To craft a Buddhist bell, ‘you have to find peace within yourself first’

For master craftsman Yoshinori Shimatani, crafting traditional "orin" bells is as much a physical pursuit as it is a spiritual one. | SHIMATANI SYOURYU STUDIO

Sep 26, 2026

Passing down a sound had never occurred to me. But fourth-generation master craftsman Yoshinori Shimatani has devoted his life to that idea.

Inside Shimatani Syouryu Studio, Shimatani’s workshop in Takaoka, a city in northwestern Toyama Prefecture renowned for its 400-year legacy of metalworking, the 53-year-old hammers unfinished brass. The sound is intense enough to make me wince, but for Shimatani, this fierce physical labor is necessary to coax out a resonance from the metal that hits the same note as his father and his grandfather before him.

The end product: an orin (standing bell) traditionally used in Buddhist temples across Japan. Across Japan, Shimatani is just one of eight master craftsmen still making these ritual instruments by hand.

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