About

The Nihon Craft Guide is written by Taku S., based in Japan. I also write The Nihon Spirits Guide, a sake and whisky site for the same kind of reader: someone outside Japan who wants a straight answer about whether something is genuinely well-made, not just marketed as "Japanese style."

Japanese lacquerware, ceramics, tea ceremony goods, and kitchen knives all have the same problem for a buyer overseas: it's hard to tell a piece made by an actual regional workshop from a mass-produced import that borrows the aesthetic. I check retailer inventory directly, cross-reference maker and region information against Japanese-language sources, and note honestly when a "Japanese-style" product isn't the real thing.

This site is new, and I'm upfront about that — recommendations here are built from research and verification, not decades of personal collecting. Where a claim is based on direct testing versus published specs and maker information, the article will say so.

How a claim gets made

Every factual claim in an article falls into one of four tiers, and I try to keep the wording honest about which tier it's in:

• Primary or independent source — a maker's own specification, a regional craft association, or an independent write-up not published by the seller. Stated as fact.
• Product spec sheet — the material, dimensions, or care instructions listed in the retailer's own structured product data (not the marketing copy above it). Cited with "the listing states" rather than presented as independently verified.
• Retailer claim — a seller's marketing description with no spec sheet or independent source backing it up. Flagged as "the retailer claims" so it isn't mistaken for something I checked.
• Unverified — anything I couldn't confirm gets left out or explicitly marked as unconfirmed, not smoothed over.

I don't buy and test every product before writing about it — that's what the second paragraph above is being upfront about. What I do instead: check the retailer's own spec sheet against its marketing copy (this is where "urethane" listed as "urushi" in the ad text gets caught), cross-reference maker and region names against Japanese-language sources, and confirm a product is actually in stock before recommending it.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, I'd rather know and fix it than leave it up. Substantive corrections (a wrong material claim, an out-of-stock product still listed as available, a maker misidentified) get fixed in the article directly, and I don't backdate the publish date to hide that a correction happened. You can reach me through thecontact page.

How this site makes money

Some of the products linked from this site are through retailer partnerships that pay a commission on purchases — seehow this works. That relationship never determines which products get recommended; the products this site calls out as not genuinely Japanese-made or not what they claim to be don't carry a commission link, on purpose.