desmoda’s posterous

Miya-daiku is a traditional Japanese craft for shaving or hand-planing wooden surfaces primarily for use in temples.  The art produces mirror-grade wood that can last hundreds or thousands of years without the use of sanding or varnish.  The temples themselves are often built without nails.

The tool for miya-daiku is extremely simple, a razor blade slotted into a carving block that looks deceptively like a vegetable peeler.  It's called the Kanna (kahn-na).  Because the tool is so simple, the technique required to produce miya-daiku supposedly takes years of training.

There was recently a show on NHK about miya-daiku.  They brought a miya-daiku master, Mr. Ogawa, and used electron microscopes to examine his work and his methods.  This particular television series is really great, it does a good job of capturing the art or essence of a master artisan or craftsman using technology (electron microscopes and high speed cameras) and then explaining the science behind the art.  I believe the program is called "Beyond the naked eye" but in Japanese.

On this episode there were some grains of wisdom that the miya-daiku passed along.

1) "Use the material how it was meant to."  This is a saying that the miya-daiku practitioners have.  It means, that every material has a born purpose and is best if used in that way.  For instance, a tree grows with a certain orientation facing south, this side receives more sunlight.  So when the craftsman harvest the tree, they will take note of the orientation and use the wood in the building with the same southward facing orientation.  Supposedly this can increase the lifespan of the piece, but they should have done more scientific analysis here.  In user interface talk, this would probably amount to meaning, "work around what people expect, not against it."

2) "I do not teach my apprentices.  I show them what needs to be produced and they teach themselves through experience."  I'm not really a fan of the "stand under a waterfall" type of training.  In this day and age, tools and techniques should be refined to their essence such that any beginner can pick it up produce a piece that is 80-90% good on the first try.  This is the only way to run a scalable business.  That extra 10% is what separates Masters from the rest of us.  But is it worth it to pay 90% more for that extra 10%?

3) "Techniques and methods can be rediscovered and revived if the building is still standing.  We build temples thinking that 300 years in the future, a craftsman might dismantle the building for renovation and say, 'Those 21st century miya-daiku were really dedicated to their work."  This is a rare sentiment in our throw-away consumerist society.  I would like to write code, build websites, and design action figures such that even a few months from now, when someone is taking it apart for a mod or renovation, they'd think, "Boy... Desmoda and Ownage really cared about this product.  It really shows"

Overall, I was impressed with the miya-daiku process.  By slicing away ribbons of wood 5 microns thick, they were able to produce a perfect surface from an organic material.  Is it possible to apply this methodology to action figure printing?  The spirit and dedication to their art was inspiring as well.

Now, let's go out and build a website that will last 300 years. =D