Roiro-nuri & Roiro-migaki: The Polished Mirror Finish
Roiro is the other showcase route — the deep, glassy, almost wet-looking black (or colored) mirror finish seen on the finest lacquerware and pen bodies (Danitrio's "roiro-migaki" pen line is a well-known commercial example). Unlike nuri-tate/hana-nuri (Chapter 17), it is not glossy off the brush — the shine is built entirely afterward, by hand, through polishing. The Wajima tradition documents it as a four-stage process:
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Roiro polishing (dozuri) | Wet-sand the cured lacquer surface with fine charcoal (traditionally Suruga charcoal), then work in oil-based polishing powder with cloth |
| 2. Wiping | Remove excess oil/polishing residue with a wet cloth, then a dry cloth, and store the piece |
| 3. Suriurushi | Coat the polished surface with a very thin layer of premium raw lacquer, wipe with soft cloth, cure in the drying chamber (nushiburo) |
| 4. Tsuya-age ("bringing up the shine") | Lightly rub the surface with oil-soaked cotton, then work in deer-horn powder or fine titanium powder with the fingertips |
Stages 3–4 are repeated multiple times to build the final mirror gloss — the craftsman's bare hands, not a mechanical buffer, are the actual polishing tool, since hand pressure and feedback are what avoid microscopic scratching on a surface this reflective. (Japan Artisan Foundation, Roiro)
A fully worked, documented example: 19 steps on a pen
The most concrete public account of a complete shitaji-through-roiro sequence, measured in actual steps and days, comes from a maker producing urushi fountain pens on ebonite blanks:
- Two coats of raw seshime urushi directly on ebonite (kiji-gatame equivalent).
- Black naka-nuri urushi, brushed, cured 48 hours in a humidity chamber, charcoal-flattened — repeated five times (Chapter 16).
- High-quality kuro-roiro urushi applied, cured 24 hours, ground flat with charcoal and water — repeated twice.
- Multiple polishing passes alternating: charcoal-and-water sanding; tonoko-and-oil polishing paste; thin coats of clear kijōmi urushi with careful wiping and drying; and finally micro-polishing with rapeseed oil and migako powder worked in by fingertip, palm, or deer skin.
Total: a minimum of 19 distinct working steps, each separated by 1–5 days of cure time, in a furo held at 25–28°C and 65–80% humidity. (On Fountain Pens, guest post) That is a useful number to hold onto: it's the real, sourced step-count for a small object done properly, and it's the benchmark against which "quick" tutorials should be judged.