This beautiful chelsea boot by the previous world champion of shoemaking, Wataru Shimamoto of Orma Shoemaker, is made in a very special Japanese leather called Shironameshi, made with an over 1,000 years old tanning technique, that use only salt and rapeseed oil.
Himeji is the home of tanning in Japan, sort of their equivalent to Santa Croce in Italy. As always, there’s a suitable river that is the backbone to make tanning industries possible, in Himeji it’s the Ichikawa river. It’s said it has a special water quality that made it possible to develop the Shironameshi tanning method, a very time consuming process using only salt and rapeseed oil, but which results in a beautiful creme coloured, durable leather. At least it’s only here it’s been possible to use this method.
It was developed during the Heian period, year 794 to 1185, and was very popular for a long time. Then came newer vegetable tanning techniques from Europe and took over, and with chrome tanning it disappeared completely. Luckily Shironameshi was revived again in the early 2000’s, and now it’s available on the market again and used mainly by some Japanese craftspeople, including Orma Shoemaker.
