Takamatsu, Kagawa — one of a series of shore days Japan Royal Service builds for residents and guests of The World.
A Sanuki temari is a ball of cotton thread wound over rice husks and stitched into a geometric pattern, and until recently the craft was almost extinct.
What separates the Sanuki version from the temari made elsewhere in Japan is the thread. It is cotton, and it is dyed with plants — indigo, madder, gardenia, onion skin, whatever the dyer has — which means the colours are muted, slightly uneven, and completely unlike the synthetic brilliance of a modern craft-shop ball.
Why it existed
Cotton was grown in this province. Mothers and grandmothers wound the leftover thread into balls for children to play with, and because a plain ball is dull, they stitched patterns into them. The patterns are geometry — divisions of a sphere into eight, ten, sixteen — worked by eye and by counting, without a template.
They were also a wish. A ball given to a child carried a hope that her life would run round and smooth, and the stitching was the labour that made the wish serious.
Then cheap manufactured toys arrived, and the craft stopped. It survives now because a small number of people in Takamatsu deliberately reconstructed it — the dyeing, the winding, the stitch counts — and kept teaching it.
What a session is actually like
You are given a wound core, a needle, and thread that somebody dyed by hand, and you are shown how to divide the sphere. Then you count, and stitch, and it goes wrong, and you learn why the divisions have to be exact before a single decorative stitch goes in.
It is quiet, seated, and entirely doable in an hour or two. It suits guests who are tired of being shown things and would rather do one.
You leave with the ball. That is not a small point — a great deal of what is offered to visitors in Japan produces either a photograph or an object somebody else made.
The useful part
The craft travels. A session can be brought to a room with a table — a hotel, a private room in another venue, or a lounge in a building where you are already spending the afternoon. Because the entire craft fits in a basket, this is a genuine solution rather than a compromise, and it is one of the few crafts at this port where that is true.
That also means it can be dropped into an afternoon that already exists rather than costing a separate journey, which for an older party is worth more than the craft itself.
One thing to decide early
If your call already includes lacquer, stone or ceramics elsewhere, we would ask whether you want a fourth thing in your hands or whether one is enough. The honest answer is often one. We would rather say that than sell four.
What we arrange
The session, the venue — theirs or yours — the length, and an interpreter, because the instruction is counting and hand positions and it does not survive mime. And, if you would rather simply own one than make one, that can be arranged too.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes Sanuki temari different from temari elsewhere?
The thread. It is cotton, dyed with plants rather than synthetics, which gives muted and slightly uneven colour. The province grew cotton, and the craft grew out of the leftovers.
How long does it take?
An hour or two, seated. You leave with the ball you made, which is not true of most craft experiences offered to visitors in Japan.
Should we do this if we are already doing another craft?
Often not, and we will say so. If your call already includes lacquer, stone or ceramics, one craft done properly beats four sampled.
More on this rotation
- A private evening on Yashima — Takamatsu
- Miyajima on both tides — Hiroshima
- One night as the lord of Ōzu Castle — Matsuyama
For residents and guests of The World
The ship lies at Takamatsu for days, not hours. That single fact changes more than anything else on this page. A place that opens three days a week stops being a gamble. An artisan can give you a whole afternoon instead of a demonstration. Nothing has to be cut short to fit a gangway.
We are a Japanese company, working in Japanese, with the people who own these places. The arrangements are made by someone the other side already knows.
Enquiries are handled privately and directly, at japanroyalservice.com/contact. We do not publish our clients, our itineraries, or our rates.
Access notes
We asked these questions of each place directly, and the answers are specific to it. Most guests will have no use for them; they are here because somebody will.
The workshop is a small traditional space with steps. The craft itself travels — the whole of it fits in a basket — so a session can be brought to any room with a table, which is a genuine solution rather than a workaround.
