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A Vibrant Craft Scene in Toyama Is Luring Travelers Off of Japan's Well-Traveled Golden Route

This is part of Uncovering Japan, a collection of stories that spotlight the lesser known gems that belong on your Japan itinerary, offering everything from a wellspring of local craft and a vibrant street-food culture to traditional wellness. Read more here. I recently experienced the most memorable sunset of my life, not on a beach in Santorini but on a hilltop in rural Toyama, Japan. As the sun dipped behind forested hills into the Sea of Japan, the vast Tonami Plain spread out below me, sunlight dancing on its patchwork of flooded rice paddies, as large, gabled farmhouses were thrown into silhouette against the orange sky. This extraordinary landscape of scattered villages—known as the sankyo-son—is nestled on a 18-mile plain between the 10,000-foot Northern Alps and the 3,000-feet-deep Toyama Bay. Its 7,000 or so farmsteads, each with their own fields and 'house forests' of cedar and zelkova, are a unique feature of Toyama—a place where culture is deeply entwined with the land. Homeware brand Nousaku was the first to create products made of 100% tin, an innovation driven by its fifth-generation female CEO. Koizumi Studio Nowhere is this connection more apparent than in Toyama's craft culture, which has become a draw for visitors, like me, venturing off the east coast Golden Route into the 'real' Japan. Spanning mingei folk craft, woodcarving, metal casting, ceramics, lacquerware, mother-of-pearl inlay (raden) and glassmaking, Toyama's galleries and artisan workshops are spread throughout the prefecture. To explore them, the place to start is Toyama City, at Kengo Kuma's eye-catching Toyama Glass Art Museum. You can be delivered there from Tokyo in around two hours via the Hokuriku Shinkansen, whose drivers' cab windows are, appropriately, crafted in Toyama technical glass. With its granite, glass, and aluminium façade inspired by nearby Mount Tateyama—one of Japan's three holy mountains—the museum is a short walk from the station and Toyama Castle. A celebration of Toyama's glass industry, it showcases post-1950s glasswork and includes a permanent exhibition by Dale Chihuly, created in collaboration with Toyama glassmakers. Take the tram, or a sightseeing boat along the Fugan Canal, from the city to the coast, to Iwase, once an important port town on the kitamae trade route between Hokkaido and Osaka. Depopulated and dilapidated in recent decades, its compact historic center has been revitalized by local sake magnate Ryuichiro Masuda and is now home to restaurants, studios, and galleries of artisans such as glass craftsman Taizo Yasuda and fine wood sculptor Tsutomu Iwasaki, who hails from nearby Inami—Japan's most famous wood-carving town. Don't miss the gallery of cutting-edge ceramicist Gaku Shakunaga, whose tableware is seen in Michelin-starred dining rooms such as three-star SingleThread in California. An artisan at Suzugami workshop applies a rare hail pattern. Courtesy of Mizu to Takumi Yoshinori Shimatani's traditional wooden tools hang in his Toyama studio. Courtesy of Mizu to Takumi Heading west, Takaoka is the heart of Toyama's metal-casting industry which was centered around Kanaya-machi, a district that retains many well-preserved wholesaler and artisan houses from the late-19th to mid-20th centuries. Bronze makers thrived there, producing artifacts for Buddhist temples. One such is Shimatani Shouryu, makers of handcrafted orin (bowl gongs) and singing bowls since 1909. Visitors to their workshop can try hammering their own small paper-like tin plate called a suzugami. Meanwhile, bronze workshop Momentum Factory Orii has pivoted to creating lighting and interior accessories (clocks, vases, tableware) with patinated copper.