A second book came in from Japan this week: Bespoke Shoe Making by Chihiro Yamaguchi, ISBN 978-4-416-51665-2.
This is another book that I took the chance to buy in Japanese, despite not reading the language. Compared to Misawa’s Book of Men’s Shoes Making, there are many more pages covered mostly with text, very rarely exclusively so. So it hasn’t been so convenient to hold open the pages and translate captions for a specific diagram or photo with the translation app on my phone. Even feeding entire pages to a translator has been a bit hit or miss, due in part to rather small characters in some labels, the prevalence of light text over photo backgrounds, and traditional Japanese text direction. The whole book is right-to-left.
Still, I’ve come away with a very good impression.
From my limited perspective:
- There are many really excellent photos. Lineups of different awls of each type, side by side. Shop shots. Steps of the making process.
- Many of the diagrams are really well drawn and exceptionally informative.
- The book covers all the major processes of shoemaking, like lastmaking or closing, in individual sections, in order, but not quite to the same level of step-by-step detail as Misawa’s book.
- The printing is excellent.
I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who might choose to buy it. But to give a sense of why I’m glad of my purchase, despite mostly reading it like a toddler, as a picture book, here’s a taste:
I think this might be the first diagram I’ve seen in all my reading laying out a clear clicking plan for bottom stuff on a full hide. I really appreciated seeing a clear sign of clicking insoles from the shoulder, rather than from the belly edges of a bend.
The obligatory handwelt thread path cross-section.
Their measuring process really does seem maximalist. Lots of measurements! There is a whole section of several successive pages on it.