Somakosha 2025

Traditional hand-hewn beams supporting the roof of an old Japanese farmhouse

I may have left Japan, but in so many ways Japan has not left me. Unexpected smells and sights whisk my mind away to moonlit streets and rainy hours spent in cafes. Black tea, 7-elevens, faded wooden signs and the crunch of wood shavings pull me straight back to the workshop. When I talk about Japan, what I’m really associating with these wonderful feelings is Somakosha.

Back in 2024 I attended the Japanese woodworking festival in Maine. Meeting other enthusiasts and witnessing the craft personally lit something in me that hasn't gone out. I learned a lot that weekend, most importantly about a place called Somakosha, a Japanese woodworking firm in Okayama. The co-founder was there in Maine and told me about it himself: how they worked, what they built, and how they'd soon be teaching classes. I signed up as soon as I could. Months later I was on a plane, more sharp steel in my luggage than clothes, headed toward something I couldn't quite name but badly needed.

A building on display at the Maine woodworking festival, built as part of a timber framing class

One pitfall of a niche hobby like Japanese woodworking is that you rarely get to share knowledge, meet other craftsmen, or learn from anyone at all. You exist in your own world, immersed in obscure articles, out-of-print books, and YouTube videos with dozens of views that guide you through ten thousand circles of trial and error. It has strange effects on a craftsman. Reading about a dovetail joint and cutting one are separated by about ten thousand mistakes. I knew a lot. I just couldn't do much with what I knew yet.

Knowledge is not the same as skill, and that fact is easy to forget when no one is around to show you the difference. Walking into Somakosha was stepping out of that vacuum. Watching carpenters do things I didn't think were possible — let alone consistently achievable — with quiet, effortless precision had a profound effect on me. It was clear I had to put down my ego, pick up a chisel, and learn everything I could.

A piece of wood with joinery marked out for cutting, courtesy of the teacher. Each line needs to be marked out and cut perfectly. Not an easy task.

Focus.

I knew good carpenters had to focus on the work to do it well, but focus is something that permeates every aspect of the shop, and even the lives of these carpenters. It’s something you feel as soon as you walk in. One of the first things that John (our teacher) did for the class was give a small seminar on focus. Focus isn't just taking out your earbuds or deciding to do something right. Focus is placing your pencil on the table instead of throwing it. It's clearing your mind to the point where you aren’t thinking about what you are going to eat for lunch, or what someone said to you at dinner last night. It is the act of completely abandoning the past and future and putting your entire effort into the present.

There is a very good reason for this. When you have 15 pieces of wood in front of you and every piece is crisscrossed with dozens of lines, all of which have to be cut to within a fraction of a millimeter there is no mental room for anything else but the task at hand. Even when I felt locked in I was making mistakes all the time. The task is too difficult and the stakes are too high for anything else to exist in your mind. A timber cut incorrectly can set a project back days, and a house that is built poorly will fall on the heads of those who live in it.

To acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to do carpentry at this level means you have to focus your life as well. It became clear that choosing carpentry as merely a profession would never be enough. The carpenters I spoke to did not say “I’m an amateur bicyclist who loves baking bread, reading, and I work for a company called Somakosha doing strategic building fabrication" they said “I am a carpenter” and from their tone it was clear that they were talking about their purpose in life, not their career. When a dozen people with that mentality, all focused on executing a project to the best of their abilities come together the product is sublime. Their love for what they do, their energy, hard work and focus all permeate the buildings they make and you can feel the difference in your soul.

Community.

This might sound intense and scary being surrounded by such focused and skilled people, but the honest truth is they possessed a contagious sense of happiness and genuine joy. Our teacher John would give people a hug when they came in for the day because he was so delighted to see everybody again. Yama-san would point out a student's mistake in such a way that they’d be smiling at him while he told them. Yoko’s enthusiasm was so palpable that students would follow her around like baby ducks, basking in her knowledge and shared energy. Every twenty minutes the deep, booming laughter of one of the carpenters would erupt from outside like clockwork and you couldn’t help but smile as you heard the universal thunder of human joy permeate the workshop.

The tide of the community lifted the boat of every craftsman. Rain didn’t dampen anyone's spirit, mistakes didn’t sting like normal, and fatigue battled the friendly energy of the workshop. Fatigue never won, it just shifted our gears as we would leave the workshop physically exhausted, only to spend hours at dinner with each other anyways. When fatigue inevitably pushed me to the precipice of exhaustion, a conversation with Yoko or a trip to the onsen would pull me back into woodworking with just as much zeal as the first day.

On one of the last days of the course, John invited every student and carpenter to his house for a feast. A fire crackled in its pit, cans of sapporo cracked open, vegetables and meat were cut and skewered by the pound, and kids ran around in costumes helping adults fetch things. When bellies were full, kids tucked into bed and the moon low on the rice-paddy horizon, random objects became impromptu chairs drawn closer to the fire. Logs, an upside down bucket, even the earth itself was comfortable enough if it meant getting closer to the embers of the fire and a chance to bask in the universal glow of community and joy.

Thoughts.

You may leave a place like that, but it does not leave you. Once the veil has been lifted on that world it cannot be unseen. Time spent working on a product that doesn’t physically exist seems like a waste. A workplace without rain, laughter, sweat, joy, focus and the smells of the forest feels like no place to work at all. It almost hurts thinking about a life with such profound purpose and community, because wishing for it in your future admits that you do not have it in your present. Surely something that brings such joy cannot be achievable in a lifetime? And yet there it was right in front of me for two and a half weeks, as real as life is short. Whenever I build something I try to infuse that feeling into the piece, impossible as that might be. I hope that by choosing this path in life to build things from wood, that everything I make brings me one step closer to that future rich in joy, laughter, community, but also hard earned fatigue, the chill of the rain, and the bitterness of black tea.