Osaki Zaimoku Cutting Boards
August 13, 2026
Osaki-San & Nemoto-San
We are honored to be the only retailer outside of Japan featuring the award-winning cutting boards created by Osaki Mayumi-san and Nemoto Tsutomu-san. Osaki-san and her husband run a family lumber mill founded in 1930 in a small town just outside my birthplace of Mito, and Nemoto-san is an 85-year-old third-generation master carpenter whose meticulous craftsmanship has earned him legendary status throughout the community. They have created a beautiful partnership, with Osaki-san coming up with ingenious product ideas using the abundant, beautiful Japanese wood she is surrounded by every day and Nemoto-san bringing her ideas to life using his expertise and skill.
While Mito is famous for natto納豆, whole soy beans fermented with Bacillus subtilis and often eaten at breakfast, with rice (pause here for a shameless plug for my natto class!), wood honestly wasn’t something I’d ever associated with our hometown. I soon learned that Ms. Osaki uses hiba and hinoki woods—woods long treasured in Japan for their durability and natural antibacterial properties, and the same woods her family’s company has used to build traditional Japanese homes for almost 100 years.
The Roots of Osaki-San’s Idea
Back in 2008, Osaki-san checked out two books from the local library: one on traditional Japanese architecture and another celebrating master carpenters. From those books, she learned that Japan’s timber self-sufficiency (how much of their total timber use was from Japanese wood) was just 24% at the time—a startlingly low figure for a country so rich in beautiful forests. Surrounded by Japanese lumber every day, she was struck by how little attention the issue received and began wondering how she could help people rediscover an appreciation for Japanese wood and bring it back into their daily lives.
The answer arrived unexpectedly on a rainy Sunday afternoon while she was cooking lunch with fellow moms during a playdate at her house. As they prepared the meal, one mom remarked, “Wooden cutting boards are wonderful, but they take so long to dry.” That simple comment became Osaki-san’s a-ha moment. She set out to create a wooden cutting board that preserved everything people loved about wood while solving one of its biggest frustrations.
Turning Timeless Materials into a Modern Design
Drawing on years of watching logs being transformed into lumber at the family sawmill, she envisioned gently sloped edges inspired by the natural curves revealed when boards are cut from a log. She sketched two designs and brought them to Nemoto-san to discuss which would be both beautiful and practical. Together, they crafted their first prototype from Japanese ginkgo wood and immediately began testing it in their own kitchens.
As they refined the design, they discovered benefits they hadn’t anticipated. The angled edges made the board easier to wash, dry, lift, flip, and clean underneath. They also made it easier to scoop up chopped ingredients by simply sliding your hand beneath the edge, and even cracking eggs against the corner is a delight. Through countless adjustments to the angles and finishing details, the signature design took shape.
Their cutting board was soon honored with Japan’s prestigious Good Design Award and selected as one of the “100 Best Kitchen Tools” by Ryori Ookoku, one of Japan’s leading culinary publications.
The Finishing Touch
The matching cutting board stand came to life in much the same way—through conversation, experimentation, and mutual trust. Osaki-san supplied an endless stream of curiosity and ideas, while Nemoto-san brought the technical expertise to turn those ideas into reality. Osaki-san laughs that they never once drew a formal design, and Nemoto-san always told her it was faster for him to just start creating with his hands to see how he could make something work.
Behind every piece is Nemoto-san’s craftsmanship. A third-generation carpenter, his family has built homes and traditional storage houses (kuras) throughout the region for generations. Known for his careful workmanship, meticulous attention to detail, calm demeanor, and quiet pride in his craft, he was the perfect partner to bring Osaki-san’s unconventional ideas to life.
To this day, each cutting board is hand-cut and hand-planed by the 85-year-old master. The cutting board stands receive the same care: Nemoto-san cuts each groove by hand with a saw, refines it with a chisel, and finishes the surface with a hand plane. Osaki-san adds the final finishing touches, carefully smoothing each edge by hand.
This powerful duo has created other award-winning wooden products, including a children’s bath toy set that makes music as you hit it with a wooden mallet as the pieces bob up and down in the water. Nemoto-san even made my children a wooden Rubik’s-Cube-like puzzle that my 96-year-old grandmother then hijacked for hours to give her brain a workout.
We feel incredibly fortunate to be the only retailer outside Japan to carry these truly special pieces. More than just cutting boards, they represent generations of craftsmanship, thoughtful design, and a shared passion for helping people experience the beauty of Japanese wood in their everyday lives. We hope they’ll bring as much joy to your kitchen as they have to ours.
Osakai Zaimoku products mentioned in the article: