Japanese Stone, Tile & Plaster

About this book

Three crafts from one earth — or two hundred entries in one guide? Japanese Stone, Tile & Plaster covers 200 entries in a single uniform format: every entry gives the Region & Materials, the Origins, How to Recognise it in a yard or on a roof, and Buying & Experience — where to buy, what to check, and how to care for the piece afterwards. Every entry runs to more than 200 words of substance.

Oya's carvable tuff and Aji's engraving-fine granite, the Setouchi quarry islands and the castle-wall palette; splitting, dressing and the three great walling styles, lanterns, basins and stupas; then the clay roof — Sanshu, Awaji and Sekishu tiles, smoked ibushi silver, and the onigawara demons on the ridge; then the wet trades — shikkui lime, earthen walls, namako walls and the white storehouse. Forms are only half the book: the working knowledge that protects a buyer fills the rest — the sixty-second heavy-craft routine, the separate price ladders of stone, tile and plaster, freight and cranes, care of outdoor stone, roofs and lime walls, and the quarries, kilns and yards worth travelling to.

No photographs: the recognition fields are written for weight, ring, grain and touch instead — heft, tap, cross-section and trowel mark — because those are checks a buyer can actually perform in a yard or demand of a listing.

Companion, kept separate: the architecture volumes surveyed buildings. This book is the materials deep dive — the stones, tiles and walls themselves, and the masons, tile makers and plasterers whose hands make them, every entry written fresh.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.