OUR STORY
Born in Wakayama, 1984.
From a small workshop on the southern coast of Japan,
quietly carrying household goods to the world.
HERITAGE
Rooted in Kainan,
since 1946.
A subsidiary of Aisen, Aisen-Industrial Co., Ltd. has specialised in import and export for over forty years. We source raw materials and finished products from trusted partner factories in China, Korea and Sri Lanka, holding every shipment to the highest standard of quality. Our export network reaches China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam — and is steadily expanding toward the U.S. and Europe.
The story begins in 1946, when Aisen made palm-fibre tawashi brushes under the Aisen name. From the start we have been driven to create products that add quiet value to daily life — developing new materials and methods with an eye to safety, usability and sustainability, for households the world over.
Kainan’s household-goods trade has long been Japan’s hub for cleaning tools, especially those used with water. Once known as the “palm industry,” it produced ropes, brooms and tawashi — the craft from which Aisen grew.
FROM KAINAN ／ 海南より
The town that made tawashi.
Origins · Kainan
Twelve centuries of quiet craft.
How a palm tree, a port town and a single brush became the work of our hands.
It is said that Kūkai — Kōbō Daishi, founder of the temple complex at Kōya-san, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site — returned from his studies in China more than twelve hundred years ago carrying the seed of the palm, and planted it in the hills above Kainan. From those trees, a livelihood slowly grew.
The palm’s coarse, weather-proof fibre was made for the work of the hands. Twisted, it became rope; bundled, it became brooms; knotted and trimmed, it became the scrubbing brush the Japanese call tawashi. For generations, the families of Kainan — a small port on the Kii Peninsula — turned palm into the humble tools no household could do without.
In time, the town became known for far more than rope. Kainan grew into Japan’s heartland for cleaning implements of every kind — and especially for anything to do with water: brushes and scrubbers, baskets and mats, the quiet instruments of an orderly home.
It was into this inheritance that Aisen was born. Founded in 1946 as a maker of palm-fibre tawashi under the Aisen name, the company carried the old craft of the town into a new age — never content to repeat the past, always driven to create products that add a quiet value to daily life.
The palm groves have long given way to synthetic fibres, and Aisen now ships to homes across six continents. Yet the work is guided by the same convictions — a care for safety, for the pleasure of a thing well made, and for the world the next generation will inherit.
PHILOSOPHY
Fun to Clean.
A simple promise we have made since the beginning. That the small rituals of cleaning — washing dishes after a meal, drawing a brush through hair — should be quiet pleasures, not chores. Tools shaped with care can make the difference.
TIMELINE
Our Path.
Our roots reach back to 1946 — to a tawashi workshop in Kainan. Aisen Industrial, founded in 1984, carries that craft to the world.
The Aisen name, on tawashi, brooms and brushes in Kainan.
Aisen Tawashi Co., Ltd. is incorporated.
The head office settles in Onoda, Kainan — our base ever since.
The export arm goes independent in Kobe.
ISO 9002 at the Akasaka factory; ISO 9001 follows in 2003.
Ningbo Aisen Trading Ltd. is established.
The Trepica material, developed with Unitika.
Ningbo Aiwasen Trading Ltd. is established.
Step inside the workshop.
FROM THE ARCHIVE ／ アーカイブより
Scenes from the Early Years.
在りし日の愛染たわし。
