Our Stories, Now on Medium — Starting with Urushi
Sound has its channel in The Neiro. Textile has its home in Heritage Kimono Art. Now the stories — the ones too long for a product page — have a place of their own. This is VOJ on Medium.
A New Chapter from VOJ
Voice of Japan has been writing on Medium for a while — reflections on Japanese craft, culture, and brand. Now we're starting a new series within it: one essay at a time, going deep into a single material and the hands that shape it.
The series opens with urushi: a material born nine thousand years ago to protect the fragile things of daily life, and the quiet contradiction it now faces in a world of dishwashers and microwaves.
What Urushi Protects
Urushi doesn't dry. It cures — a slow chemical transformation that turns tree sap into something harder than the wood it coats. For nine thousand years, its entire purpose was function: make the fragile things of daily life survive daily life.
But a material built for daily use doesn't always survive daily life today. No dishwasher. No microwave. The honest result, more often than not, is that lacquerware stops being used and starts being displayed instead.
Where the Material Goes Next
Freed from the kitchen table, urushi finds new life — in jewelry, in sculptural art, in eggshell inlay and gold leaf folded between the layers. This shift, and what it means for a nine-thousand-year-old material, is what our first Medium essay explores in full.
Read & Follow Along
New essays in this series are posted on Medium roughly once a week, each one tied to a different craft. Urushi opens the series. Six more are on the way.
Read "Urushi : The Art of Protecting What We Love" on Medium
— Voice of Japan