Kiro

Kiro is a Hakone yosegi marquetry shop in Yumoto, near Hakone-Yumoto Station, whose work is carried out by craftsman Yuhei Kojima, featured in the TV documentary series Ashita e no Tobira (Tomorrow's Door). Hakone yosegi itself dates to the late Edo period, when the craftsman Ishikawa Nihei, who had studied wood-inlay methods in Shizuoka, began combining the region's many naturally colored woods — white mizuki and mayumi, yellow nigaki, brown walnut, gray hinoki, black katsuragumi, red nato — into geometric mosaics. The style was designated a national traditional craft in 1984. Its defining technique, zuku, shaves a finished mosaic block down into sheets as thin as 0.15mm using a specialized plane, then applies that veneer to a finished object — a method that stretches a single block of patterned wood across many pieces rather than carving each one from solid material. Kiro applies the technique to a wide catalogue beyond the classic tea caddies and puzzle boxes: tote bags, geta sandals, photo frames, music boxes, chopsticks and tea canisters, sold from the shop's own storefront and online. The range shows a traditional craft adapted to everyday, contemporary objects rather than staying confined to souvenir-scale pieces.