Artist: Yuuki Kamei, Designer and Creator of KINOKABAN

Kamei lives deep within the forests of Yatsugatake. In his studio, gently filled with the sweet scent of wood shavings, he spends his days quietly conversing with logs over 200 years old.

Kamei allows the wood to rest and dry for a mind-boggling span of time—more than a decade or so after it has been felled. His creative process begins by standing before the wood and slowly engaging with it.

There is no set formula for the designs created here. He simply sets his chisel to the wood and listens intently to the beautiful grain that emerges and the subtle shimmer of the wood’s figure. Then, there comes a moment when “how this tree has lived” becomes visible, like a patch of sunlight. He carves out the shape the wood itself desires to become, feeling his way forward as if cherishing it.

“There is no art that surpasses nature,” Kamei says. Kamei draws inspiration from the orderly geometry hidden in wildflowers and grasses, the ever-changing colors of the sky, and the shimmering reflections on water. Even now, when he encounters the delicate yet dynamic forms of the natural world, his heart leaps with the excitement of a young boy.

A single fragment of beauty, accumulated deep within Kamei’s memory, suddenly transforms one day into a ray of inspiration and takes shape as a work of art. The voice of the wood, the forms of the natural world, and a quiet passion—a longing for beauty yet unseen—are brought to life in this world through the eternal motif of the “bag.”

A Beautiful Guidance Leading to a Single Line

He carved his very first KINOKABAN in 1990. It was a one-of-a-kind gift for his beloved wife. “I wanted to surprise her with something no one had ever seen before.” That single bag, carved from wood through self-taught techniques and shaped with single-minded devotion, is the very origin of everything that has led him to where he is today.

Later, as he began his career in earnest as a bag artisan and encountered countless tree species, he fatefully arrived at linden as the wood most suited for bags. Yet, surprisingly, that very first log he had once chosen and carved—knowing nothing about it, simply to bring a smile to his wife’s face—was none other than linden. Furthermore, the traditional floral meaning associated with the linden tree has long been “marital love.” Is this merely a coincidence? Or is it a beautiful, time-transcending sense of humor orchestrated by a two-hundred-year-old tree?

“My job is not to interfere with nature’s art. I am not the one creating it; I am merely allowed to let it be created.”

The reason his works radiate a gentle warmth that stirs the depths of one’s heart the moment you hold them is none other than the presence of such a profound love story at the very root of the artist’s own life. He creates only a little over thirty pieces a year. To pass on this miracle of nature to the next century, he continues to quietly breathe in unison with the trees in the forests of Yatsugatake to this day.

Profile: Born in 1963. Lives with his wife and three cats in the lush forests of Yatsugatake, Yamanashi Prefecture.