Mure and Aji, Takamatsu — one of a series of shore days Japan Royal Service builds for residents and guests of The World.
There is a hill fifteen minutes from the berth that has been cut by hand for more than eight hundred years, and the men cutting it today learned from the men who taught the men who cut it for the Tokugawa.
Most visitors to Japan buy something made by a craftsman. Very few stand in the quarry the material came out of, on the same morning, with the man who owns it.
The hardest granite in Japan
Aji stone comes out of the hills above the villages of Mure and Aji, on the peninsula east of Takamatsu. It is a granite of unusual density and unusually fine grain, and the trade calls it the diamond of granite — not as a slogan, but because it behaves like one under a tool. It resists. It holds an edge that softer stone loses. It takes a polish that goes deeper than a surface.
When it is polished, something appears that is not visible in the raw block: a faint, cloudlike mottling in the crystal that the masons call fu. No two blocks carry the same fu. It cannot be manufactured, cannot be predicted from the outside, and is the reason a single grade of this stone has been reserved for centuries for work that had to outlast the people who commissioned it.
Certain faces of the quarry were historically set aside as goyō-chōba — reserved ground, cut only for official work. The distinction still exists in the trade's vocabulary. Standing in front of one is a different experience from reading about it.
A village of specialists
What makes this district singular is not the stone alone. It is that the work has been divided, over generations, into separate trades with separate floors.
There is a quarry. There is a shaping works. There is a lettering works, where characters are cut. There is a hand-polishing works. A block moves between them, and the men on each floor do one thing for their entire working life. This is not craft as performance. It is an industrial ecology that happens to be four hundred years old and still running.
Isamu Noguchi moved here in 1969 for exactly this reason, and his studio is a ten-minute drive away.
Aoishima, and the carver who runs it
Chikara Ninomiya is a working Aji stone craftsman who founded his own stone company in 1993 and later established Aoishima to take the material somewhere it had not previously gone — out of the memorial trade and into contemporary art and objects.
His firm are lettering specialists, and they hold a position that is becoming rare: characters are cut by hand rather than by laser. The house motto translates roughly as carve, and leave behind. Through AJI PROJECT he collaborates with contemporary designers and artists on pieces that read as sculpture rather than masonry.
He receives visitors himself. What he offers, in his own words, is the history of the stone and the industry in the showroom; the working processing floor; a demonstration by his craftsmen; the showroom pieces and the AJI PROJECT collaborations; and — for those who want it — tools in your own hands. He will build the visit to one hour or to three.
The quarry, and how you see it
The quarry floor is not open to visitors on foot. It is a working face — broken ground, drops, machinery — and the operator says so plainly rather than letting anyone find out on the day.
His answer to that was better than a compromise. He will take you along the quarry hills and through the stone town by car, guiding you from the window as you go — a landscape he describes himself as overwhelming. Nobody has to leave their seat to see the mountain being cut.
What it joins up with
This is a fifteen-minute stretch of coast that holds the quarries, the specialist workshops, the Takamatsu Municipal Stone Museum, and the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum Japan. A single day can hold the raw hill, the trade that works it, and the sculptor who came here because of both. Mr Ninomiya has confirmed that combining his visit with the museums is possible.
It is, so far as we know, the only place in Japan where that particular sequence can be walked in one morning.
What we arrange
The visit itself, at the length that suits you. An interpreter, because the conversation with a working craftsman is the point and it does not happen in English. The car for the quarry road. The tool experience, if you want your hands on the stone. And, where it fits, the museums either side of it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we go into the quarry itself?
Not on foot. The quarry floor is broken ground with drops and the operator says plainly that it is not safe. Instead you are guided along the quarry hills and through the stone town by car, from the window — which needs nobody to leave their seat.
Can we actually work the stone?
Yes. Tools in your own hands is one of the things the workshop offers, alongside a demonstration by its craftsmen.
How long does a visit take?
Between one and three hours. The workshop builds it to the length you want.
Is English spoken at the workshop?
No. The conversation with a working craftsman is the point of the visit, and it happens through an interpreter, which we supply.
More on this rotation
- Isamu Noguchi's studio at Mure — Takamatsu
- George Nakashima's Japanese workshop — Takamatsu
- Where Japan's pine bonsai are grown — Takamatsu
For residents and guests of The World
The ship lies at Takamatsu for days, not hours. That single fact changes more than anything else on this page. A place that opens three days a week stops being a gamble. An artisan can give you a whole afternoon instead of a demonstration. Nothing has to be cut short to fit a gangway.
We are a Japanese company, working in Japanese, with the people who own these places. The arrangements are made by someone the other side already knows.
Enquiries are handled privately and directly, at japanroyalservice.com/contact. We do not publish our clients, our itineraries, or our rates.
Access notes
We asked these questions of each place directly, and the answers are specific to it. Most guests will have no use for them; they are here because somebody will.
The quarry floor is not entered on foot by anyone. Instead the quarry hills and the stone town are guided from the car, through the window — which needs nobody to leave their seat. The showroom, the processing floor and the tool work are all done indoors and seated.
