About the Fifth Generation

 

I am Japan's sole lamp artisan.

I was born into a family of lampmakers that began in 1924.

When I was in elementary school, the company dissolved once,

yet my mother (the fourth generation) restarted lampmaking with the strong conviction, “I absolutely must continue making lamps.”

 

When I was in college, the skilled assembly craftsman who had been the backbone of the company passed away suddenly. My mother's words, “Maybe we can't make lamps anymore,” moved me. “Then I'll make them,” I declared. Overruling my mother's objections, I dropped out of university and joined the family business.

But far greater obstacles than I imagined lay ahead. To my shock, no lamp-making manuals or blueprints remained. The old craftsmen had passed everything down verbally. We relied solely on my mother's memory and the knowledge of the one remaining factory manager.

Yet that manager was an old-school type who believed “women shouldn't enter the factory” and that "you don't learn the job by being taught. Steal it by watching." Yet, at my mother's request, he accepted me. With a notebook in hand, I spent entire days following his back, learning the work while pondering why he did things a certain way.

When illness eventually forced him to leave the workshop, he reportedly told my mother, “She's the one who could do it. She'll definitely manage.” Even now, ten years later, those words still sustain me.

 

Assembling our hurricane lamps involves numerous manual tasks alongside several operations requiring specialized machinery.

These machines are our own original, vintage equipment, and their blueprints no longer exist.

Even repair shops can't fix them, and sometimes I just stand helplessly before the machines.

Yet, by borrowing the wisdom of craftsmen in Yao City, a town known for manufacturing, we manage to repair them.

Thus, we continue production, preserving history by maintaining the manufacturing methods as much as possible.

 

Even with simple structures, the old machines have a soul.

I feel that soul also resides in the lamp's flame. We understand each other (sometimes carefully gauging their mood) and converse.

Alongside these machines and lamps that have survived through the thoughts of many people,

I want to continue lighting warm flames, staying close to them.

 

 

Fifth Generation: Yuka Bessho

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