What kind of work?
Performs coating and polishing repetitively. Produces products that can have a long history.
Nu-shi takes a role of performing coatings on wood substrates of bowls and trays among many related craftsmen. The process involves first, middle, and final coats, and those are done by one craftsman or divided into several craftsmen depending on the place of origin. The first coating to place Urushi and polish it number of times to obtain robustness, middle coating to remove irregularities and make it smooth, and final coating to finalize the smoothing leaving no brush trails. Through this process, products that can have a long history are produced. Urushi requires highly developed skills to handle. Temperature and humidity of the day gives influences on its drying speed, and dust is its great enemy. The job of Nu-shi is to perform its precise techniques while taking care of those things.
Desired characteristics
Being aspired every time, keep polishing its techniques step by step
Persistence is required for Nu-shi craftsmen to achieve its ideal finish while repeating coating and polishing. Craftsmen who have ambitions such as proactively taking ideas of how their superiors and masters do are only those who can develop themselves. As fabrication of tools is also their job, originality and ingenuity are another important element required. For those who are good at focus on work to achieve its goal, keep going forward steadily even in small steps from small things, and feel pleasure to create something, we would like to aspire to be Nu-shi.
The Path to Becoming a Nu-shi
The basic is to find employment at a Nushi-ya, or to start learning at a training center or a school.
The popular way is to find employment at a lacquerware maker, that used to be called Nushi-ya, as apprentice to aspire becoming full-fledged. Another way would be to start by learning either at a lacquering-dedicated course at university, vocational school, or high school, or at a craftsman under apprenticeship. In some cases three to four years of apprenticeship is treated as enough period to recognize them full-fledged, however it has been said ten years is required as minimum in reality.
| Products | Furniture,Tableware,Accessories,Bowl,dish,Tray,Boxes,Saucer,Tea ceremony utensils,Flower vases |
| Qualification | Lacquerware production certified technician |
| Related craftsmen | Togi-shi（Lapping Crafter） Chinkin-shi (Sunken Gold Crafter) Makie-shi (Gold or Silver Lacquering Crafter) Roiro-shi (Polishing Crafter) Kiji-shi（Wood substrate Crafter） |