Tsuda Chokoku

Tsuda Chokoku carves ichii ittobori, the Takayama technique of shaping Japanese yew (ichii) into figures and objects with a single blade, leaving the wood's natural grain and color as the only finish rather than applying paint or lacquer. The workshop traces its own lineage back to Matsuda Sukenaga, credited as the founder of the technique in Takayama during the Edo period, and describes itself as holding the oldest continuous history among the city's ichii ittobori shops. Today it's run by brothers from the Tsuda family, the sixth generation to carry the name, working from a shop on Takayama's Honmachi street. The range spans small, collectible netsuke through zodiac figures and tea utensils to larger contemporary pieces, all cut from the same undyed yew and priced by size and detail rather than by any applied decoration. The studio has been recognized with craft-competition awards and carries a prefectural traditional-craft designation, but its core claim to distinction stays simpler: six generations working the same wood-shaping tradition from a single Takayama address, without the technique's signature restraint — no color, no lacquer, just the yew itself — ever changing.