Kenya Kobayashi

Background

Kenya Kobayashi grew up in Fukuroi, Shizuoka, with a family craft lineage that was present but not automatically inherited. His maternal grandfather, Hashime, made vine baskets and brooms in Nishiaizu, Fukushima. At twenty-five Kobayashi began learning basketry from him because no one else in the family was continuing the work. When his grandfather's health declined, a lingering instruction to make brooms pushed Kobayashi first toward an elderly local woman who had made brooms with Hashime and then toward a formal apprenticeship.

Kobayashi left a geotechnical-survey job he had held for roughly a decade and in 2015 entered the Kanagawa workshop of broom maker Jiro Yamada. He learned cultivation, harvesting, drying, sorting and the slow tying/hammering operations that control a broom's shoulder, width, spring and sweep. He has described needing several years before the process became intelligible as a whole.

He became independent in 2022, returned to Fukuroi and named the workshop 一 hashime after his grandfather. He now grows pesticide-free broomcorn himself and continues basket/rattan knowledge through structural repairs of cracked vessels and furniture.