Cypress Craftsman Hiroshi Miura

"I started making models quite some time ago. In the mid-1960s, plastic came on the market and wooden bathtubs and buckets started to sell less, so I started making models in my spare time. Fishing is my hobby, and I could feel firsthand the disappearance of the types of boats I had been familiar with since childhood, so I decided to start by making a boat.

The first large-scale work I made was the "Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter" dolls made by Tsujimura Jusaburo in the mid-1970s. After that, I wanted to somehow preserve the Edo town that was disappearing, so I spent one to two years making each of the tenement houses, bathhouses, main stores, etc.

When I was a child, my father would take me to the entertainment district, where the atmosphere of Edo still lingered. Those memories, along with the memories of the various merchants I went to deliver baths that had been ordered, and my experience of working in a variety of jobs, such as making carts and working as a carpenter after the war, when I was unable to return to my original work, were all very useful in creating this work.

I thoroughly research nishiki-e and historical documents, but when I create, I try to incorporate the scent or lyricism of my memories. Things like, if this room were the landlady's room, what shape would the brazier be? It's things like that. It's not interesting to simply create a building. I think that even if it's the same item, it will be different if you create something just by pursuing the shape of an object and if you create it while thinking about the surrounding scenery, lifestyles, and people.

I would be delighted if people could enjoy looking at my work and imagine the lives of ordinary people in the Edo period." (Narrated by Hiroshi Miura)