Toyooka’s roots as a bag-making town go back a millennium approximately 1,200 years ago.
Due to the flooding of Toyooka’s Maruyama River, yearly rice harvests were unpredictable. As an economic alternative, townspeople began to weave baskets and traveling containers using materials from Toyooka’s willow trees.
As these containers grew in popularity across the country during the Edo Period, bags created using weaving techniques known as yanagi-gori (willow craft) gave the city a reputation famous for bag-making.
These bags were presented at many international expos, where they won awards at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904.
BUSINESS INFORMATION
- Business Name
- Kiryu Traditional Crafts
- Business Hours
- 10:00-15:00
- Holidays / Closed
- Wednesdays
- Language Support
-
Sorry, but only Japanese is spoken.
LOCATION
107-1 Izushicho Uchimachi, Toyooka, Hyogo 668-0214
Kiryu Traditional Crafts is a boutique specializing in producing and selling yanagi-gori (willow craft) bags which can only be found in Toyooka and were the catalyst for Toyooka’s bag-making industry. The apprentices of Takumi Terauchi, the only craftsman in Japan who has received national certification as a traditional yanagi-gori artisan, can be found greeting customers while weaving new willow bags at their work benches right beside the creations already for sale.