I'll let you breath that in a moment. It comes in blue, too: http://tinyurl.com/hwey8tm
[BTW, this site happens to be to the trade, which has prevented me from getting my hands on a lot of good stuff, thus far... ]
I've just come back from a month in Japan, and what you see here was my complete haul. I'd planned to visit the town of Kumano, the center of traditional brushmaking in Japan, and I was very close to there. But unfortunately business prevented me from taking the time, this time around. I really plan to go on a tear next time.
I knew this brush was out there. I'd seen the top site above in my research over the years, but when I suddenly happened on it in a shop I grabbed it.
There were two things I had to experience with this brush. First, I happen to think the handle is groovy. If they'd had the blue I might've picked up one of those too. But let me tell you, it turns out to be a great handle (with one small shortcoming). The maker calculated the length just right, so that the square that caps it sits firmly in the knuckle and against the palm when pressure is placed, allowing excellent control! It's actually quite brilliant. The one shortcoming has to do with the cap. I'll get to that.
The main attraction here is anaguma (アナグマ - Meles anakuma), the rare Japanese badger. Before I go on I should mention that Japanese and Chinese taxonomies in this area of research can be frustrating, unto ridiculous. To keep it brief, there's a Japanese animal known as "tanuki" (狸
. The subject of legends and fables, it's said to possess all sorts of mystical powers, including shape-shifting. The actual animal this refers to is usually called "badger" in English literature, but it isn't, it's something called a "raccoon dog" (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus), and it's protected the way we Americans protect the Bald Eagle, for its rarity and as a national symbol. This gets even more confusing because this animal has 5 other names from antiquity, including mami, and mujina, the latter of which is a completely mythical creature, but was originally the name given to the animal technically called "badger". A man in 20s Japan was acquitted by their Supreme Court for the crime of killing a tanuki because he was from a rural mountain village where they were called mujina It was strictly a semantic error.Then there is what the Japanese (and Chinese) ubiquitously call "Water Badger", a very common and very good brush fiber. Some here may recall that after months of research I found out that the animal from which it comes is not actually a badger at all, but a variety of mongoose (called "crab-eating mongoose").
But this is advertised as pure anaguma, and I've no reason to doubt it. I used the term rare, but it's not an endangered species, and is not even farmed in Japan, to the best of my knowledge. The population is quite large. Of the many varieties of badger worldwide, anaguma is the third, behind European and Asian badgers. It's rare in brushes though. But the low price (around $40, $28 for the spare knot) supports the idea that this is not a rare species.
I've only used it a few times, so my review is cursory. I'm a face-latherer, and this brush doesn't work well for that. It has almost no backbone. I've never used a horse brush, but what I've read makes me think it falls in that direction. The good is that the fibers become as soft and cloud-like as my finest silver tip. The bad is that the actual tips of these hairs are very sharp, so the feeling, though not uncomfortable, is noticeably what I'll call "scratchy" (because Sesame Street taught me respect for the letter "a"). This is actually promoted in the advertising as stimulating blood flow and aiding exfoliation, for what that's worth. Not a bug, a feature. So it doesn't make a good face-lather. It may work well in a bowl, because the whipping action is formidable. The flow-through is exceptional, but that was also a bit of a negative from the face-latherer perspective, because the lack of backbone meant it didn't take up a great volume of soap, so by the end of my second pass it was empty.
About the knot, the cap idea is sort of good, making it easy to replace when the time comes. It's not especially well executed though. I'd have to take it apart to see how it's constructed, but the knot actually spins within the ring. I'm not sure if this is meant as a feature as well, and will have to use it a few more times to see how that plays out. It also may be a defect, for all I know. Perhaps the epoxy contracts and fails to bind to the ring as it was intended to. I've never seen anything written about this, though, and I doubt that notion. Things tend not to be that haphazard in Japan. The spinning knot resulted in the cap loosening a bit on one use, but it may have been loose to begin with. The easily removeable/replaceable knot is a concept with potential, but it may not be perfectly realized here.
As I say, this is cursory. I can enjoy the absolute uniqueness of this brush, and I'm going to keep using it to learn whether other techniques will improve its performance, or if, like boar, the use improves over time and with breaking-in. If there's anything to report, I will.
The puck is a soap I'd never tried, but is well-known among Japanese aficionados. It's the name brand of the Kamisori Club (kamisori means "to shave"), which makes a case for the use of catechins, a variety of phenol said to benefit skin with positive moisturizing and revivification of cells, neutral pH, and an antioxidation component. It's an unusual soap, for one thing, in that it has zero fragrance. If you breath deeply you get the faintest whiff of... soap. But that mildness is apparently the selling point, along with its other skin-assisiting qualities. The bad is that it is _really_ hard to lather - the lather I get is wet and bubbly, no matter what I've tried thus far. Also, if you enjoy the experience of fragrance, which I do, you're completely out of luck here. Nothing. The lather is also really thin. The good is that it's as slick as anything I've tried, and while it has no cushion to speak of, the layer it puts down (the catechins?) is highly protective, and leaves the skin feeling comfortable and moisturized, as though after-product was used, but I've found no need for it (except to make me smell nice). The puck was about $15, and if you buy a package of 2 it's a few bucks less. I had to try it once, but it's hard to recommend.
Until my next visit to Japan, that's the catch. Sorry to have gone on so. DGI
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