Golden Touch: Try a Kintsugi Experience in Central Tokyo

Join a Kintsugi Experience in the Heart of Tokyo

In Tokyo's stylish Nihonbashi district, hundreds of years of Japanese elegance, Western influence, and business acumen have resulted in the towering office buildings and retro-luxury department stores we see today.

Among these, guests will find the six-story Mutoh Honten building, where they can purchase tableware from all around Japan. This facility offers an exclusive experience to try an ancient Japanese craft as well – kintsugi.

Our team joined a kintsugi workshop at Mutoh offered by our trusted partner, Wabunka, where we learned the ins and outs of this delicate art.

Read on to discover an amazing, meditative experience that we would recommend to any Japanese culture enthusiast.

About Wabunka

Wabunka is a platform that offers private cultural experiences across Japan. Travelers can take part in knife-making classes, kintsugi workshops, and other hands-on activities led by renown local artisans, artists, monks, and other experts.

Every experience is fully private (no mixed groups) so guests can focus on learning and participating without distractions. A private guide is included when the host doesn’t speak English, making it easy for international visitors.

Designed for busy travelers, Wabunka’s experiences are straightforward to book and fit seamlessly into any itinerary.

What Is Kintsugi?

Kintsugi is the technique of using urushi lacquer and gold or brass to repair broken pottery.

The art has been around since the Muromachi period, when fine tea rooms began to employ it as a way to highlight the fleeting beauty of damaged servingware. When the utensils couldn’t be used anymore, they were repurposed as beautiful decorations with veins of gold.

Traditional kintsugi can take as long as a month to complete and dry a single piece, and the urushi lacquer used is both extremely prized and toxic. To fill in cracks and create a strong bond, lacquer had to be mixed with materials like sawdust and cotton before the eye-catching metallics could be applied.

In modern times, facilities like Mutoh can use synthetic lacquer, which has a much faster drying time and won’t irritate the skin.

This technology makes kintsugi experiences beginner-friendly, quick, and perfect for visitors to enjoy kintsugi even on a short trip to Japan!

The Kintsugi Experience at Mutoh Main Store

Mutoh is staffed by professional dealers and artisans with extensive knowledge of their wares. They guide visitors through all of the key steps needed to create a one-of-a-kind piece of kintsugi art.

Step 1. Creating Your Kintsugi Piece

First, select a ceramic piece to repair from the options provided by the staff. After the repair, you can take it home as a souvenir.

Please be aware that the repaired ceramic pieces are for decorative purposes only, as the synthetic lacquer used in kintsugi is not food-safe.

The first step is to mix the synthetic urushi adhesive and paint it onto the broken, exposed surfaces with a toothpick.

After re-adhering the broken pieces, any chips or gaps can be filled in with epoxy putty. Participants will be able to mold the epoxy putty themselves and press it delicately into place.

Step 2. Learn about Kintsugi History and Techniques

A ceramic piece repaired through the yobitsugi technique

While the newly repaired pottery dries, your instructor introduces some of the history of kintsugi and ways it has been used creatively to breathe new life into broken pottery.

One of the most eye-catching techniques is yobitsugi, which involves building up mismatched shards into a totally new piece of ceramicware! Synthetic lacquer is especially useful for this process because it can be used to adhere porous materials like porcelain to nonporous ones like glass.

Step 3. Refining the Repaired Ceramic Piece

Once the pieces are dry, participants will be able to sand and file down any bumps or unsightly parts of the repair. They have a lot of trust in letting just anyone work with sharp X-Acto blades and sandpaper!

Once the repair sections are ready, another portion of lacquer mixed with metallic powder is prepared.

Step 4. Decorating the Finished Work

Guests can choose between a few different metal powder blends, including “green” or “red” gold, which are subtly different but both very beautiful!

Even though kintsugi uses the word for gold in its name, not all kintsugi pieces actually use gold. Bronze is also very common, and some artisans even choose to leave the natural color of lacquer or add striking dyes like pinks and greens.

Finally, guests are welcome to add their own unique flourishes and designs to complement the repair. From start to finish, these one-of-a-kind souvenirs express the artisan’s ideas and skills with elegant subtlety.

About Mutoh

Mutoh was established in 1923 as a lacquerware and glassware wholesale company. Mutoh has a long relationship with department stores, making Mutoh Main Store’s location right in front of the Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi department store an appropriate choice.

Kintsugi kits on sale at Mutoh

In their shop on the first floor, you can also find Kintsugi kits specially designed for those who would like to try golden joinery at home.

Although Mutoh mostly sells wares for resale in bulk to retailers, they noticed an opportunity to put otherwise thrown-away pieces to good use.

Mutoh’s Kintsugi Workshops

When Mutoh’s partner kilns and studios have slightly flawed products that can’t be sold, usually the pieces are simply destroyed and thrown away.

Instead, Mutoh decided to buy imperfect products and use them for public experiences and classes like kintsugi workshops. The initiative became an eco-friendly way to introduce traditional arts to the world.

Mutoh offers long-term classes to create works in hon-urushi (natural lacquer) for participants who can come for multiple sessions. In separate classes, maki-e workshops, which highlight the capabilities of beautiful, tiny metallic designs on lacquer work, and large group sessions are also available.

Visitors can work with many famous varieties of ceramics, including Arita ware, Kutani ware, and Kyoto ware. On quiet days, passersby are even welcome to pop in for a walk-in class and enjoy an hour or so of first-person immersion into the lives of kintsugi artisans.

English-speaking staff may not always be available. To ensure assistance, we recommend booking your Kintsugi workshop in advance through the Wabunka booking site:

Enjoy Repairing Ceramic Ware with Gold at Mutoh

We hope this glimpse into the Kintsugi experience at Mutoh has sparked your interest! This workshop, conveniently located in central Tokyo, offers flexible scheduling when booked in advance.

You'll leave not only with a beautifully gold-embellished ceramic piece but also with firsthand knowledge of Kintsugi—the art of embracing imperfections by repairing them with gold.