YouTube video of Ken Hishinuma receiving a tour of Shinki-Hikaku with many questions and answers
Notes
- use raw horse hides from Europe
- more expensive, but better
- largely from animals raised for meat
- shipments of hides taking longer now, since have to go around the Cape of Good Hope to Japan, not through the Red Sea
- burlap sacks of Elephant brand South African mimosa tannins
- do overwhelmingly veg-tan now, with a little chrome tanning
- used to be the opposite
- butts with defects or shell layers too small become horsebutt leather
- costs the same to tan them
- make much less money on them
- tan over 90% of hides they receive to shell cordovan
- 1 or 2 of 400 horse hides will have cordovan layers connected across the back
- necessary for making one-piece cordovan belts
- processing about 20,000 horses per year, relatively low
- fewer people eating horse meat
- more mechanization, less use of horses as draft animals
- founded in 1951
- Nitta, president, the third generation
- grandmother founded the company
- specialized in horse from the beginning
- began with only chrome tanning
- current chairman started them doing cordovan
- view of Himeji Castle from the finishing room
- cordovan for school bags isn’t glazed, but instead urethane coated
- scratched glass in glazing machine creates streaks in the finish
- takes about 10 months to make cordovan
- paint machine for school bags
- glass leather an imitation of cordovan
- small section for non-horse, e.g. fish skins
- testing sturgeon
- comparison of oiled, shin, and urethane-coated cordovan