About Us

At Decima Japan, we make heirloom watch boxes by hand in Echizen — the town on Japan's west coast that has been a center of urushi lacquerware for over 400 years.

Why we do this

Most things are now built to be replaced. We wanted to make the opposite: an object good enough to keep, use daily, and hand on. Our watch boxes are made the way Japanese lacquerware has always been made — solid wood, hand-joined, and lacquered layer by layer over three months by a fourth-generation artisan.

Artisan applying red urushi lacquer by hand

Four generations of one family

What sets the boxes apart is the workshop behind them. The craft — and the knowledge of how to do it well — has passed down through four generations of the same family. Each generation has deepened it. That history is in every box.

Hand-brushing a layer of urushi lacquer

Where the name comes from

Decima — or Dejima — was the small artificial island in Nagasaki that served as the single point of trade between Japan and the Dutch during Japan's centuries of isolation. It was where two cultures met. The name fits us: a Dutch-Japanese venture built around Japanese craft. Like the original Dejima, we sit at the meeting point of the two.

Historical map of the Dejima trading post in Nagasaki

For over four centuries, Echizen has been the heart of Japanese lacquerware, home to artisans whose work once furnished the homes of nobles across Japan. That legacy is what we set out to honor.

How a box is made

From raw sap to finished box, the process runs through five stages:

  1. Tapping the lacquer — Urushi sap is harvested from the lacquer tree, the raw material for everything that follows.
  2. Building the base — A wooden base is cut and joined from Japanese cypress, pine, and cedar.
  3. Lacquering — More than 30 layers of lacquer are brushed on by hand, one at a time, over three months.
  4. Polishing — Each surface is honed until it's mirror-smooth.
  5. Finishing — Final details and checks before the box is wrapped and shipped.

Freshly lacquered boxes curing on a drying rack

Decima Japan is now winding down, and we're clearing the last of our stock. If you'd like one of the final boxes, we'd be glad for it to find a home with someone who appreciates how it was made.

— The Decima Japan Team