Craft guide
ORBISCRAFT & ATELIERS IN KANAZAWA14 stores · curated ORBIS register
Gold Leaf Kanazawa Katani sells gold-leaf-decorated objects and craft materials in Owaricho, with hands-on sessions allowing visitors to apply the leaf themselves. Gold Leaf Sakuda (金箔屋さくだ) has manufactured and applied gold and silver leaf since 1919, producing gilded folding screens alongside smaller craft goods. Its premises near Higashi Chaya combine a retail shop with demonstrations and workshops, giving the material a practical setting.
Owaricho, Kanazawa
Katani sells gold-leaf-decorated craft objects and materials from its Kanazawa workshop. Hands-on sessions let visitors apply leaf themselves, turning the stop into both a purchase and a technique demonstration.
Best for Kanazawa gold-leaf craft goods and hands-on gold-leaf workshops.
Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Gold Leaf Sakuda has manufactured and applied gold and silver leaf in Kanazawa since 1919, evolving from a leaf wholesaler into a maker of gilded folding screens and craft goods. Near the Higashi Chaya district, the company runs a factory tour, a small gold-leaf museum, and hands-on gilding workshops alongside its retail shop.
Best for Gold leaf workshops and gilded folding screens
Higashi Chaya District, Kanazawa
A gold-leaf manufacturer and retail shop selling craft objects and offering demonstrations of traditional gold-leaf production. Established 1919.
Best for Gold-leaf craft objects and live production demonstrations, since 1919.
Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Founded in 1975 by Kuniko Asano, recognized as Japan's first female metal-leaf manufacturer, Hakuichi grew into an eleven-store Kanazawa company built around a city that produces over 98 percent of the country's gold leaf. Its flagship Hakukokan complex sells gold-leafed lacquerware, cosmetics, and confections, and includes a renovated Higashi Chaya teahouse known for gold-leaf-topped soft serve.
Best for Gold leaf souvenirs and gilded lacquerware
Higashi Chaya District, Kanazawa
Hakuichi’s Higashiyama store sells gold-leaf tableware, accessories, cosmetics and decorative crafts. The range demonstrates how Kanazawa leaf moves from traditional ornament into practical gifts and contemporary surfaces.
Best for Kanazawa gold-leaf tableware, accessories, and cosmetics.
Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Hakuza produces gold leaf using the centuries-old entsuke technique, a method recognized as an intangible cultural asset, and supplies leaf used in restoring national treasures and temples. From its Kanazawa storefronts, including one in the historic Higashi Chaya district, the company sells gold-leafed tableware, interior objects, cosmetics, and edible leaf for everyday use and formal gifts.
Best for Gold leaf crafts and gifts
Saiwaimachi, Kanazawa
A gold-leaf manufacturer with a showroom selling leaf-decorated goods and a workshop for applying gold leaf to take-home objects. The company was established in Kanazawa in 1898.
Best for Gold-leaf decorated goods and hands-on gold-leaf application workshops since 1898 in Kanazawa
Nomachi, Kanazawa
A fifth-generation workshop and shop making ceremonial paper decorations and gift wrapping with Kaga mizuhiki cords. The craft has been carried by five generations of the business.
Best for Fifth-generation Kaga mizuhiki cord ceremonial paper decorations and gift wrapping
Kanazawa
Kaga embroidery workshop in Kanazawa founded in 1912 by Sutaro Imai; now run by his great-granddaughter Sachiko Yokoyama, a nationally recognized traditional craftsperson, producing hand-stitched silk, gold and silver thread work.
Best for Kaga embroidery craftsmanship since 1912
The Kaga embroidery workshop known today as Kaga-nui IMAI began in 1912 in Kanazawa, founded by Sutaro Imai as 'Nui no Imai.' The craft itself dates back further, transmitted from Kyoto in the early Muromachi period alongside Buddhist teachings and originally used for altar decoration, using silk, gold and silver thread worked by hand into three-dimensional designs that cannot be replicated by machine. The workshop passed through a second-generation head, Fukueda, and a third, Kiyoshi, before reaching its current representative, Sachiko Yokoyama, the founder's great-granddaughter. Yokoyama was designated a National Traditional Craftsperson in 2008 and established the current Kaga-nui IMAI studio in 2011, continuing production of traditional pieces alongside newer, contemporary-facing designs.
Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Kaga Yuzen Kaikan is Kanazawa's dedicated center for Kaga Yuzen, the hand-painted silk-dyeing technique developed for kimono under the Kaga domain, with exhibit rooms showing newly produced pieces alongside the dyeing tools and materials behind them. Its ground floor sells finished Kaga Yuzen textiles and smaller accessories, while a basement studio runs hands-on dyeing workshops.
Best for Kaga Yuzen silk textiles and dyeing workshops
Hirosaka, Kanazawa
A city craft shop exhibiting and selling work by Kanazawa makers across multiple traditional craft disciplines. The shop was founded in 1997.
Best for Kanazawa makers' traditional crafts across multiple disciplines, since 1997
Kanazawa Crafts Hirosaka has occupied its address at 1-2-25 Hirosaka, in central Kanazawa (postal code 920-0962), since opening in 1997. The shop operates as a dedicated showcase for the city's traditional craft trades, describing its mission as displaying and selling what its own materials call 'rare traditional crafts of Kanazawa,' distinguishing it from conventional souvenir retail. Its premises span two floors of gallery space, given over to rotating exhibitions that introduce individual makers working across a range of disciplines — lacquerware, woodworking, ceramics, textile dyeing, glasswork, metalwork, and weaving are among the craft categories represented in its exhibition programme, each rotation drawing on different local artisans rather than a fixed, permanent selection. The shop is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Mondays and over the New Year period, and can be reached directly by phone or email, a level of direct access typical of a small, specialist gallery rather than a department-store craft counter. Nearly three decades after opening, it continues to function as one of central Kanazawa's few venues built specifically around introducing visitors to the working artisans behind the city's lacquer, dyeing, and metalwork traditions, rather than simply stocking their finished goods alongside unrelated merchandise.
Hirosaka, Kanazawa
Founded in 1780 in Kanazawa's Musashigatsutsuji district, Nosaku has sold Kaga maki-e lacquerware alongside Wajima and Yamanaka lacquer pieces across eight generations. It also runs hands-on maki-e gold-inlay workshops for visitors at its Kanazawa shops.
Best for Kaga maki-e lacquerware and hands-on maki-e workshops
Nosaku dates its founding to 1780, when Notoya Sakutaro opened a lacquerware shop in Kanazawa's Musashigatsutsuji district. Eight generations later the family business still operates under a stated motto, 'the shop exists for customers,' and continues to sell lacquerware out of Kanazawa rather than having relocated or franchised out the family name.
The shop's range covers three related but distinct Ishikawa Prefecture lacquer traditions: Kanazawa lacquerware decorated in the Kaga maki-e style, in which gold or silver powder is sprinkled into wet lacquer to build up a design; Wajima Nuri, the multi-layered lacquer technique associated with the port town of Wajima; and Yamanaka Nuri, known for lacquering over finely turned wood. Selling all three under one roof lets Nosaku present Ishikawa's lacquer output as a regional family rather than a single house style.
Beyond retail, Nosaku offers maki-e experience workshops where visitors can try the gold-leaf inlay technique themselves, alongside custom lacquerware commissions and a repair service for existing pieces. The business operates a main shop in Kanazawa's Hirokoji district and a second location inside JR Kanazawa Station, plus a small tea room, Urushi no Mi, on site.
Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Based in Kanazawa's Nomachi district, Tsuda Mizuhiki works in Kaga mizuhiki, the local style of decorative paper-cord tying used for noshi wrapping and celebratory gifts, and extends the craft into three-dimensional cord sculptures depicting seasonal motifs. The studio also makes mizuhiki jewelry and DIY kits, one of which earned a Kanazawa Brand Excellent New Product distinction, and offers hands-on cord-tying workshops.
Best for Mizuhiki cord gifts and accessories
Kanazawa
A historic Kanazawa sake brewery with shop, tours and tastings. The merchant house and brewery preserve Edo-period fabric and traditional craft details.
Best for Merchant house and brewery preserve Edo-period fabric and traditional craft details
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