Hideyuki Sato
佐藤英之

Hideyuki Sato, born in 1977 in Iwaki, Fukushima, is a third-generation Kokeshi kōjin. His workshop, Kijidokoro Sato, was founded by his grandfather in 1901. After graduating from university and spending two years in the trading business, he returned to his family’s tradition at the age of 24. He creates Kokeshi in the fullest sense of the craft: from cutting and preparing the wood to turning, brushwork and sales — every step remains in one pair of hands, and within one family.

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Hideyuki Sato, born on 2 August 1977 in Iwaki, Fukushima, is the third-generation head of the Kokeshi workshop Kijidokoro Sato. The atelier was founded by his grandfather in 1901; both his father and grandfather shaped Sato’s craft before, after university and a brief career in commerce, he chose it as his own path at the age of 24.

Sato describes himself as a kōjin — a term used in the world of Kokeshi to refer to someone who masters the entire making process without division of labour: selecting and drying the wood, cutting the blanks, known as kidori, turning, painting by hand with a brush, finishing and selling. This completeness sets him apart from more specialised craftspeople and forms the core principle of the workshop.

The raw material is mainly dogwood, known in Japanese as mizuki, which is felled in winter and dried for one to two years before it can be worked. Sato works at the intersection of inherited tradition and the present day: the tools may have changed, but the commitment to craft integrity has not.

Together with his parents and brother, he runs one of the few remaining family workshops in the Tōhoku region where four members of the same family are actively involved in both turning and painting — a rarity among the roughly 100 Kokeshi craftspeople still active in Japan.