Rie Yoshida | MaseruBear
里江 吉田

Rie Yoshida is from Toyama Prefecture and crafts teddy bears from kinran — Japanese brocade whose gold threads and delicate patterns have fascinated her since childhood. Her grandmother taught her to sew and opened her eyes to kimono culture; both continue to shape her work today. After years in a local haberdashery, she founded her own bear brand: MaseruBear.

The name comes from the Toyama dialect and means, roughly: "I give you something — please accept it." This act of giving lies at the heart of her work. When Yoshida-san holds a new piece of kinran in her hands, everything else briefly falls away — the weave, the patterns, the history held within the cloth. Her bears are born from the desire to make that beauty tangible.

For PUNKESHI, she has developed a strictly limited special edition: kinran fabrics in carefully selected colours, available in small numbers only.