This Yojuro stone is believed to have been collected by Mr. Yojuro and carved by the Sakai family. The yellowish-white color of the stone indicates a patina that gives a feeling of oldness.

It was a surprise for me to find Yojuro stones in Mr. Matuura Arishige’s suiseki book because he always emphasized the importance of being natural in suiseki. Mr. Matuura described Yojuro stones in two of his publications; Introduction to Suiseki Beauty (1993) and Suiseki Introductory Manual (2004) as follows:

"Stones made by Yojuro, a stone carver, at the beginning and mid of Showa (ca 1925-1940) are called Yojuro stones. Many of the stones from the Ibi River in Shizuoka prefecture have black and white parts; we can appreciate two tones in one stone. Although suiseki hobbyists prefer natural stones, the old Yojuro stones that lost artificialness have unique features (to appreciate)."

Later, I became acquainted with Mr. Kasahara Manabu, owner of Sansui-en stone shop in Tokyo. He was kind enough to share a copy of a series of articles written by Mr. Sakai Teikyo, a very skilled stone carver. Mr. Teikyo’s series of four essays about his memories of Ibi River stones was published by Ibi River Aiseki-kai between October 1968 and January 1969 in a local stone club magazine “Sekiyu (Stone Friends)”.

In the third of these essays, he wrote:

“Kanshichi, my younger brother, and I went to Kuse Village in Ibi County to purchase stones around the end of Taisho or beginning of Showa (ca 1920-1925). We found a man named Yojuro placing about 10 stones in front of his house. Those stones were mainly part black and part white. All the stones were in the same condition. 



One of the black top parts was broken and it looked like an island in the sea (white part  looked like the sea). I felt that I could make interesting stones out of these two-tone stones. I bought all the stones from Yojuro. Thinking back, Yojuro perhaps did not 

understand the stones well, but he thought those two-color stones were rare and he could sell them. Yojuro was the only person who collected those stones. We called those stones Yojuro stones. We made good-shaped mountains of the black parts and made the base from the white part. When we shipped those stones to Tokyo, people liked them. This is how Yojuro stones started.”

The Ibi River in Shizuoka prefecture is the main source of Yojuro stones.

A large partially worked Yojuro stone that is 30 cm wide, 17.5 cm high, and 12 cm deep. To make this into a scenic distance mountain stone, the artist will need to skillfully remove about two-thirds of the black stone on top when forming the appearance of a mountain chain. The lower thick white portion can be reduced in thickness with a single basal cut.

This article helped me understand how Yojuro stones began to be made. However, there is little written about Yojuro himself. We do not know his surname. He is remembered only by his first name. We know that he was a stone collector in the early 1900s and he supplied a distinct type of two-tone stones from the Ibi River to stone carvers. Around this time, there were many more stone carvers near the Ibi River. Tom Elias wrote about Sakai Kanhichi and Sakuke, father and son, stone carvers between 1891 and 1930. See the article Enhancing the Stone, Part One, The Japanese Reality of Modifying Suiseki in the Classroom section on this website. The Sakai family began to work these stones because many of them did not sit well. 

Some Yojuro stones are beautifully made.

This beautiful older Yojuro stone depicting a distant mountain range has good appeal. This stone is 33 x 4.3 x 9.5 cm, and the bottom of the stone has been cut.

One of the best suiseki books “Traditional Beauty: Bonsai and Suiseki” published by Sekai Bunka-sha in 1979 has two photos of Yojuro stones (page 243). One Yojuro stone was described as “The natural Yojuro is supplemented by the man-made artificial beauty. Due to the age and grace of this entire stone, the stone is comparable to natural landscape stone. This Yojuro stone had an honor of having been seen by the Emperor.”