6 stores · curated ORBIS register
Karaku Incense Co., Kyoto, Japan
Shoyeido has made incense in Kyoto since 1705, spanning twelve generations of the same family business. Its incense is still handcrafted there using traditional recipes and aged raw materials, including aged agarwood and sandalwood in the Xiang-do Master's line.
Best for Twelve generations since 1705 — aged agarwood, sandalwood, and the Xiang-do Master's line.
Gion, Kyoto, Japan
Documented in Gion since at least 1695 across 15 generations, Kagizen Yoshifusa reopened in 1955 and turned its chilled kuzukiri - kudzu-starch noodles in black sugar syrup - into a nationwide dessert draw by the 1970s.
Best for Kuzukiri chilled kudzu-starch noodles at a 300-year-old Gion confectioner
Kagizen Yoshifusa has worked from Gion since at least 1695, when temple records first place the confectioner in the neighborhood surrounding Yasaka Shrine; an inscription dated 1726 and a run through fifteen generations back up the shop's own account of its age. For most of that history it served the district's temples, shrines and restaurants as a supplier rather than a storefront, and its now-signature kuzukiri only became a shop-floor specialty after the business reopened in 1955 - chilled ribbons of kudzu starch, cut thin and served with black sugar syrup, made from kudzu sourced from Morino Yoshino Kuzu Honpo in Ouda, Nara. By the 1970s word of mouth had turned it into a destination dessert, drawing visitors from across Japan rather than just the neighborhood. The wagashi side runs on the same seasonal logic Kyoto confectionery is built on, with sweets designed around the turning of the year rather than a fixed line. Alongside the original shop, Kagizen opened ZEN CAFE and a gift shop on a side alley south of Gion-machi in 2012, pairing a more contemporary room with the same kitchen, and a small gallery, Ku Kagiya, sits nearby hosting exhibitions tied to the neighborhood's craft scene. The core appeal hasn't shifted with the additions: a chilled bowl of kuzukiri, made the same way, in the same district, for the better part of three centuries.
Nakagyo, Kyoto, Japan
Miyawaki Baisenan has sold Kyoto folding fans since 1823, when a fan seller from Mino province took over an existing shop stocked by Omiya Shinbei. The current name, added by the third-generation owner in 1887, honors a rare local wood and reflects the shop's long ties to Kyoto's fan-making trade.
Best for Kyoto sensu folding fans in bamboo, washi, and silk
Kyoto / Japan
Aizenkobo is a Kyoto indigo-dyeing workshop and shop set a few blocks from the Nishijin weaving district in Nakagyo Ward, near Nijo Castle.
Best for Naturally fermented indigo textiles from a third-generation Kyoto dye house near Nishijin
Aizenkobo is a Kyoto indigo-dyeing workshop and shop set a few blocks from the Nishijin weaving district in Nakagyo Ward, near Nijo Castle. The novelist Junichiro Tanizaki gave the workshop its name on February 18, 1929; the characters read literally as "indigo-love workshop." Now in its third generation, the business began as an obi maker before its current proprietors — Mrs. Utsuki and her artist husband — steered it toward Western-style indigo garments as kimono sales declined. Mrs. Utsuki has described the shift plainly: "I came to see that sales were dropping," she has said of the years after she married into the family shop.
Aizenkobo dyes with fermented natural indigo rather than a synthetic vat, a process that demands repetition: cotton is dipped roughly 100 times to build depth of color, silk closer to 200. Unlike chemical indigo, the workshop says the natural dye deepens rather than fades with washing and wear, and it markets its cloth's antibacterial and fire-resistant qualities as a byproduct of the fermentation method itself rather than any added finish.
The workshop's reputation has traveled well beyond Kyoto — a piece is held in the British Museum's permanent collection — and by its own account roughly nine in ten customers now come from outside Japan. For a shop that began as word-of-mouth obi-making, that is a marked inversion of its original clientele.
Kyoto / Japan
Hiyoshiya has made kyo-wagasa, Kyoto's traditional oiled-paper-and-bamboo umbrella, since the late Edo period — over 160 years — and describes itself as the only Kyoto workshop still carrying the technique through five unbroken generations.
Best for Kyo-wagasa umbrellas and bamboo-and-washi lighting
Hiyoshiya has made kyo-wagasa, Kyoto's traditional oiled-paper-and-bamboo umbrella, since the late Edo period — over 160 years — and describes itself as the only Kyoto workshop still carrying the technique through five unbroken generations. The umbrellas are built the old way: split bamboo ribs, a wooden hub, and washi paper stretched and oiled by hand, a construction largely unchanged since the craft was passed down.
What distinguishes Hiyoshiya from a purely preservationist workshop is what it has done since Kotaro Nishibori took over as president in 2003 under the stated philosophy that tradition survives by continuing to innovate. Rather than keep the wagasa structure confined to umbrellas, Hiyoshiya adapted its ribbed bamboo-and-washi form into a line of interior lighting, using the same folding skeleton and paper diffusion that make a wagasa canopy glow when backlit. That reinvention grew the business well beyond a single craft shop, into consulting, education and a network connecting artisans internationally, while the original Kyoto workshop still turns out hand-built wagasa and teaches visitors the dohari paper-pasting step in short courses.
For a craft with a shrinking number of working hands, Hiyoshiya is a rare case of a centuries-old technique staying commercially alive by finding a second object to live in.
Kyoto / Japan
Tsujikura traces back to 1690, when Yamashiro-ya Jinshichi began making and selling umbrellas in Kyoto; the shop is now in its 17th generation and describes itself as Japan's oldest working wagasa maker.
Best for Hand-built wagasa from Japan's oldest umbrella house
Tsujikura traces back to 1690, when Yamashiro-ya Jinshichi began making and selling umbrellas in Kyoto; the shop is now in its 17th generation and describes itself as Japan's oldest working wagasa maker. Each umbrella is built by hand through more than 100 separate production steps, using domestically sourced bamboo for the ribs and hub, wood, and washi paper treated with vegetable oil for the canopy — materials and a process the shop says have stayed essentially fixed for roughly 300 years.
The business has adapted around the edges without changing the core craft: the 13th generation added traditional lanterns to the workshop's output around 1920, and in 2011 the shop moved into the seventh floor of the Tsujikura Building in Kyoto's Nakagyō ward after its previous premises deteriorated. The umbrellas themselves have drawn outside recognition over the decades, including coverage in Vogue and a 1985 feature in the New York Times.
For a craft that depends on a small and aging pool of bamboo splitters, paper-pasters and oil-finishers, a 17-generation family workshop still running the full hand process — rather than a shop reselling wagasa made elsewhere — is now a rarer thing in Kyoto than the umbrella's long history might suggest.
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