Hirai Woodturner's Unshu: the part number names the wood, and only 4–5 pens leave the lathe a day
Down a lane past the shopping street in Kitatatsumi, Ikuno Ward, Osaka, there is a workshop that turns wood. Hirai Woodturner, founded in November 1970. Its Unshu line of fountain pens and ballpoints accounts for 29 part numbers in PencilDB.
From umbrella handles to fountain pens
According to the workshop profile published by its retailer Shokunin.com, the story begins in 1962, when the founder came from Tokushima to Osaka and met the lathe and the turner's trade. Through Japan's boom years what he turned were umbrella handles. Parts for brush pens, for cosmetic brushes, for fishing tackle followed — the work was subcontracting for big-name manufacturers. Writing instruments under the workshop's own name came much later.
The tool is called a shaka, and the turner makes it himself
Turning means holding a blade against spinning stock and cutting the shape out of it. The workshop explains that the blade used for this is called a shaka, said to be shaped after the palm of the Buddha's hand. It is not bought ready-made: each turner forges his own to suit the way he works. The lathe itself, the same page notes, leaves traces in Egypt before the common era, and in Japan the million pagodas of the Nara period were turned out on it in bulk. A day's output, the workshop says, is at most four or five pens.
The part number opens with the wood
Unshu part numbers are short. ST-M is the rosewood fountain pen, KT-M striped ebony, YS-M-noring yakusugi cedar, SK-B the cherry ballpoint. Two or three letters for the material, and in the code that follows, an M for a fountain pen or a B for a ballpoint — across the 26 alphanumeric part numbers held in PencilDB, there is no exception.
Price follows the material almost alone. Among Unshu ballpoints, karin, cherry, tigerwood, striped ebony and purpleheart are all ¥11,000; rosewood and yakusugi are ¥14,300. Fountain pens start at ¥16,500 for tigerwood, and those with a 14k nib from ¥39,600. The most expensive single pen is not wood at all: SI-GM, in deer antler, at ¥49,500.
In 2025 the former head was named a Contemporary Master Craftsman
The workshop announced that Mamoru Hirai, its former head, was selected as a Contemporary Master Craftsman (Outstanding Skilled Worker) for fiscal 2025. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare put that year's total at 142 recipients; the award itself dates from 1967. In November 2018 he was also certified an Osaka Techno Master. Footage of Hirai turning yakusugi has been sitting on the Shokunin.com channel, which has 1,110 subscribers, for fourteen years.
Watch the video (Shokunin.com channel)
Hirai Woodturner official site
Shokunin.com: Hirai Woodturner profile
FY2025 Outstanding Skilled Workers announced (Waza no Tobira, MHLW)