Yasuhiko
The Story
The Kuska company aims to combine tradition, fashion, and art to create products that are handcrafted by artisans through the seamless cycle of material production, dyeing and hand-weaving. Their motto of “not superficial but essential design,” inspires the artisans to best utilize the natural characteristics of materials in order to produce beautiful products that are timeless and unaffected by trends.
Born in the Tango region of Kyoto, Yasuhiko spent his school years playing baseball at a school famous for athletics. While in college, he fell in love with surfing and spent his days going on surf trips all over Japan and even abroad. He began a career working at construction sites for a building firm in Tokyo. On a visit to the family business one spring day, Yasuhiko was moved by the sight of the craftsmen carefully making textiles one by one.
Convinced that this was something that must be preserved, he immediately resigned from his job in Tokyo and joined the family business, aged 30. Although it had declined considerably, he recognized that the industry had a lot of historical depth, and he thought he could make use of it to express himself in some way to support this community. He admits that his main motivation was the idea that he could work while incorporating surfing into his lifestyle. Besides being a traditional silk production area, Tango has a beautiful ocean where he could surf, and enjoy fresh and delicious food. He spent the next two years training in weaving until taking charge of the business at the age of 32, whereupon he launched his original brand as a combination of tradition, fashion and art.
Yasuhiko still remains actively engaged in daily productive activity, believing his mission is to modernize traditional art.
The Craft
One of Japan’s premium silk-growing regions, Tango is known for its natural landscape of mountains, rivers, and sea that unite to create scenic beauty. Yasuhiko’s grandfather Hiroyuki began manufacturing and selling Tango chirimen crêpe textiles in 1936, taking his own father-in-law’s nickname for the company name.
Two generations later, Yasuhiko visited high technology production sites overseas, and decided that it was necessary to add value to products in areas other than price and production volume. After he became the president, he replaced all the looms in the factory with hand-woven ones. He subsequently found that hand-woven neckties were quite rare, and began to create fabrics by combining the advantages of hand-weaving with the stability of machine weaving. His brand was launched in 2010, creating products with a precise and meticulous attention to detail where the weaving is done one thread at a time. As such, a craftsman can only make up to two or three items per day.
To quickly spread the appeal of Tango chirimen materials, Yasuhiko began with basic products such as neckties, stoles, and sneakers that were easy to incorporate into daily fashion. Their primary goal was to make the brand known both in Japan and abroad, so that even if the kimono were to eventually disappear, Tango’s beautiful silk textiles would remain.
Yasuhiko launched a web media called “THE TANGO” to introduce not only his own products but also the new initiatives of Tango weavers. By introducing “Made in Tango” products that utilize the unique characteristics of each weaver, the region can become a name brand recognized internationally. As the market matures and the younger generation takes over, Yasuhiko believes that they will find more value in “inherited skills” such as local products and crafts.
Selected works
