PIONEERING THE INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION OF CRAFT SKILLS FOLLOWING ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMPANY IN 1928

From building structures such as Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines through to private dwellings and the tools that we use in our everyday lives, Japan is a nation that has for many centuries cultivated traditions based on wood that occupy an important position in our daily lives. Takeo Yamanaka, the founder of Maruni Wood Industry, spent his childhood at Miyajima in Hiroshima Prefecture, a place that has a rich heritage of traditional crafts based on the use of wood. Upon graduating from university he formed the Yamanaka Research Institute together with five other crafts specialists. This marked the starting point for Maruni Wood Industry.

The precursor of Maruni Wood Industry was Showa Mageki Kojo (Showa Bentwood Factory). Founded in 1928, this company established the technique of bentwood working that was considered extremely difficult at the time. The name of the company was changed to Maruni Wood Industry, Inc. in 1933, after which the company set about achieving the industrial application of crafts skills in distinction to traditional Japanese methods of furniture production, which had remained until then firmly rooted in the field of the handicrafts. This was thus one of the first Japanese companies to aim at creating and mass-producing furniture on the basis of a division of labor and with recourse to methods that did not entail reliance on the manual skills of artisans.

ACHIEVING A STATUS AS JAPAN’S LEADING BRAND IN THE FIELD OF CLASSIC FURNITURE

After the end of the Second World War, Maruni Wood Industry set about introducing new techniques acquired in the course of research and development carried out in connection with artificial methods for drying wood.

During the 1960s Maruni on its own developed carving machines and other types of machines for use in the production process with the aim of giving rise to ever more sophisticated woodworking techniques. The company thus acquired the skills needed to produce on a fully industrialized basis items of furniture incorporating sculpted carvings, a type of furniture that had until then been produced in the form of single units and had been regarded as extremely high class. The classic furniture developed by the company in 1968 continues to enjoy a reputation today as amongst the most successful examples of Western-style furniture ever produced in Japan.

Maruni Wood Industry thus developed into Japan’s most celebrated manufacturer of classic furniture, growing to the extent that the company came to occupy the prime position in Japan in term of sales as a manufacturer of high-quality furniture that evokes a traditional sense of beauty.