Note: The text below is the transcript of the YouTube video above.
Look at this.
These bamboo ribs. There are so many of them.
This is the inside of a traditional Kyoto umbrella.
It takes about a month to make. And it’s made by multiple craftspeople. Some of them spending their entire careers mastering just one part of the process.
And when it breaks… people don’t throw it away. They repair it.
One umbrella. Decades of stories.
In a world where we replace everything instantly… what does it mean to truly cherish something?
Today, I want to explore that question.
And I’ll be honest — I didn’t expect an umbrella to make me rethink how I treat the things I love.
But it did.
Hi, I’m Satomi Takayama, a Japanese artist based in London. On this channel, I share inspirations I’m collecting for my creative journey ahead—art, craftsmanship, design, and the stories behind them.
I’m on my way to meet wagasa craftspeople at Hiyoshiya in Kyoto. They’ve been making umbrellas since the late Edo period—over 160 years.
A couple of months ago, I walked into a craft gallery in Kyoto and saw something that completely stopped me.
A large lamp shade—made with washi paper.
The light coming through it was soft, warm, delicate… and somehow really striking.
I wanted to know: who made this?
And when I found out it was made by traditional Japanese umbrella craftspeople right here in Kyoto, I knew I had to meet them.
This is a Kyoto wagasa—a traditional Japanese umbrella. Made entirely from natural materials: bamboo, washi paper, and plant-based oils.
And seeing it in person… It’s even more striking than I expected.
The craftsmanship up close—the precision of each rib, the warmth of the natural wood—honestly, it’s extraordinary.
It’s almost too delicate to touch.
And listening to her, I started to understand something—about beauty, about time, and about what it means to really cherish something.
The first thing I noticed was this:
Some beautiful things demand attention right away. But this… is different.
This is the kind of beauty that makes you slow down.
It makes you really look—because if you rush past it, you miss it entirely.
The grain of each bamboo rib. The way they all come together at the centre.
We get so busy day to day that we end up walking past beauty like this all the time.
And I’m definitely guilty of that, too.
But looking up at those bamboo ribs… it was genuinely breathtaking.
[Craftswoman speaking]
What a beautiful way to think about it.
Fragility isn’t a flaw.
It’s the reason you want to take care of something.
And that care is built into every little detail.
Then she explained something I’d never thought about before.
[Craftswoman speaking]
Every detail, every gesture—thoughtful.
Designed around care. Not just for the umbrella itself, but for your clothing… and even for the people around you.[Craftswoman speaking]
There’s something very Kyoto about that.
Beauty isn’t about adding more. It’s about stripping things back—finding what’s essential, and staying with it.
You see it in Japanese gardens. In a flower arrangement.
And now, I see it in wagasa too.
And that brings me to the third lesson.
When you have something this beautiful—something you’ve actually taken time to notice—you don’t want to let it go.
You want to live with it.
You want to feel how it sits in your hand after a year.
How the materials settle. How it become yours.
And that’s why—even ten years later—people still bring these umbrellas back to be repaired.
And I realised that there’s a beauty in using something for that long.
[Craftswoman speaking]
What they cherish.
And it made me think… not just about umbrellas.
How often do we, living in a fast-moving world, replace instead of repair?
Something stops working the way we hoped, and we just move on. A relationship gets difficult, and we walk away. A habit we can’t maintain, and we give it up entirely.
But what if some things are worth repairing? What if the act of repair itself—whether it’s an object, a relationship, or even a part of yourself—is what creates real depth?
Because a repaired umbrella isn’t weaker than a new one. It carries something more. Time. Care. History. The story of someone who chose to stay with it.
Behind this one umbrella are many hands—craftspeople who spent their lives mastering one small part of this process.
[Craftswoman speaking]
When you know that, the umbrella holds something more than just its physical beauty. It holds time. It holds craft. It holds the dedication of people you’ll never meet.
And that’s worth cherishing.
But wagasa are rarely used in daily life anymore.
So the fifth-generation craftsman started asking: how do we bring this beauty to more people?
[Craftswoman speaking]
Still discovering new beauty in the craft they’d devoted their lives to.
This is one of the most beautiful examples of a traditional craft finding its place in the modern world—not by losing what makes it beautiful, but by finding a new form.
After visiting their workshop, I kept thinking about how I want to bring this kind of beauty into my own life—and into my work.
I’d love to have one of these in my space to appreciate—either the umbrella or one of those lamps.
I’m just really drawn to things made with real care now.
And that’s something I want to carry into my future projects too—whether it’s a space, a collaboration, or something I haven’t fully figured out yet.
Because when you know the story behind something—the craft, the time, the hands that made it—it changes how you feel about it.
So I’d love to know: is there an object in your life that carries that kind of meaning for you?
Something you cherish not just for how it looks, but for what it holds? Please share in the comments.
If you want to see more of Hiyoshiya’s work, I’ve linked their information below.
And the lamp I mentioned is on display at KYOTO AMPLITUDE—definitely worth a visit if you’re in Kyoto.
Also—lately I’ve been travelling across Japan meeting craftspeople like this, and I’d love to eventually share all of this as an e-book or something.
If that’s something you’d be interested in, you can sign up for my newsletter—I’ll share updates there first.
Next time, I’ll be sharing my visit to an indigo dye artisan in Kyoto—someone who’s spent decades perfecting one single colour. There’s so much to learn from that. So stay tuned.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.
