Asakusa, Tokyo: Make Your Own Chochin Lantern with a Craftsman

Tokyo has many craft classes. Very few take place inside a studio that is still in commercial production. Here you work beside a craftsman who supplies chochin to shrines, festivals and restaurants across Tokyo, using the same washi, bamboo and brushes he uses to fill those orders. The studio itself is more than a century old. The lettering is what sets a chochin apart. Edo-moji is the brush style that grew up with Edo popular culture — the same hand seen on kabuki billboards, rakugo stages and old shop signs, each character shaped to carry strength and meaning. It is applied to your lantern by hand, in your name or a word you choose. What you carry out is not a souvenir version of the craft. It is made by the same process, carries lettering written for you alone, and there is only one of it.