An independent Japanese company, founded by two French friends who love Japan, shipping from the ramen capital of the country. Since 2010.
Akazuki started in 2010 in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu, when two French friends living in Japan kept hearing the same thing from people back home: the Japanese tableware they wanted was either impossible to order from outside Japan or cost twice its price once it landed.
So they registered a company, 株式会社Akazuki, rented a first office in the Maizuru neighborhood, and started shipping bowls, teapots and cast iron kettles to people who had never set foot in Japan.
Fifteen years later, the office has moved a few streets over to Daimyo, the catalog has grown past 1,000 products, and customer emails are still read and answered by the team that packs the parcels. We are not a marketplace, not a proxy service and not a reseller with a warehouse in New Jersey. We are a Japanese company selling what we would put on our own table, shipped from our own warehouses in Japan.
This page is the story we never took the time to tell.
Everything you order leaves from this dot
Fukuoka is the western gateway of Japan. It is closer to Seoul than to Tokyo, which surprises most people, and it explains a lot about the city: an old port, a food culture shaped by Korea and China, and a very practical attitude toward sending things across the sea.
Eleven things you did not know about Akazuki
- We are a Japanese company, not a proxy.株式会社Akazuki is a kabushiki kaisha registered in Fukuoka. We buy from producers, hold the stock, pack it and ship it. Nobody in between.
- We sell ramen bowls from the birthplace of tonkotsu ramen.Hakata, the old merchant district of Fukuoka, is where pork-bone broth ramen was born. There are more than 1,000 ramen shops in the city. We have opinions about bowl depth.
- Japanese porcelain was born an hour from our office.Arita, in neighboring Saga Prefecture, fired the first porcelain in Japan in 1616. Arita and Hasami are the sources of a large part of our ceramics.
- The price you see is the price you pay.For the United States, duties, tariffs and taxes are included at checkout. No customs invoice at your door, no surprise from the courier.
- More than 1,000 products, 99% made in Japan.For home kitchens and professional ones alike. The origin is clearly indicated on every product page. The 1% exception is a handful of bento accessories, and they are labeled as such.
- Our parcels have reached 78 countries.From the United States and Australia to Iceland, Chile and Kenya. Wherever a postal service or a courier goes, a Fukuoka-packed box has probably gone too.
- One office, two warehouses, all in Japan.The office is in Daimyo, Fukuoka. The stock sits in Mino, the ceramics heartland of Gifu, and in Nagasaki, next to the Hasami and Arita kilns. Parcels leave from where the products are made.
- We work with Michelin-starred restaurants.Chefs and pastry teams order from us the same way you do, because the tableware and tools they want are the ones made here. The rest of the time, we ship to home kitchens.
- Our cast iron comes from Iwachu, in Iwate.The kettles and teapots you see here are made by a foundry founded in 1902 in Morioka, 1,400 km north of us. It is the one product line we are happy to ship the long way around.
- Four point eight out of five.That is our average customer rating, built one order at a time, including the ones where a parcel arrived broken and we reshipped it the same week.
- The name is a nod to Naruto.The founders were reading the manga when they picked it. Akazuki echoes Akatsuki, the name of the organization in the story, and the Japanese word for dawn. Fitting for a company that started as a side project at odd hours.
Fifteen years, in short
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株式会社Akazuki is registered in Fukuoka by two French founders. First orders shipped from a desk in Maizuru.
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akazuki.com opens to international customers. First parcels to the United States, Europe and Australia.
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Iwachu cast iron and Kyushu ceramics become the core of the catalog. The office moves to Daimyo, and warehouses open in Mino (Gifu) and Nagasaki, close to the producers.
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Duties and taxes included for all US orders. The catalog passes 1,000 products.
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Still in Daimyo. Shipping to home kitchens, restaurants and shops worldwide, and still answering emails ourselves.
How we choose what we sell
We do not stock everything. We stock what we would give to a friend visiting from abroad: pieces that are made in Japan, made to be used daily, and priced the way they are priced here, not the way they are priced in a museum gift shop.
Being in Kyushu helps. The porcelain towns of Arita and Hasami, the folk pottery of Koishiwara and the tea fields of Yame are all within a morning’s drive, and our Mino warehouse sits in the middle of the largest ceramics district in Japan. We can visit a producer, look at the second-quality pile, and decide what goes on the site.
What we refuse: products sold as Japanese that are made elsewhere without saying so, and products we cannot pack safely. A beautiful bowl that arrives in pieces is not a beautiful bowl.
What we promise
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速
Shipped fast, from Japan
Orders are prepared within 48 hours on business days and leave our warehouses in Japan by EMS, DHL or tracked airmail.
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包
Packed by hand, insured
Ceramics are wrapped individually and double-boxed. If something arrives damaged, send us two photos and we reship or refund. No forms, no arguing.
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人
A person answers
Write to contact@akazuki.com and you get a reply from someone in Fukuoka who can walk to the shelf and check the item.
The people behind the emails
Akazuki was founded by two French friends who came to Japan, stayed, and never got over it. Today it is a team of four people in Fukuoka, led by director Fabien Gandrillon. We have spent fifteen years learning the difference between a good donburi bowl and a great one from the people who make them, and most of what we know ends up in the product pages.
We like cast iron, dislike the word “curated,” and think the single most useful thing an online shop can do is tell the truth about shipping times.
If you have a question about a product, a producer or a shipment, one of us will answer. If you are a journalist, a restaurant or a shop, write to the same address.
Where to find us
2-2-51-502 Daimyo, Chuo-ku
Fukuoka 810-0041, Japan
contact@akazuki.com
Daimyo is a neighborhood of narrow streets between Tenjin and Akasaka, full of coffee shops, secondhand stores and small restaurants. We do not have a showroom, but if you are in Fukuoka and want to say hello, write first and we will find a moment.
