“It’s impossible to visit the Yagi family without falling in love with their philosophy, their craftsmanship and their warmth,” writes ERG Media founder Ted Gushue in the introduction. His words pull you straight into Kaikado’s world, inside the family’s modest Kyoto workshop where “voices are hushed and shoes are respectfully left at the door”, a serene, almost meditative space where the soft scent of cedarwood and soldered tin wafts in the air, where the silence is broken only by the melodic shaping of metal—a rhythmic sound that resonated throughout the house of his childhood, as sixth-generation owner Takahiro Yagi recalls. Here, around a dozen craftsmen and women shape copper, brass, and tin by hand, their movements nearly as inherited as the tools they wield with. “What we have learned in our 150-history,” Yagi reflects, “is not passed down through words and instructions but through our person-to-person connection between each other.”

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of Kaikado’s story, and one beautifully recounted in the book, is how perilously close it all came to vanishing. During World War II, when Japan mandated that metals be collected for the war effort, Kaikado’s third-generation head buried the company’s precious tools rather than surrender them, even at the cost of imprisonment. In the lean post-war years, the company flirted with obscurity, their handmade wares out of step with the mechanized, mass-produced future Japan seemed to crave. The fact that Kaikado not only survived but thrived is testament to a stubborn belief that some things are worth doing slowly—and by hand.

Takahiro Yagi, a classic German and Italian sport cars enthusiast, likens Kaikado to a Porsche 964 RS: “The 964 RS does not have any single element that stands out but all of the elements come together in perfect balance”. Likewise, “each craftsperson has their own unique personality, but those individual characters each play a critical role in forming this thing we call Kaikado. It is like a symphony where the orchestra comes together to play music.” In the end, the Kaikado book serves as an invitation to listen to that symphony—not with your ears, but with your hands and eyes.