Kumano, Hiroshima

Buses from Hiroshima's city center pass through the mountains and drop into a basin ringed on all sides by low hills — no train line reaches here, which gives Kumano-cho its particular quiet. The town sits between Hiroshima and Kure, close enough to both that commuter apartments line the newer streets, yet the older craft runs deeper than the bedroom-suburb surface suggests.

The brushes made here — kumano-fude — account for a commanding share of Japan's national output, and the craft is visible not as a museum piece but as a working industry. At Fude no Sato Kobo, the making is demonstrated in real time: hair sorted, bound, shaped by hand using a method called bonmaze, a technique developed within the town itself. The attached select shop carries both traditional ink brushes and the cosmetic brushes that now form a significant part of production — the same hand skills, redirected toward a different surface. Once a year, the Fude Matsuri draws attention to the craft, and used brushes are offered up at the Fude-zuka at Sakakiyama Shrine, where a brush mound marks the intersection of daily work and ritual.

Between visits to the workshop, the town offers kumazuki and roasted iriko among its local foods — small, ordinary things that belong to the rhythm of the place rather than to any curated experience of it.