The January 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake damaged Wajima severely — buildings collapsed, fires spread through the historic merchant district, workshops were destroyed. Wajima nuri, the lacquerware tradition that has made this city famous for centuries, was disrupted at its source. Many craftspeople lost their studios. Some left the city. Some did not. The workshops that have reopened are continuing to produce Wajima nuri and to offer the chinkin experience — engraving patterns into lacquered surfaces and rubbing gold into the lines — in temporary or repaired facilities. Visiting now is a different kind of experience than visiting before the earthquake. The city is visibly in recovery. The craft is continuing anyway. Wajima nuri involves more than 124 distinct processes, each layer of lacquer applied and dried before the next. The chinkin technique adds decoration to a finished lacquered surface by cutting lines with a chisel and pressing gold leaf or powder into them. What emerges is a black surface animated by gold — understated, precise, requiring the steadiness that comes only from practice. The experience of making even a small version of this pattern, in Wajima, after the earthquake, is an act of participation in something that has chosen to continue.