light in beech by Moare<\/p>\n

For the dining area, Shirakawa contributed a long table in walnut, surrounded by dining chairs from all the makers. It\u2019s a comfortably mismatched ensemble featuring Kashiwa\u2019s award-winning Civil chair, a reworking of the Windsor chair designed in 2001 in oak and walnut, and the company\u2019s Lei chair, another modern Windsor that\u2019s offered in eight colours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to chairs the Windsor is the backbone,\u201d says Atsushi Morino. He\u2019s spent 35 years at Hida Sangyo, which employs 450 people and racks up sales of \u00a55bn (\u20ac38m). \u201cWe are not a huge company but we make what we want to make and we take care over the quality, environment and design.\u201d He strokes the curved backrest of Sori Yanagi\u2019s yd261 armchair in white oak, from 1978. \u201cWe\u2019re probably the only people who could bend a piece of oak this large but it shows our commitment to long-lasting design.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its showroom in town, Hida Sangyo is displaying new pieces from its popular Awase range designed by Hisae Igarashi in light beech with contemporary fabrics. Also on show are new pieces in its Kinoe range, which is designed by Ibuki Kaiyama and uses only Japanese wood. The use of Japanese wood, or rather the lack of, is a hot topic and the subject of one of the most popular panel discussions at the festival. Although Japan is 70 per cent forested, the inaccessibility of the trees \u2013 and thus the cost of cutting and transporting them \u2013 and the fluctuations in supply have driven many Japanese furniture makers to use imported woods.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are supposedly 10 billion sugi [cedar trees] in Japan and yet we\u2019re importing 70 per cent of the trees we use,\u201d says Morino. Hida Sangyo is making a determined effort to use Japanese wood. \u201cWe want to use more Japanese trees. It makes sense from an economic and environmental point of view. And the Japanese sugi is a great tree.\u201d The Kinoe range uses native cedar (often the knotty parts that were once discarded), chestnut and beech; the range\u2019s Windsor chair comprises all three and is a symbol of Takayama\u2019s traditional division of labour. \u201cThis issue of not using as much Japanese wood as we\u2019d like is a source of frustration for us,\u201d says Katsunori Shirakawa, current chairman of the Hida Woodworking Federation, which was founded in 1950. \u201cWe\u2019d like more help from the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over at Kashiwa, which has been in business since 1943 and employs 300 people, low lacquered Loop chairs are set out to catch the eye of a hotel designer looking for something to sit comfortably on tatami-mat flooring; Kashiwa\u2019s Gekka range uses Japanese bamboo from Kyoto. Kakishita, a 60-year-old family-run lighting company whose bread and butter is producing 60,000 wood-edged downlights for household electrical companies, is showing new items from its Moare lighting range made up of Japanese washi paper, ceramic, lacquer and metal.<\/p>\n

There are some new makers showing pieces too: Hida Collection was launched in April and is making dining chairs, tabletops and cutting boards from Japanese wood. It has a simple design aesthetic that appeals to a younger market.<\/p>\n

The arrival of cheaper imported furniture initially caused a few ripples in this corner of Japan, where quality is held in high esteem, but the market has settled and the makers have their own audience \u2013 mostly domestic, although increasingly overseas \u2013 who appreciate the craftsmanship Takayama has to offer. The Hida makers have been appearing at design shows abroad as a group and individually, buoyed by the positive reaction to the \u201cMade in Japan\u201d label.<\/p>\n

\u201cHida has quality across the board but particularly in our craftspeople \u2013 they know exactly which bit of wood will work best for a particular part of a chair,\u201d says Shirakawa. \u201cPrimarily we want to make what we believe in, not follow trends. We try to read the market but at the end of the day we want Hida products that reflect who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hida region of Japan has roots in woodworking that stretch back to the 6th century, when 100…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9596,8,33,15822,43438],"class_list":["post-66587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-craftsmanship","tag-japan","tag-nihon","tag-takayama","tag-woodworking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}