THE DECEPTIVE WORLD

When I meet him Koichi wears a smile that spreads across his face, and makes his eyes twinkle. He is in his sixties. His mannerisms have become noticeably Italian, he speaks not only with his lips but also with his hands. We talk seamlessly, the dialogue evolves very naturally. He tells me about his first trip abroad, his journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway in the mid-80s: “I had dreamed of this trip for a long time; I didn’t want to take a quick trip by plane. I thought that taking the Trans-Siberian would be right for me. I boarded the ship from Yokohama, in the Kanagawa Prefecture, and upon my arrival in Vladivostok, I got on to the Trans-Siberian, a railway line that crosses all of Russia before terminating in Moscow. I was in a group with 12 other Japanese passengers, you couldn’t travel alone across Russia at the time. I didn’t know much about Russia but to my surprise, in our group, there was a Japanese Russophile who had studied everything about the country and I learnt a lot from him about the country we were travelling through. Once we were in Moscow, he changed to get to Leningrad, and the others headed in different directions across Europe. For me, the journey itself opened up a whole new world. For example, a Russian gentleman accompanied us throughout our train journey, acting as both guide and guardian; he had to make sure we didn’t do anything suspicious. Our carriage was only for foreigners, we were isolated from Russian passengers. So I could tell right away that we were not travelling through a free country. My idea was to leave Japan to seek `beautiful things`, not just professionally, but for my life as a whole. I remember that from the end of my childhood onwards, after finishing high school, I wasn’t very happy with my life as a student and I was convinced that I had to push myself further, to explore things at large, and that Europe was the place where I could do so. A year after my journey, the Chernobyl incident took place, and soon after that the Soviet Union fell. I was ready for a one-way trip, but soon I realised that the world outside of Japan was not perfect as I had imagined.”

Nevertheless, Koichi tells me he did not have a particular plan as to what he would do once he got to Europe, other than the fact that he had a friend who was a mutual acquaintance of Carla, a young Italian woman from Pinerolo – a small yet historically influential town in the province of Turin, who also happened to have a deep interest in Japanese language and culture, and had previously visited Tokyo for a month where she had encountered Koichi. Piedmont was and is still famed for its rich culture of design, and was the optimum place for Koichi to study European furniture-making. Meeting Carla, opened doors of possibility for Koichi and three months later, he arrived at Porta Nuova – the central train station of Turin – to be greeted by Carla, with whom Koichi would have twin-girls three years later.

FOUR DECADES IN ITALY

2025 marks the 40th year since Koichi Hasegawa first arrived in Italy. He recounts one of his first impressions of life in Italy in 1985: “ I was very surprised to see that when you enter a shop in Italy, you get greeted by the shopkeeper as well as other customers. This behaviour struck me because in Japan, only the vendor says `Irasshaimasse` (meaning, ‘Please, welcome’) and the customer remains silent while making their purchases. The client is not required to say anything at all. However, in Italy there is immediately an exchange, everything is livelier!”

Upon moving to Piedmont, Koichi immediately enrolled at ENGIM (known in short as Murialdo, Ente Nazionale Giuseppini del Murialdo - a non-profit foundation that has been in operation since 1977 to serve young people and workers in their professional development and personal and social advancement) to study European carpentry. In the end he decided to stick with the Japanese traditions: “The Japanese plane [‘kanna’] – has a different steel than European planes. I’ve tried using other planes but when I finish a wooden surface with the Japanese plane the surface becomes so smooth that if you bend down and look at it edge-on, it looks like a mirror; there’s not need to sand it. However, it must be said that the instrument is not everything; you can pay a lot for an instrument, but knowing how to use it and the techniques you adopt matter more. Needless to say, European techniques of woodworking are also highly-prized. For example, here in Piedmont, I have seen some incredible Napoleon chairs; the craftsmen who built them 200 years ago must have been really skilled! Over time, a lot has changed. Long ago, when today’s technologies did not exist, the contact between man and wood was more direct. This has now been almost completely lost. Fortunately, the builders of temples in Japan, of course, where machinery can be used, do use it because it allows the process to be less laborious; but at least they still work on the final details by hand.”

Reminiscing about his early days in Pinerolo, Hasegawa explains how a normal day in his life looked: “In the morning, we had academic subjects like maths and Italian, and in the afternoon carpentry. I remember not understanding anything in Italian and struggling to communicate with my classmates; but in maths I was a hero! Math is universal. When the teacher asked questions, I guessed the answers correctly. I remember that, at the end of an exam, all my classmates would ask me about the answers I had written down, and if they had the same ones, they would celebrate! The afternoons were dedicated to carpentry, and during those lessons, I was given the opportunity to demonstrate how to work with Japanese tools, like planes and chisels, etc. I also made long-lasting friendships at those desks, as in the case of Bunna from Africa Unite.”

