Beyond Tsuge: Japanese Pipe Making

That a Japanese pipe-making tradition existed beyond Tsuge was only widely recognized internationally in the early 2000s. For decades, "Japanese pipe" meant, for smokers outside Japan, almost exclusively a single brand. Yet in that same country, makers — some of whom had passed through that brand's own workshops — worked under their own signatures.

From Kiseru to Briar

Japan's own tobacco implement is the metal-bodied kiseru, used for finely shredded tobacco. Tobacco reached the country as early as the 1570s, and the kiseru became both an everyday item and a status object during the Edo period. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, cigarettes spread rapidly and kiseru workshops declined; by 1929, records show only 190 workshops and 400 craftsmen left in the country.

European-style briar pipes reached Japan much later; the first craftsmen to work briar appeared only in the late 1940s, with the American presence in the country after the Second World War feeding that demand. According to the Tsuge Pipe Company's own history, the firm was founded in Tokyo in 1936 by Kyoichiro Tsuge, who trained as an ivory mouthpiece maker; after the war it moved to cherry wood, then to briar once imported briar became available in the 1950s. The briar pipes of those years, their bowls carved with Japanese motifs, were sold as souvenirs to American servicemen.