Providing those who find tawashi scrubbing brushes to be too rough the gentle and soft feel of the windmill palm tree.

TAKADA TAWASHI was founded in 1948 as a processor and manufacturer of windmill palm tree products. The windmill palm tree is a tall, evergreen palm, with bark that is resistant to rotting, rich in elasticity, and highly resistant to water. Since the Edo period, the tree has been an important staple of the Wakayama Prefecture in Japan. Many people cultivate and harvest the tree, and the Japanese bark is so precious and useful that the people who carried it on their back for sale would even run into bandits on the mountain paths who tried to steal their profits. Originally, the bark’s fiber was used to make tawashi scrubbing brushes, but the age of mass production and consumption led to a substitute made with cheap palm and artificial fibers. People stopped going into the palm groves, and the craftsmen who harvested the bark grew old. The material completely stopped being distributed.

Third generation sales manager Daisuke Takada felt that the people in the region were responsible for remedying the situation. He found a craftsman who understood the old methods, asking for help. After 7 years, the company began selling Shuro Tawashi (windmill palm tree scrubbing brush) using the high quality, domestically sourced palm bark from Wakayama. Producing the product is TAKADA TAWASHI CEO Hideo Takada. Made entirely by a craftsman, the scrubbing brushes are popular among professional chefs due to their light, easily draining characteristics, and uniform fiber. Domestic windmill palm trees unique to Japan are used as the raw material. The stringently selected fibers are surprisingly soft, and many people purchase them for use as a bathing brush as well. “I want people to learn more about windmill palm tree material,” says Takada. Not to protect the tradition, but because using it will naturally keep the material alive... There’s a lot that I still want to do in order to make this happen.”