SHOGUN TOOLS

Hi and welcome to SHOGUN TOOLS! 

 

Shogun Tools was founded in 2017 in Brisbane Queensland Australia by Maki from Tokyo Japan with support by her husband Alex who is a horticulturist and runs a garden maintenance business.

 

Maki's grandfather used to run a Japanese gardening service company in Tokyo and she grew up in a family environment filled with passion for plants and gardening.  Her passion was once lost in the super busy Japanese working life but resumed after she moved to Australia and met Alex in 2011.

 

Alex was living in a rental house and they renovated the front garden to be very productive and neighbours often stopped by to see and talk about it. One day Maki travelled back to Japan and came back with a pair of hand-made secateurs and a weeding sickle as souvenirs and accidentally, Shogun Tools was born. Alex was so impressed with the quality of the tools and his horticulture friends would frequently ask about them.

 

Realising the demand for high quality tools, they started to search together for more useful gardening tools. Maki researches valued tool information from Japanese professionals and hobby gardeners and Alex tests those tools with his employees at work if they are of good use for Australian use.

 

They are also keen cooks and eventually their interests grew to find beautiful kitchen knives. Wood working tools came more from Alex's hobby of carpentry (he's into making native bee hives for soft splitting method).

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Historically, Japanese blacksmiths (kaji) have been venerated for the high quality of their blades and metalwork. Despite the advance of modern mass manufacturing, the once thriving industry is still represented by a small (albeit ageing) number of master craftsmen. The decline in skilled smiths and decreasing number of small enterprises is due to competition with cheap mass imports and the adoption of a disposable culture where tools and items are designed for a short useful life. In a world moving towards reduced cost manufacturing, it has become increasingly harder to pass down skills from generation to generation and continue the existing small family business in the face of multinational competition.

 

Shogun Tools predominantly support these small businesses and craftsmen who create high quality tools legacy tools that will give a long service life with correct care. By supporting these business we hope to keep the skills and traditions alive and share the joy of using these sustainable tools to gardeners, cooks and carpentry lovers outside of Japan.