Broom making was introduced to Tsukuba in the Meiji period (1868–1912), when a peddler brought home the craft he had learned in the Kanuma area of Tochigi Prefecture. Production then flourished in the town of Oho. The early Showa period (1926–89) saw the peak of Oho brooms, but the tradition declined amid the changing times until it had all but disappeared.
Azusa Fukushima discovered broom making as a graduate student. The opportunity came by to study crafts created by farmers during the agricultural off-season, and it was here that she met Toyoshiro Sakai, the only broom maker in Tsukuba.
“The soft touch of the bristles, and the wonder of a tool that became an extension of the hand—experiencing this firsthand changed my concept of brooms,” says Fukushima.
She also recognized a unique appeal of broom making: “There was no need to buy the material, because you could grow it yourself. If there was a field that was no longer cultivated, you could transform it from an excess into the source of a valuable tool.”
Straight after graduation, Fukushima leased a small field and began making brooms under the tutelage of Sakai. This involves sowing the seeds of broom corn at the end of May, tending to the field until the harvest in late July, drying the plant, and then, from the end of August to the next spring, working in the silence of the studio to craft the brooms. Fukushima’s field has expanded to 700 square meters today. It’s almost the early summer and the beginning of a new year for the broom maker.
