Beneath The Waves: The Work Behind Yokohama Kaikosai 2025 Temple Architecture

This spring, right after Makers’ Day!, we got a message that made us pause:

“Would you be open to designing a small shrine for the upcoming Yokohama Kaikosai?”

We said yes.

Not because we specialize in shrines (we don’t).

Not because we had a lot of time (we didn’t).

But because we saw in it a unique design challenge and a space to explore how tools, craft, and symbolism could intersect in something sacred, temporary, and shared.

Symbols in a Festival Temple Architecture

For the 44th Yokohama Kaikosai, a festival honoring the city’s maritime history, we were invited to design a temporary public shrine: a modest structure of a festival temple architecture where visitors could stop, offer a prayer, drop a coin, and eventually hang an ema.

Though the scale was small, the design asked for something deeper: a way to speak through symbols. We chose the traditional wave pattern, seigaiha, as our base—a rhythm of concentric arcs that suggest movement, memory, and the sea. A stylized wooden boat anchors the structure, facing outward toward the crowd. The prayer and offering area features a whale, a creature long seen in Japanese culture as a guardian of abundance, depth, and safe passage.

The entire structure was designed with portability and lightness in mind, with most of it fabricated in-house using our xTool laser cutter. This project let us test how modern fabrication could carry forward traditional meaning.

Fast Tools ≠ Easy Work

Let’s clear something up:

Yes, our xtool can produce 20–30 omamoris from a single MDF sheet in 23 minutes.

No, that does not mean the job is done in an hour.

We're producing 1,000 pieces, and the pace is rarely what people imagine.

Each sheet needs setup.

Each cut needs safe removal.

Each batch needs cleaning, flipping, aligning, engraving, quality checking, and reloading.

There’s always a human.

Watching, adjusting, catching errors before they compound.

And then there’s the stamping.

We use a thick blue ink, the same kind we use in our regular studio stamps.

But it’s heavy. Gloopy. It pools unpredictably.

For each omamori, we have to adjust pressure with our body weight—check for too much or too little ink, make sure it lands evenly. Sometimes, we redo it.

Each stamp? About 30 seconds. Then we stamp the other side.

Then we wait for it to dry. Sometimes a hand slips. The wrong side gets stamped.

The ema is no longer usable.

And those pretty blue and white hemp strings?

Each one threaded, each knot tied—by hand.

One by one.

Sometimes with care.

Sometimes with meditative distraction.

Always by someone.

And honestly?

That’s the point.

The Human Touch is What Matters

When you're making something meant to be touched, prayed with, held up to the light, you don’t cut corners.

We've always believed in the value of manual labor, and this project reminded us exactly why.

It’s in the details:

Aligning the wave pattern so it hums softly from panel to panel.

Wiping away just enough char so fingers don’t smudge.

Testing every slot so the ema slide in smoothly, but stay in place.

These aren’t machine jobs.

They’re human ones.

A tool can cut, but only people can feel.

What We’re Taking With Us

We went into this project curious. Open to experimenting with our tools. Testing out new methods. Building something temporary, but meaningful.

And we left with so much more.

A renewed understanding that even with high-efficiency tools, it’s the human decisions in-between: the intuition, oversight, care, and occasional do-overs—that make the work matter.

We’re already looking forward to the next thing we get to say “yes” to.

Thanks for following along.

— Mars of ISHIKAWASAMBO