The Beauty Layered in Time: The Spirit of Japan in Lacquerware

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Glossy black. Vermilion that seems to breathe. 
The smooth feel when you hold it in your hand, and the way its sheen deepens the more it is used. 

 

Lacquerware is one of Japan’s most refined and intricate traditional crafts, a mirror of the country’s aesthetic sensibility. 

 

The light of lacquer does not glare harshly like glass. 
It gleams as if sinking inward, changing expression with the angle, its outlines soft rather than sharp. 

Black grows deeper as black; vermilion grows clearer as vermilion. 

Through that gradual change, a vessel shifts from being something we simply “use” to something we “grow with” over time. 

 

This uniquely Japanese craft is not only beautiful to look at. 
Within it live a way of thinking that values nurturing things over years, a willingness to cherish and accept what has been broken, and a quiet philosophy of living in step with nature. 

 

To touch lacquerware is to encounter a way of seeing in which a vessel is something you cultivate through time. 

 

The History of Lacquer – Skill and Beauty from the Jōmon Period Onward 

 

The history of lacquer in Japan reaches back to the Jōmon period. 

 

At the Sannai-Maruyama Site in Aomori Prefecture, archaeologists have unearthed combs and vessels coated with red lacquer. 

 

 

This large settlement, where several hundred people are thought to have lived between roughly 5,500 and 4,000 years ago, is one of the largest Jōmon sites in Japan. 

 

The lacquer pieces found there were not merely utilitarian. 
They were made as decorative objects that made the most of the vivid red color and soft luster. Even at that ancient stage, lacquer was already being treated as a material that carried “beauty.” 

Tapping natural tree sap, applying it to wooden tools, then adding patterns on top—these techniques and ideas had already taken shape in that era. 

 

 

Such discoveries tell us that lacquer has been used in Japan from a remarkably early time. 
From the beginning, it existed both as a material for daily tools and as a medium of beauty. 

 

Later, from the Nara through Heian periods, lacquerware developed as ritual and furnishing pieces for temples and the imperial court. From the Muromachi into the Edo period, decorative techniques such as maki-e (gold and silver sprinkled designs) flourished, and lacquerware spread into everyday life as well. 

 

While changing its outward form from age to age, lacquerware has sunk deep roots in Japanese daily life—surviving not only as lavish works of art, but also as practical vessels that color the family table. 

 

A Philosophy in Layer Upon Layer 

 

The making of lacquerware is not an activity that prioritizes speed or efficiency. 

 

Wood is carved. The ground layers are prepared. Lacquer is applied, dried, polished, and applied again. 
The process involves dozens of stages, and a single vessel may take months to complete. 

 

Each step is delicate, and temperature and humidity can alter the result. 
Craftspeople read the thickness of each coat and how it is drying, and build the surface up stroke by careful stroke. 

 

【Tsugaru-nuri artisan at Matsuyama Lacquer Workshop.】

 

In this repeated layering, you can sense something akin to the spirit that the haiku master Matsuo Bashō called fueki ryūkō: 
honoring unchanging fundamental techniques while also responding to shifts in daily life and the times, and quietly breathing new life into tradition. 
The “unchanging” and the “ever-changing” sit there side by side. 

※Fueki ryūkō : Bashō’s idea that one must treasure what is eternally essential (fueki) while also embracing forms that change with the age (ryūkō). 

※For more on Bashō, see the related article: Matsuo Bashō – The Solitary Poet Who Perfected the Art of Haiku

 

The surfaces of black or vermilion lacquer receive light softly, changing expression as you tilt them. 
In the hand they feel cool, leaving a smooth trace under the fingertips. 
Time spent applying and curing each layer is what shapes that quiet beauty. 

 

A Vessel That Grows Through Use 

 

Lacquerware is not “finished” the moment it leaves the workshop. 
As you use it, its sheen increases, the light on its surface becoming more settled and calm. 
It is not the brilliance of something brand-new, but a luster created by human touch and the passage of time. 

 

And even when lacquerware breaks, that is not the end. 

Instead of treating chips and cracks as “flaws” that demand disposal, Japanese culture offers another path: to mend and return the piece to use. 

 

This is the art of kintsugi. 

Broken parts are joined with lacquer, then adorned with gold or silver powder so that the vessel accepts its past damage and is reborn with even greater richness. 

 

Kintsugi is not a repair that aims to erase scars. 

It keeps the marks of breakage visible, acknowledges the time the piece has lived through, and then brings it back into everyday use. 
Behind this lies a value system that esteems not perfection, but the time inscribed in an object. 

※For more on kintsugi, see the separate article： When Imperfections Shine: The Philosophy of Kintsugi

 

In this way of thinking, you can strongly sense the Japanese sensibility that embraces mono no aware and mujō—an awareness of transience and the bittersweet beauty that comes with it. 

Through such a lens, lacquerware grows within daily life, eventually wearing a beauty that is entirely its own. 

 

 

Lacquer Landscapes Across Japan 

 

All across Japan, lacquerware cultures have taken shape within the particular nature, climate, and lifestyles of each region. Even though the material is the same, the strengths and expressions of the vessels change with place. 

Tsugaru-nuri (Aomori Prefecture) 

※Read about Aomori：Life in the North Shaped by Harsh Winters and Abundant Harvests

 

Tsugaru-nuri developed in Aomori, in a region of long, harsh winters. 

 

Its distinctive feature is the togidashi-kawari-nuri technique, in which multiple layers of colored lacquer are built up and then polished back to reveal intricate patterns in the surface. 
The depth and complexity of these designs are themselves the visible accumulation of time-consuming work. 

 

 

Aizu-nuri (Fukushima Prefecture) 

※Read about Fukushima：A Tapestry of Diverse Landscapes Woven by Three Regions

 

Aizu-nuri, from the Aizu region of Fukushima, has long been cherished as lacquerware “made to be used” in everyday life. 

 

Grounded in practicality and durability, it also incorporates maki-e and other decorative techniques that give it a certain grace and splendor. 

In a single piece you often find a balance between sturdiness suited to daily use and a beauty that stands out at celebrations and in gift-giving. 

 

 

Yamanaka Lacquerware (Ishikawa Prefecture) 

※Read about Ishikawa：A Land of Tradition and Beauty Inherited from the Kaga Domain

 

Yamanaka lacquerware, produced mainly in the Yamanaka Onsen area of Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture, is especially renowned for its woodturning (kijibiki) techniques. 

 

Artisans use the lathe to turn wood into thin, precise forms, shaping elegant curves in bowls and plates.
This woodwork forms the core of the local craft. 

Here, value is placed not only on the beauty of lacquer itself, but also on how light the piece feels in the hand, and how gently the rim meets the lips. 

 

In recent years, makers have incorporated contemporary designs as well, updating lacquerware as a tool for modern life while preserving the traditional foundation. 

 

 

Wajima-nuri (Ishikawa Prefecture) 

 

Wajima-nuri originated in Wajima City on the Noto Peninsula, also in Ishikawa Prefecture. 

Its most notable feature is a unique undercoat that uses local diatomaceous earth called jino-ko, giving the pieces exceptional strength. 

 

Decorative techniques such as chinkin (gold inlay carving) and maki-e further add to their refined, dignified appearance. 
These vessels, which combine toughness with beauty, reveal their true worth when they are actually used and worn in daily life. 

 

 

The differences among these regional lacquerwares are not only a matter of technique or pattern.
How they are used, and what roles they have been expected to fill—everyday tableware, gifts, ceremonial pieces—are all present in their shapes and construction. 

Through the shared material of lacquer, many distinct forms of “Japanese beauty” continue to live in different corners of the country. 

 

What Is Carried Forward 

 

Even as times change, the essence of lacquerware does not. 

 

In an age overflowing with new materials and technologies, lacquer vessels are still quietly picked up, still used day after day. 

 

In a small bowl resting in your palm there is the blessing of wood and lacquer from nature, and the hands of the craftsperson who shaped it into a vessel.
Layered onto that is the time of the person who has continued to use it. 

 

Lacquerware holds all of these within it and, as the years pass, comes to embody a beauty created by nature, by human skill, and by the slow accumulation of everyday life. 

 

【The process of making a Wajima lacquer bowl at Nakajima Chuhei Lacquerware.】