The Cabinet and Furniture Technology department of Palomar College was honored to host this world class conference. There were nearly two dozen master craftsmen from Japan in attendance including:

• Kojiro Sugimura - Carpenter/temple builder-founder of Kezurou-Kai.
  
• Mitsuo Naoi - Carpenter/temple builder - bestowed the prestigious title of National Living Treasure of Japan.
  
• Yuji Funatsu - 3rd generation blacksmith - His tools are considered the best in the world.
  
• Kiyoshi Kimura - Cuts and makes the highest quality stones.
  

Although dubbed a Japanese carpentry contest, the emphasis was truly on sharing and teaching. The generous friendly approach of these master craftsmen broke the ice quickly and led to a wonderful cultural exchange and changed forever our relationship with these masters, and their tools and techniques.

The events included a thinnest hand plane-shaving contest, a thinnest crosscut with a handsaw contest, and many demonstrations on Japanese joinery techniques, puzzle making, tuning and using a Japanese hand plane, and sharpening.

The highlight of the events was the making of a Japanese Torii gate, which is traditional Japanese architecture erected in gardens or entryways for good luck! The wood for the Torii gate was milled by our program, in our Urban Wood mill. The tree, fittingly a Torrey Pine, was from Coronado, California, and was over 100 years old. Students and master carpenters worked together side-by-side constructing and erecting the Torii gate with hand tools in only two days!

On Sunday, November 12, as dusk began to fall, the entire Kezurou-Kai conference turned its attention toward the erection of the Torii gate. With the collaboration, exhilaration and efficiency of an old-fashioned barn raising the Torii gate went up. Wow! You had to be there!

Arguably, Japanese carpenters are the most highly skilled craftsmen in the world. Japanese blacksmiths, using hand techniques of folding and forge welding, produce the finest tools steel available in the world. These blacksmiths then craft the steel into hand tools such as chisels and hand plane blades.

The tools are sharpened to an incredible edge (with Japanese water stones) and used by the carpenters of Japan, and a few others who have discovered these amazing tools and learned how to use them.

The techniques, used by the Japanese craftsman, have been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, and have been kept secret to the rest of the world.

Kojiro Sugimura is a carpenter/temple builder in Japan. Sugimura-san and his father own and operate a 400 year-old family carpentry business. Sugimura-san decided that it was important to begin sharing the Eastern tools and carpentry methods with the rest of the world. In 1987, Sugimura-san founded Kezurou-Kai.