Eirakuya Co. Ltd. (株式会社 永楽屋 かぶしきがいしゃ えいらくや ''kabushiki-gaisha Eirakuya'')
is a Japanese manufacturer and vendor of ''
tenugui
A , literally "hand-wiper", is a thin Japanese hand towel made from cotton. Typically, are about in size, plain woven, and almost always dyed with some pattern. Usually the long sides are finished with a selvage, and the short sides are just ...
'' (hand towels)
located in the
Nakagyō-ku ward of
Kyoto
Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...
,
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. It was founded in 1615.
History
The company was founded in the year 1615 and is known as the oldest cotton cloth dealer of Japan.
Before the
Bakumatsu
was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government ...
, the store of the business was lost in fires twice and was reconstructed in the early
Meiji Period
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
. However, during
WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
the building was demolished as part of the firewall construction plans of the time.
After the war, the company was formally established in 1959,
with focus in the production and selling of towels, facing strong competition from foreign brands. Later in 1999, the company shifted back to producing traditional
tenugui
A , literally "hand-wiper", is a thin Japanese hand towel made from cotton. Typically, are about in size, plain woven, and almost always dyed with some pattern. Usually the long sides are finished with a selvage, and the short sides are just ...
and was able to achieve financial stability after a long period of crisis.
Present day
The company continues to produce and sell
tenugui
A , literally "hand-wiper", is a thin Japanese hand towel made from cotton. Typically, are about in size, plain woven, and almost always dyed with some pattern. Usually the long sides are finished with a selvage, and the short sides are just ...
, along with other items such as business card holders and bags.
Currently it has 9 stores around Kyoto
and 60 employees in total.
In recent years, as a brand, it has gained popularity among foreign visitors for offering items of both traditional and artistic design.
References
External links
Eirakuya Japanese Website
{{Authority control
Retail companies of Japan
Companies based in Kyoto