I empathise with Koichi when he tells me that he only had a tourist visa and at a certain point ran into difficulties to extend his stay. He managed to obtain a student permit and renewed it several times but of course, that did not allow him to work for a living. “Then, when I married Carla, I remember that the director of the Murialdo congratulated me at my wedding and said: ‘So now you have to work... If you like, from mid-September you can work here.’ So I taught the carpentry course for a year! After a year of teaching, I started working as a self-employed carpenter, and I opened this workshop on Via Vigone in Pinerolo. I immediately registered my business in the category for crafts, and I started to pay taxes in that category, but I wasn't at ease, because I hadn't managed to obtain all the permits I needed. At that time, under the prime ministership of Claudio Martelli, a law that allowed foreigners who had been in Italy for more than five years to naturalise and obtain a work permit was passed. During those years, I realized that the life I was living was not just of my own making but the result of a chain of events, without which as well as the support of the people I had around me I would never have been able to continue what I started.”

THE HASEGAWA WORKSHOP

In 2027, the Hasegawa workshop will have been here in Roletto for forty years. He shows me a kanna and other Japanese tools he uses to make his sculptures as well as several items of very cool furniture. We are surrounded by found materials such as aged wooden planks, a pair of beautiful walnut doors that perhaps once provided security to some mansion in Turin, a couple of old chairs in the style of Napoleon II, shelving units and Hasegawa’s mind-blowing wooden creations. He taps his finger on his super-precise butterfly joints – made famous in the 1950s by George Nakashima, a Japanese-American woodworker. Japanese woodworking techniques are based on a philosophy that outlines the importance of crafstmanship over convenience; exhibits strength without hardware such as nails, screws or glue, and depicts aesthetic harmony with nature. I can’t help but wonder if at first it was hard for him to find customers interested in buying his furniture.

Master Koichi tells me: “I initially worked on creating custom-made furniture. Customers were very interested in the features of Japanese furniture, particularly in the sliding-door cabinets. However, there weren’t many. Once I was talking to a retired carpenter who came to see one of my exhibitions. He told me that he had been very inspired to create purely beautiful items, not solely those that were commissioned, but if he had done that he wouldn’t have had as many customers willing to pay him. When you add art to craftsmanship, it’s really hard to find someone willing to pay for that work. I completely agree with him, but in my case, call it luck or misfortune, I had time and ideas would come to me, and I would say to myself: I came all the way from Japan not to be a craftsman of common furniture, I came to find my own identity as Koichi! I couldn’t resist the urge to make purely aesthetic creations, I couldn’t refuse the impulse.”

Recently, Japan House in London put on the exhibition The Craft of Carpentry: Drawing Life from Japan’s Forests, the centre-piece of which was a life-size reconstruction of the Sa-an teahouse in the temple Daitoku-ji in Kyoto. Koichi explains the Japanese love for wooden construction by loosely linking it to the way of life in his native country: “I believe that in Japan, throughout history, there has been a greater use of wood than in Europe. In Europe there was more stone, so the structures of houses were mainly made of stone; whereas in Japan everything was made of wood, which burned continuously: a single lightning bolt was enough to turn everything into ash: the houses burned, the temple burned and everything had to be rebuilt from scratch.”

In our complex time of environmental awareness and targeted goals of sustainability versus centuries-old consumer culture, most of the financially-successful artists do not consider it a personal responsibility to work solely with discards. However, in Hasegawa’s case we can confidently say that one man’s rubbish (the way most people currently view antiques) is another man’s treasure, because found materials form his entire artistic practice. “Antique pieces are unique, they have so much to tell, you can really feel their warmth. Recently, I attached the door of an old cabinet together with a modern mirror to create a light feature and gave it a new life. After, I happened to carve a stylised landscape with a horizon on a walnut panel that was previously the shelf of a piece of furniture, all eaten away by worms. What emerged on this old piece of raw wood was an indefinite shape, which was interpreted as a fish head by some while others said it looked like a dragon’s head. I really enjoy these interpretations and I am pleased when the piece communicates something. I wasn’t looking for a precise shape; it was just a draft to pass the time.”  

INSPIRATION AND PERSEVERANCE: A TIGHTROPE

You don’t have to be an antiques collector to appreciate the way a master carpenter can work hardwoods into some of the most fluid forms. Koichi Hasegawa’s sculptural signature-pieces depict this rarely observed level of fluidity. I’m fortunate see his Libreria Triclinium (1994) and  the three-legged Kandinsky Table (2002) at the workshop. He sits on the chair of the former work casually and tells me, “I wanted to create a space next to the bookshelf where you could sit beside the bookshelf and read a book.” There are some sculptures that I previously saw at his solo exhibition at Open Ada in Torre Pellice which are hard to describe in words, you really have to see them in person to truly appreciate their beauty and comprehend the level of mastery.

