Closing Time

The workshop closes at six. It has always closed at six. My father closed it at six and his father before him, and the reason is not tradition but practicality: after six the light through the north window changes angle and you can't see the grain properly, and if you can't see the grain you shouldn't be cutting. I make furniture. Chairs, mostly. Sometimes a table. Occasionally a cabinet for someone who has seen the chairs and wants something larger. I don't make them fast. A chair takes me three weeks. A table takes longer. The wood decides the schedule as much as I do. My workshop is in Takayama, in a building my grandfather built when the war ended and there was suddenly a need for everything — chairs, tables, beds, shelves, doors, window frames. He made all of it. He was not an artist. He was a carpenter who understood what people needed and made those things well enough that they lasted. Some of his chairs are still in use. Sixty years. The joints are tight. The wood has darkened but the structure holds. I went to university in Tokyo and studied economics for two years before I understood that I was in the wrong building. Not the wrong subject — the wrong building. I belonged in a workshop, not a lecture hall. My father said nothing when I came home. He handed me a chisel and showed me how to sharpen it, which took a week to learn properly, and then he showed me how to use it, which I am still learning. The chisel is the honest tool. A power tool does what you tell it regardless of what the wood wants. A chisel requires you to pay attention. You feel the grain through the blade. The wood pushes back when you're going against it. You learn to read resistance. My chairs cost more than people expect. I don't apologize for this. The wood is Japanese cypress, which I source from a forest two hours north. The joinery is traditional — no screws, no nails, no glue. The pieces fit because they were cut to fit, and they will hold because wood that is properly joined wants to hold. It's not magic. It's measurement. I sell eight to ten chairs a year. This is not a viable business by any economic standard I studied in Tokyo. I also repair things. I teach a weekend class. My wife works at the city office. We manage. Managing is underrated. At six o'clock I put the tools away. Each one has a place. The chisels go in a roll. The saws hang on the wall. The shavings go in a box that, when it's full, I take home for the bath — cypress shavings in hot water is not a luxury, it's a Tuesday. The light changes. The workshop is quiet. I lock the door and walk home through a town where some of the buildings were made by my grandfather and some of the furniture inside them was made by me, and the grain of both is still visible if you know how to look.