The Process of Making Japanese Wooden Sandal ─ The Only One of Its Kind in the World

👣 The Process of Making a Five-Toed Wooden Sandal ─ The Only One of Its Kind in the World

In the mountains of Gifu, a man makes a geta that no one else makes.

His name is Masato Omori.
He did not come from footwear. He came from kimono, cleaning and repairing them, and it was not going well.
Then a customer asked him for something that did not exist. She taught kimono dressing, and she had spent years on a single question: how does a woman come to stand beautifully in kimono. Her answer was the toes. Separate them, let them grip the ground, and the body settles.
So she asked him to make a geta that frees all five.

He had it made by geta craftsmen at first. Four years of that.
But a traditional geta is the same shape left and right, and a human foot is not, and the craftsmen would not change the shape. They were protecting something. He understood that, and he also could not stop.
In the end he had to make it himself, and he had to learn every part of it, because the people who knew would not show him.

This film follows one pair from the first square of fabric to the finished sole.