Visit to Riso Headquarters in Tokyo

We recently had the privilege of visiting Riso Kagaku Corporation’s official headquarters in the Minato district of Tokyo, Japan! Toma Fuse of Riso’s Overseas Marketing Section and Yui Sato of Riso’s American Sales graciously showed us around the office and showroom.

We got a chance to see some samples of work by Tokyo based Riso artists and were introduced to Riso products not available outside of Japan-including an ingeniously designed paper folder-the R-99J-and a sealing unit, the EX 4150.

Afterwards, Toma-san and Yui-san offered to bring us to Handsaw Press -one of Japan’s leading Riso print studios and publishers. There we met Fu Abe who showed us around the studio and shared various projects with us including a massive A1 Riso printed magazine produced by Corners Press, our Riso publisher friends in Seoul, South Korea!

We were dazzled by the beautiful Riso print work covering every surface, and RisoLAB Director Panayiotis Terzis even found a pair of his own prints on the wall.

Our NYC #Riso friends TXTbooks also made a cameo in a violet and flat gold print that immediately popped out at us.

Thank you Fu-san for showing us around, and If you’re ever in Tokyo and need a place to make a Riso print, reach out to @handsawpress and make an appointment. They also have a full woodworking studio in the basement.

We’re endlessly indebted to Toma-san and Yui-san for giving us their time and letting us peek into the inner workings of the organization that gave us the Risograph Duplicator-a crucial tool for independent print based artists and small publishers across the world.