Maruman and Tile
We make tile with the wish that the places of living and working where tile from Maruman is used will become favorite spots and help you pass pleasant days.
About Tile
Ceramic tile is fired.
Indefinitely unchanging in quality, unaffected by sunlight, weather, or other such manifestations of the external environment, offering excellent durability, and with porcelain tile in particular having a low rate of moisture absorption, tile is an outstanding construction material that does not occasion frost damage and can be used at any site.
Compared to easily torn paper, rust-prone iron, decay-prone wood, and deterioration-prone plastics, tile is clearly superior from the perspective of protecting buildings.
Above all, with glazed mosaic tile, the appearance of each individual tile can be varied through combinations of china clay and glaze.
As for each one being different, the colors themselves, the depth and spread of the colors, the degree of gloss, the texture, the feel and more – everything is different.
Depending on the location and conditions of use, combinations of tile of differing shapes, sizes, and thicknesses are also possible.
Selecting and arranging one's preferred colors and shapes produces a design line none other in the world.
With its extremely great degree of freedom and design performance in addition to its strengths as a construction material, tile adds depth to surfaces and spaces where it is used, and elevates the quality and value of interiors.
About Kasahara, the Birthplace of Tile from Maruman
Kasahara-cho, in the city of Tajimi, is a small town with a population of around ten thousand.
The area around Tajimi is blessed with good-quality china clay that accumulated from an ancient era of some ten million years ago.
Fired pottery came to be made around the time of Japan's Asuka period of the sixth and seventh centuries, and this is the producing center for Mino ware, which boasts a history of around 1,400 years.
Bolstered by this traditional technology that has been passed down unbroken, the tile industry began in Tajimi in 1914.
Amid this, ceramic tile that had glaze applied to it developed by the late Itsuzo Yamauchi, a native of Kasahara, serves as the impetus for the production of mosaic tile to become Kasahara's largest postwar industry.
At its height of prosperity, Kasahara had over a hundred tile factories, and even now the town produces almost all the mosaic tile in Japan.
MOSAIC TILE MUSEUM Tajimi opened in the very center of the town in 2016, and attracts tile aficionados from all over the country.
Our History
Manzo Kato, the first head of the company, was born the youngest of six brothers.
He grew up to assist his brothers who were operating as a tile wholesaler in Hokkaido.
After his parents implored him to return to his birthplace, he began a tile-laying workshop in Kasahara.
In this way, Maruman came to be founded in 1931.
Manzo spent difficult times before and after the war with his sons, and it was in 1957 that the operation was established as Maruman Shokai. His eldest son Hiroshige soon took over the company and became its second head in 1963, with Manzo assuming Chairperson. With the rising construction demand accompanying the high-level economic growth of the day, the domestic market enjoyed vigorous growth.
Tile from Japan fulfilled demand in North America as well, with exports at their peak in the years around 1970.
Manufacturers in Tajimi and elsewhere also came out with a succession of offerings so as to top the competition through innovative artistry, and large quantities of original-design tile from Maruman was exported to the USA, Australia, and Europe.
In 2010 the second head met with a literally untimely end, and his oldest daughter, who had been away from the business for twenty years, returned that very day and took the reins of management.
Tile shipment quantities in Japan were in steady decline, and for exports as well, attempting to win out in competition against low-cost tile from other countries made for trying circumstances.
The third head, who had witnessed the struggles of her predecessors, was nonetheless undaunted. She was surrounded by members of the same industry who had lofty ideals for tile as their occupation.
Aided by customers and suppliers, and with vigorous encouragement from her comrades, she made use of her feminine perspective, and together with her staff she strives to offer ceramic tile suited to interiors that could only come from Maruman.
What We Care
The speed and rhythm of the clattering sound reveals the ongoing state of tile-laying.
Maruman has a tile-laying workshop inhouse where mosaic tiles are mounted to sheets one at a time.
For every product, limit samples are fashioned for distinguishing good-quality items from unacceptable ones, and our tile-layers create sheets that are approximately thirty centimeters square as they check the limit samples.
If tile size is one centimeter square, this means that as many as 576 pieces must be checked per sheet.
Are the joints straight? Are the tiles free of chips, bubbles, pinholes, and other defects? Is the color close to the standard? Day in and day out, our tile-layers devote attention to tile quality and the degree of perfection of the sheets.
Because Japan has four distinct seasons, the bond and glue thickness and drying times are adjusted to match the season, and the products are completed so that every tile, no matter how small, is securely attached to the sheet and no tiles come loose from the sheet when it is taken from the box at the jobsite.
We take pride in shaping every sheet into a top-quality item in this way, and bringing our tile to the world.
Our Mission
"Made in Japan" is something we commit to without compromise.
Right from Maruman's inception, we have created our own original designs, commissioned production by our manufacturer partners, and offered original-design tile.
Product size, shape, and color are all planned in-house, and with the manufacturing facility, as well as involving the glaze manufacturers, we make prototype after prototype in order to create tile of greater appeal.
