Tsujikura

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.