Inspiration doesn’t come so easily to everyone as it does to Koichi. He tells me, “For Waves of Giudecca (Onde della Giudecca), for example, I was captivated by the movement of the waves, watching the water live in Venice. I was photographing the waves, with the island of Giudecca in the background, trying to capture the right moment. I remember concentrating so much that at one point I felt like I was seasick, as if I were on a ship. It was a beautiful experience.”

He pulls away the sheet that covers Tavolo Kandinsky (The Kandinsky Table, 2002) perched on top of a platform, a sculptural yet completely functional table that plays with Kandinsky’s forms and colours. At this point, I should reveal that Koichi Hasegawa is not a draughtsman. He does not usually make preliminary sketches on paper. For him, the work is directly created out of wood. When he began working on it, he says he wanted to make a three-legged table: “I found this idea more fun. Then, while I was building it, I realised that the triangular structure I had built would not support the table-top; it needed two diagonal arms to balance it, so I added them. That’s what happens when you don’t have a precise project; there are unforeseen events and you have to find a way to move forward.” I wonder if his intuition ever misleads him. He tells me, “Since I don’t have a sketch on paper, I often find I am not likely to be misled. If I really don’t like the way it’s coming together, I’d rather stop and move on to some other piece and then return to it at another time. However, there are also times when I look at a piece I made some time ago, perhaps in a different natural light, and I realise that the piece is not complete at all! That there’s a lot more to explore. So I start working on it again.”

I find the way he uses gold-leaf to bring out accents in carved or joined wood, sometimes resembling a dimple of sun-kissed water (Bookcase on organ pipes, 1996; Origin, 2005) and at other times reminiscent of the water motifs depicted as zigzags in Islamic architecture (Triclinium Library, 1994), aesthetically pleasing. He also uses a slither of dispersed gold-leaf in Sailboat  (Veliero, 2008), which turns out to be inspired by the ship Kevin Costner was aboard in the film titled, Waterworld (1995, dir. Kevin Reynolds)! Koichi says, “For me, Sailboat represents not just a ship sailing the seas, but a ship that travels everywhere, even through the universe, as a spacecraft!”

Koichi Hasegawa has produced works in various dimensions with different kinds of fine woods such as mahogany, walnut, wenge, Japanese cherry, box, oak, keyaki elm. He tells me he is always guided by the specific piece of wood with which he is working at any given time. “A particular grain, an interesting knot is what inspires me. As it was in the case of Origin (2005). I didn’t have a precise project in mind when I started working on it. I was struck by the natural split of a knot, which felt very powerful to me, and from there I got the inspiration to create this flow of wooden pieces around it to express its energy. However, making the vortex stand on one leg was a great struggle. I had to create the shape of the vortex gradually, attempting all the while to find the right balance. All the while, I was torn inside. One part of me kept saying, ‘you can do it, keep going’, and the other trying to dissuade me from finishing it. The more difficulties I encountered, the angrier I got and found the strength to continue.”

AGE-OLD DEBATE: ART VS. CRAFT

Some of Hasegawa’s signature works are built with hundreds of regular, linear pieces of wood while others are carved out of one unique piece of wood. A sense of metamorphosis is central to both styles of sculpting, yet how he manages to switch between two styles has me puzzled. “I had to go to Japan to be with my mum, who was living alone, and there I started working on smaller pieces because of spatial limitiations. I carved Time Jump (Taimu Jampu) and The Wall of Anger (Ikari No Kabe) in the kitchen. My evolution has been slow, I moved from medium to large works, with assemblies of different woods and special joints, to smaller pieces, on unique parts, where I could experiment with shapes and shadows. In a certain sense, this has allowed me to mature a dialogue that is even nearer to my heart.” Interestingly enough, I notice that all of the smaller works he created during his time in Japan are also titled in Japanese.

Then there’s the debate on how one can switch from an artisanal background in custom-made furniture to becoming a sculptor. Many who frown upon craft would snub their noses at the idea. So I ask Koichi how he embarked on this transformation. He’s earnest about it: “I didn’t study to be a sculptor, or work as an apprentice under a master sculptor, I just followed my imagination. Inside a piece of wood, there is imagination. Michelangelo looked at the stone and immediately understood what it could become. I don’t feel that way; I don’t have that ability, I proceed little by little, with a free mind. Perhaps, it is a simplification to say so but I feel that somehow the wood speaks to me. I am aware that I encounter a piece of wood, with that precise grain, thickness and character, only once in my life. After that it is up to me to decide whether to throw it in the fireplace, use it to create something, or transform it into something beautiful. I almost feel a responsibility towards a precious piece of wood, and to honour it. I need to ensure that it is happy that I sculpted it. And to me, doing exactly that – being able to transform a rough piece of wood into something beautiful – is an honour.”

