A paulownia chest can be planed back to new. Kamo kiri-tansu are built from paulownia boards and finished with tonoko powder and wax, and the workshops are concentrated within the city. The district is described as accounting for around seventy per cent of national production, with two hundred years behind it, and twelve businesses belong to the trade association.

Because the finish is not a film of lacquer or varnish sitting on top of the wood, a surface that has been stained or scratched can be taken back by planing off a very thin layer and refinishing it. That is not a repair in the usual sense; it returns the piece to its original condition. Consequently the workshops here do not only build new chests — a steady part of the work is taking in old ones and resurfacing them, sometimes for the third or fourth time in a chest's life. The Shin'etsu line reaches Niigata city in about forty minutes, the town is flat and its shops are gathered together, and the snow in winter is heavy.

Furniture that can be resurfaced has a different relationship to time. The owner does not use it up and dispose of it; it passes through two or three generations, with the surface renewed at each handover, which means the producing district retains a permanent stream of maintenance work alongside its manufacturing. That changes what the size of the industry actually is, and how it ought to be counted. Adding up the new chests sold in a year would substantially understate how much work is being done in Kamo, because a good deal of it is being done to furniture sold decades ago.