Japanese Trick Box 10-step
Ten moves. This is where trial and error stops working.
The harder of the two. Ten moves in a fixed order, and the box does not say whether a move was right: it simply allows it. Anyone who has never opened a secret box will sit with this one a while. Six different yosegi patterns outside, each in a different wood.
- Ten moves to the compartment
- Yosegi-zaiku mosaic, no paint and no stain
- Made in Hakone, Japan
- Compartment 104 x 79 x 44 mm
- WoodYosegi Zaiku, assorted natural woods
- Size150 x 97 x 68 mm
- Moves10
- Still availableSold out
About this box
Yosegi Zaiku means assembled wood. Rods of different woods are glued together until the cross-section shows a geometric motif, and from that block the craftsman planes a layer as thin as paper and lays it on the box. No paint and no stain: every shade is the wood itself.
Ten moves cannot be guessed. There are too many combinations, and a wrong step does not reset anything: it leaves you in a position with nowhere to go. Getting in means remembering the way you came. Hakone masters refined this mechanism over generations.
The pattern on the surface originally had the same purpose as the mechanism underneath: to hide where the joints run. On this box several patterns sit diagonally beside one another, and the edges of the sliding panels disappear into them.
It measures 150 x 97 x 68 mm outside and the compartment 104 x 79 x 44 mm. That is room for a folded letter, a locket, a memory stick or a key to something that needs explaining. Nothing is glued shut, so the box closes again and can be passed on.