|
 Stepping
through the double glass doors [of Takenaka],
I was greeted by a crowd of superb statuary. In
this sleek showroom, which was spacious but felt
like a gift shop at Christmas, full of vases,
clocks and stationery goods, I abandoned the image
I had constructed of local industry--of small,
tiring companies growing smaller, mature employees
growing older, and priceless technologies relinquished
to disuse. Mounting the wide staircase to the
second floor, I heard the hum of young voices;
about twenty uniformed men and women were busy
at word processors in a sizable space that suggested
a company that could be measured on a Tokyo scale.
If the
office murmured with anonymous efficiency, the
sitting room shouted out a single name: Tokizo
Takenawa. Atop one low book cabinet, a startling
gold bust painted with bold Kabuki markings seemed
to be constantly challenging itself to a more
extreme expression. Volumes of art history were
shelved as if in a private library, with care
and an eye to ease of selection. Takenaka sat
calmly, somewhat statue-like himself, across the
polished table in a low black leather chair.
I marveled
at the company's prosperity, and the (somehow
disturbing) subordination of tradition to modernity,
and he swiftly pointed out that there is a difference
between 'jiba sangyo' (local industry) and 'dento
kogei' (traditional industrial arts). Bronze (which
accounts for 50% of his company's output) is both.
Aluminum, with which he is not involved, is simply
a local industry--and not remarkable in the fact
that it is doing very well. Today, only 5% of
Takaoka's output is still bronze, but orders come
from all over Japan, and 90% of the bronze produced
in this country comes from Takaoka, a testimony
of the outstanding technology of the area's craftsmen.
Although
collaboration isn't uncommon at Takenaka (there
are 60 people in its circle of designers, sculptors
and craftsmen, and eight in-house designers),
the relatively long time it took to go from design
to prototype suggests that Igarashi and Y.M.D.
managed to challenge even a giant like Takenaka
to even more exacting requirements, and turn out
a heretofore untried combination of metals technologies.
In the 90 days of attempts and adjustments, the
reproduction team did its best to create the piece
Igarashi first envisioned, testing a variety of
metals. Eventually they settled on iron pipe coated
with pitch. Seemingly balanced atop are a sphere,
a cube, or a pyramid, all of tin bar.
|
Creating
and affixing this geometry proved the critical
step in the prototype production. Because Igarashi
was so taken with the elegance of bronze, the
production team tried putting the same alloy that
is used in bronze statuary through two wax-based
casting processes devised precisely for recreating
detailed and complex shapes: 'lost wax', developed
in the U.S. after World War II, and 'rogata',
a traditional Japanese technique that has been
used for more than a thousand years. .. .. 
Unfortunately,
although reproducing the sphere posed no problem,
the squared bars of the other geometry were simply
too severe for wax; some distortion was inevitable.
Explains Hideo Tomita, head of Takenaka's sales
department, "Now we employ the rubber-cast method
on tin, which has its own difficulties. Tin is
soft, which is both a plus and a minus." Soldered
together and onto the base pipe, these ornaments
must be sanded extremely carefully, and of the
three the globe is the most forgiving, since any
irregularities in the straight lines of the others
are easily visible. The pieces are finished with
a frosted oil paint called "lacquer". 