In September 2025, Koichi Hasegawa will be participating for the second time in a group exhibition at the Promotrice delle Belle Arti in Turin. For renowned artists exhibitions often lead to sales but for those who are not represented by an influential gallery, buyers do play hard to get. Koichi tells me that in the past he never worried much about presenting his works to the public, that he was eager to continue working and thinking about the next piece. Through his participation in exhibitions he gradually came to realise that bringing his work out into the public sphere was also important. “There are artists who create regardless of what their audience may feel about it. For me, the encounter with the viewer is a reason to make an effort and consider improvements. Sales are an entirely different matter; it takes time. If after an exhibition, my work finds a buyer I am happy but it is not certain, especially in today’s world.”

What makes Koichi Hasegawa’s work so unique is the way he creates a rare bridge between Japanese carpentry and sculpture. A mindful and trained pair of eyes can appreciate his work for the value it deserves. However, regardless of whether we are talking about his sculptures or his custom-made artisanal furniture, it is natural to assume that not many people can afford to dress their homes with such unique pieces in which form and function compete with one another. So I ask him which is more significant for him. “Of course, a four-legged table is more stable, but the idea of making it three-legged is more fun! I think that when assembling wood, adding many pieces just to achieve high functionality is over-rated. When one manages to reduce functionality to its essence and simplicity, for me, one is closer to beauty.”

THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF ALL THINGS HUMAN

For decades we have been living in domestic settings that are furnished with affordability and convenience in mind, in order to support the  circular economy; use, recycle, produce, and hence consume again; even before the term circular economy became a household term. Though as we are all aware, there’s only so much material that can be recycled on a planet with limited resources. A lot of the material that we pensively place in recycling bins never actually do get recycled. The idea of the zero-waste circular economy has its supporters as well as its vehement critics. One of the most eye-opening papers I have read in relation to this topic is titled, “Against wasted politics: A critique of the circular economy” (2022) by Francesco Valenzuela and Steffen Böhm. Hasegawa’s artistic practice is conscious of many of the problems of our contemporary world yet he is one of the few in an industry forged by hundreds of thousands of artists and artisans working with practices that are less than environmentally-friendly even if their subject is environmental sustainability. Does he think there is a future for his practice, and how’s the state of his profession in Japan?

“Nowadays, young people are bombarded with options, and while there is access to many different forms of art, and a great availability of means, it often leads to a lot of confusion. One risks going round and round in circles as time passes and becoming increasingly confused to the point of being unable to see a clear direction. For me, having been in contact with wood since I was young has been a great fortune. I also find wrought iron very interesting but in this life, I am focused on wood. I am not a genius who can use different materials. I have only conversed with wood. I don’t want to tell young people to follow one way or another, they must decide themselves. Unfortunately, life is not simple, and one must fight to carve out their own space. The only thing I feel I can advise is to battle with yourself, not to settle for copying a technique, but to draw things out from within yourself. As for the field of art in Japan, I couldn’t tell you exactly but I can say that I’ve noticed that for Japanese society, an artist must have a degree from an art university. For most Japanese artists, this is now normal and taken for granted; they don’t even realise that it might not have to be that way, but unfortunately, that is the mechanism.”

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR

Throughout both my encounters with Koichi Hasegawa I was aware of the impending 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 & 9 August 1945).  I felt obliged to ask him about the effect these catastrophic attacks had on the Japanese people. I thought that perhaps his parents might have recounted the events to him through their own eyes. Our collective memory of the world in general has a great effect on whom we become. He tells me that his father witnessed the Nagasaki bombing from a great distance. Although the atomic bombings hadn’t directly impacted his family, it caused social riffs between people. In the aftermath of the bombings there were many injured who were in need of the state’s financial help because they couldn’t work, but there were also those who wanted to take advantage of the situation and pretended to be disadvantaged by the incident. There were ongoing court cases for individual compensation that took many years to resolve, and some who were in actual need did not manage to receive any compensation. When the subject of war opens up, we immediately delve into inexplicable current affairs as well as remote histories. He says that the reason Japan has not taken an outspoken stance against the wars on Ukraine and Palestine is because the memory of the atrocities of war are still too fresh in Japanese society, and that they believe they need to stay out of it completely in order to protect their own stability because of their direct experience of the bombings.