Young people lately tend to avoid an old-style, tough training. The effect of dwindling birthrate and aging population adds to our industry's serious problem of the declining number of young carpenters.

According to the census by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, there used to be 760 thousand carpenters in 1995. By 2010, however, the population decreased to 400 thousand and it is estimated to go down to 200 thousand by the time of Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
There are less than 1,000 carpenters specializing in shrines and temples, and they are on the decease just as carpenters in general are.

Association of Shrine & Temple Carpenters Training School was founded in December 2016 in order to improve the current situation. It is our philosophy to train young shrine & temple carpenters in order to revive local shrines and temples while contributing to various industries.

The modern age is known as the "no-stress society." The rough and grueling training of the apprentice system can easily thwart the highest aspirations of young apprentices. They leave the industry even before they learn any techniques. Those who go through the curriculum at vocational schools, however, become too theoretical and less likely to have acceptable skills onsite. So they too leave the industry.

We thus provide a new training method that matches the modern day and age in order to contribute to our industry. We train young shrine & temple carpenters for three years to be skillful enough to work onsite with seasoned carpenters. We accept 10 applicants each year and produce 10 young shrine & temple carpenters each year after a three-year training to acquire techniques with their comrades. We believe that our graduates will be contributing to shrines and temples as key persons of our industry in the next 10 years.