About

Why I Started KASHIWA

In Japan, the right things are everywhere.

The rice bowl that fits your hand just so. The plate made for exactly what you're serving. The knife that feels right from the first cut. Lacquerware built up by hand, layer after layer, to be used for decades.

You find these things when you know where to look. Small workshops, family-run studios, craftspeople who have spent generations refining what they do.

These aren't souvenirs. They're things made to be used, made to be held, made to turn an ordinary moment into something quieter, more deliberate. Behind each one is a way of thinking about materials, form, and everyday life.

KASHIWA exists to bring these objects, and the rituals they hold, to a table on the other side of the world.

I've cooked on both sides, sourced on both sides, and felt the distance between them firsthand. I've spent more than 20 years in professional kitchens, first in Japan and later here in the United States. I found some good things here. But much of what I was looking for, the pieces that actually felt right in a Japanese kitchen and at a Japanese table, simply wasn't here.

KASHIWA is my answer to that gap.

Tradition, Reimagined

But KASHIWA isn't about preserving Japan exactly as it was.

Tradition only stays alive when it continues to evolve.

The techniques, materials, flavors, and ideas passed down through generations are not the end of the story. They are the starting point for what comes next.

Some things deserve to be carried forward just as they are. Others deserve to be questioned, reworked, and given a new form.

That's the space I'm interested in: where what has been inherited meets what can be imagined.

The form may change. The feeling remains.

The Spirit Behind Our Crest

The kashiwa oak holds onto its old leaves until new ones have grown, a quiet reminder of how one generation makes way for the next.

The world changes. We change with it. But what matters can continue forward: the care, the intention, the spirit behind what we make.

That is the spirit behind the KASHIWA crest.

How We Choose

Choosing what belongs in KASHIWA works the same way cooking does for me.

I don't want to simply recreate what came before. I want to understand it first: the technique, the material, the reason behind it. Then ask what it can become today.

That's the standard every piece is held to, shaped by years spent on both sides of the kitchen, in Japan and in the United States.

From objects to the rituals around them, from the craftsperson's workshop to the kitchen and the table, I'm interested in the connections between them.

KASHIWA is where those connections live.

— Founder, KASHIWA