TENRYU × Nishijin Textile

Fishing rod covered with Nishijin Textile

The top quality silk fabric in Japan “Nishijin textile”, originated at Nishijin district of Kyoto in Heian period By combining traditional technique to weave graphite fiber and our cutting edge technique to process fabric to the pipe shape, the fishing rod gets deep design.

What is the Nishijin textile?

Nishijin textile started in the Nishijin district of Kyoto more than 500 years ago, and now it is regarded as the top quality textile used in many ways, such as Japanese Kimono belt.
Although it requires many procedures and extremely great care to finish the textile, it has much more sophisticated design than other kinds of textiles.
The Nishijin weavers had to leave their living areas during the Onin War in Muromachi period.
After the war ended, the weavers returned to one of the areas, where the western army had been camped during the war.
This is the origin of the name 'Nishijin', which means' western camp'.
Inaddition, to be regarded as the "Nishijin" textile, the textile must be woven by the member of Nishijin Textile Industry Association .

Use the Nishijin textile to fishing rods

We tried to combine Japanese traditional technique and cutting edge technology, which was a new challenge also for fishing rod technology.
It is extremely difficult to process the Nishijin textile to the pipe shape for creating fishing rod, because it is the graphite textile woven in many layers, different from normal kinds of graphite clothes.
After the repeated trial and error, it has become possible to use the Nishijin textile to create fishing rods.

Wish for NISHIJIN TEXTILE

Weaver's thoughts

“Distingue”, “Grace”, “Sensitivity”, “Brilliance” and “Elegance”.
It is impossible to express the Nishijin Textile well even with the above words.
The textile is breathtaking for everybody handing it.
Everybody highly praises its “feeling elegant and noble” “beautiful and sophisticated color tone” when they wear.
This is the “Nishijin textile”.
This beautiful textile has been over 500years from Muromachi era.
However demand of Kimono has been decreasing year by year and number of weavers has decreased to one-tenth of its peak.
What should be done to inherit technique of Nishijin textile to the next generation?
They have wanted to develop a new textile with a new material that met needs of the time and usable for new field.
Then they had their eyes on Graphite Fiber.
After more than 10 years hard tasks with trial and error, they finally succeeded to develop new textile with delicated pattern.
For decades, for hundreds of years, they want to continue to develop, produce and inherit “Distingue”, “Grace”, “Sensitivity”, “Brilliance” and “Elegance” along each period.

TENRYU thoughts

We have been proud of “made in japan”, so we have needed to contain “Japanese Culture” in our products.
It is easy to say “Japanese style”, however it is not enough reason to be made in Japan.
“Technique” and “Culture” that is inherited by hand work of craftsmen.
That's we need.
It is fine to use bamboo to produce just so-called “Japanese-style” rod.
To challenge with taking advantage of modern technology, that is TENRYU.
So we had great impact when we met “Thinnish textile with graphite fiber”
It was a big challenge to weave the traditional and high-class Publishing textile by Graphite fiver with modern technology..
And we thought they had same stance with us on craftsmanship.
However it was not easy to finish the rods with this new textile..
Now we get the new rod and we believe this rod inherits Japanese own culture and is the very rod we really wanted.
The fishing rods has developed with materials and now we could open new doors, haven't we?