Three stages, three different craftspeople. A Sendai tansu is made by dividing the work into the carcass, the lacquering and the metal fittings, with each stage handled by a specialist rather than by one maker working through the sequence. The carcass is sashimono joinery: boards fitted together without nails, so any error in dimension shows up immediately in how a drawer runs, and there is nowhere for it to hide.

The lacquer is applied in a manner that leaves the grain visible through it, which means the quality of the timber work underneath is put on display rather than concealed by the finish. Workshops here stand mixed in among ordinary housing rather than gathered into a craft quarter, and some of them can be visited to watch the joinery being done, which is the stage that decides everything downstream of it. Being inside the city of Sendai, the district gives craftspeople the ordinary range of choices about schools and commuting, and they live in the town while working at the trade.

A well-arranged division of labour never puts the concealing stage last. A fault in the carcass cannot be covered by the lacquer, and roughness in the lacquer cannot be covered by the fittings, so each successive stage functions as an inspection of the one before it. Nobody has to be appointed to check anything, and no separate quality stage is required. Three people making one chest means the work passes three inspections on its way to being finished, each carried out by somebody whose own reputation depends on catching the fault.