目の保養 · me no hoyō

Nurture life, simple Japanese wellness.
hoyojo.

Japanese objects for keeping well. Small daily habits, quietly made, that ask very little of you and give back for months.

Shop the first objectWhat hoyojo means

Two words we build on

Hoyō

to rest, to keep well

In 目の保養 — me no hoyō — the eyes are given rest by something beautiful. Looking is treated as a kind of care. We take it literally: everything we make should be good to live with, and good to look at.

Yōjō

nurturing life

A tradition of health kept up in small amounts, daily, long before anything goes wrong. Not a cure. A way of tending. It is the reason our objects are made to last seasons rather than weeks.

Binchotan Charcoal Water Purifying Sticks

The first object

Binchotan Charcoal
Water Purifying Sticks

A single piece of white oak charcoal, fired in Wakayama, dropped into a jug of tap water. It improves the taste, quietly, for three months at a time. Then it goes to your plants.

£14.99· three months of water
View the object

Where Binchotan first started

Kishū, Wakayama. Ubame oak, and kilns kept by a handful of families.

Ubame oak
Quercus phillyraeoides, coppiced rather than felled
1,000°C+
Fired, then smothered in ash and sand
Kishū
Wakayama prefecture, southern Honshū
Three months
Then it goes to the garden, not the bin

Why we started

We kept noticing that the habits that helped most were the smallest ones, and that they were nearly always attached to an object worth keeping.

hoyojo began with a stick of charcoal in a glass jug and the surprise of wanting to look at it. We are collecting more of these: things from Japan that are made carefully, used daily, and quietly good for you. One at a time, properly.

— the hoyojo studio