As foreign merchants once linked products and countries (china from China, for example), the term "japanning" first appeared in a 1688 text by John Stalker and George Parker that described the superiority of Japanese lacquerware. However, the technique of applying lacquer on various objects as a protective and decorative varnish is not unique to Japan. Lacquerware has long been manufactured in many regions of East and Southeast Asia. Even so, lacquerware is considered Japan's representative art craft, due to the high artistic standards and great variety of shapes and techniques.
About 600 years ago, a Kyoto temple priest introduced the lacquering technique to Murakami City in Niigata Prefecture. Today the small castle town is famous for a lacquerware peculiar to the region, known as Murakami kibori-tsuishu, or Murakami tsuishu for short.
Tsuishu usually means the technique of engraving designs into the layers of red lacquer, which have been applied one on top of another nearly 100 times until the lacquer becomes nearly 1 cm thick. Invented in China during the Song Dynasty, the technique was introduced to Japan during the Muromachi Period.