A traditional Japanese craft does not require a traditional Japanese room.
That may be the most important thing I learned while choosing the first Kamakura-bori pieces for Tabibito.
Kamakura-bori has roughly 800 years of history. Some examples are elaborate, with flowers and leaves carved deeply into the wood and finished in layers of urushi lacquer. They can look unmistakably traditional.
But the craft is much broader than one visual style. Some pieces are quiet and geometric. Some can stand on their own as art. Many were also made to be used.
When I began selecting Kamakura-bori for American homes, I was not looking for a version redesigned for America. I was looking for work that could remain completely itself and still feel natural here.
That distinction matters to me.
If you are new to the craft, start with What Is Kamakura-bori?. Here I want to focus on a different question: How can you actually live with it?
Start with the object, not a “Japanese” room
It is easy to think that bringing Japanese craft into your home means creating a Japanese-looking interior around it.
I do not think that is necessary.
A Kamakura-bori plate can sit on a wood dining table, a stone kitchen island, a modern sideboard, or a simple open shelf. It can be surrounded by American, European, Scandinavian, or contemporary furniture. The room does not need tatami, shoji, or other Japanese references to make the object belong.
The more useful question is whether the piece has a form, scale, color, and visual presence that work naturally with the life already happening around it.
That is one reason I was drawn to simple tōkon (刀痕) pieces for Tabibito's first collection.
Tōkon means “traces of the blade.” On these plates, repeated carving marks radiate across the wooden surface and remain visible beneath the lacquer.
Up close, the handwork is obvious. From farther away, the overall geometry is restrained.
That balance is what I was looking for: distinctive without dominating the space.
Why I chose simpler Kamakura-bori for a first introduction
I have spent roughly half my life in Japan and half in the United States.
When I started Tabibito, I began thinking of that as having two sets of eyes. One was formed by growing up in Japan. The other was formed by decades of actually living in American homes.
I did not want to use that perspective to tell a Japanese artisan what Americans supposedly want.
I did not want to ask someone to change a traditional color, simplify a motif, or make an “American version.”
My job, as I see it, is to keep looking until I find the places where the two already meet.
When I returned to Sansuido in Kamakura in March 2026, the shop was full of beautiful work, including intricate floral designs. But I kept coming back to two much simpler plates covered with strong radiating blade marks.
One was square and thick. The other was larger and round. Both had enough presence to stand alone as objects, but I could also picture them immediately in my home in California.
Fruit. Cake. Japanese sweets. A small bowl. Bruschetta or prosciutto when friends came over.
Nothing about the plates needed to be redesigned for those uses.
A good serving plate already knows how to be a serving plate.
Use Kamakura-bori as serving ware
Kamakura-bori is not only decorative art. Trays, plates, boxes, and other household objects have long been part of the tradition.
That opens up a much easier way to live with it: use the object for what it was made to do.
A serving plate can hold:
- Japanese sweets with tea;
- fruit on a dining table;
- cake or cookies;
- cheese and small appetizers;
- hors d'oeuvres when friends visit;
- a small bowl or another piece of tableware as part of a larger arrangement.
The food does not need to be Japanese.
That is important because otherwise a traditional craft can become something you take out only when you are performing a particular culture or occasion. I would rather see it become part of ordinary life.
Let it stand as an object when you are not using it
A useful object does not have to disappear into a cabinet between meals.
One reason I like the thicker Kamakura-bori pieces is that they have enough physical presence to stand on their own.
A plate can lean on a stand, rest on a sideboard, or sit flat on a table with nothing on it. The carving changes as light moves across the surface, so the piece can read differently over the course of a day.
This is especially true with deep relief or repeated tōkon marks. The pattern is not printed onto a flat surface. It has actual depth.
When the plate is needed, use it. When it is not, let the object remain visible.
For me, the best pieces do both jobs without feeling compromised: they are strong enough to stand as art, but useful enough to join everyday life.
Mix it with things that are not Japanese
You do not need matching Japanese tableware.
In fact, mixing Kamakura-bori with objects you already own can make the craft feel more personal.
A reddish-brown lacquer plate can sit beside clear glassware, white ceramic dishes, metal flatware, linen, or ordinary wooden furniture. The contrast often helps the carved surface become more visible.
The goal is not to construct a perfectly coordinated “Japanese” table.
It is to let one meaningful object enter your existing life.
That is also closer to how objects gather meaning over time. Homes are rarely collections assembled all at once. They are built gradually from things we bought, inherited, received from someone, or carried back from somewhere.
Do not be afraid of everyday life
Long before Tabibito existed, my friend Goro Koizumi gave my wife and me a Kamakura-bori tray as a wedding gift in 2009.
We brought it back to the United States and still use it on our dining table.
That experience matters to the way I think about these pieces. The tray did not become meaningful because we protected it perfectly for years. It became meaningful because it stayed near us while life happened around it.
Goro, whose family runs Sansuido in Kamakura, has always encouraged people to use Kamakura-bori rather than become so afraid of damaging it that the object never participates in daily life.
That does not mean ignoring proper care. Urushi lacquerware should be treated with respect, and I plan to cover cleaning and care separately. But respect does not have to mean leaving a serving plate untouched forever.
There is a difference between caring for an object and being afraid of it.
Look at Kamakura-bori from two distances
If you are considering a piece for your home, I find it useful to look at it in two ways.
First, look closely.
Notice the carving. Follow the tool marks. Look into the recesses. Move the piece slightly and watch the highlights change. If you can handle it, feel that the pattern has actual physical depth.
This is where the human work becomes visible.
Then step back.
Forget the individual chisel marks for a moment. Look at the whole silhouette and the overall pattern. Ask whether the object feels calm in the room or demands too much attention from everything around it.
This second view mattered a great deal when I chose the simple tōkon plates.
Up close, they are full of evidence of the hand. Across the room, they become simple circles, squares, and radiating geometry.
That is why I think they can be an easy first Kamakura-bori piece for someone who loves Japanese craft but has never owned Japanese lacquerware before.
Tradition has already changed the way it lives
Using Kamakura-bori in contemporary life is not a modern invention imposed on an old craft.
The tradition itself has a history of changing how people used it.
Its roots are closely connected to Buddhist sculpture, temple furnishings, and religious objects. During the Meiji period, when the world around Buddhist craftsmen changed dramatically, Kamakura carving families increasingly applied their skills to household objects such as trays, boxes, and tableware.
The core craft survived in part because it entered new parts of everyday life.
Today Kamakura-bori is still made, taught, displayed, sold, and used in Kamakura. At the Kamakura-bori Kaikan, even the cafe serves food on Kamakura-bori lacquerware.
So when you put fruit or cake on a carved lacquer plate, you are not somehow disrespecting an 800-year tradition by making it ordinary.
You are allowing the object to continue doing something the tradition has learned to do for a very long time: live with people.
The way I hope Tabibito pieces are used
I do not expect every person to use Kamakura-bori the same way.
Some people will be drawn first to the carving and display a plate as art. Others will put it on the table immediately. Most may do a little of both.
What matters to me is that the object does not feel like a cultural artifact that has to remain at a distance.
Pick it up. Look at the marks. Put something on it. Let it become part of your room and your own routines.
Over time, the most meaningful thing about the object may no longer be that it came from Japan.
It may be the dinner when you used it, the person who noticed it, the food you served on it, or simply the fact that it has been sitting in the same place in your home for years.
That is when a craft stops being something you merely admire and starts becoming something you live with.
