EASTWIND ARTISANS is an official member of  affta (American Fly Fishing Trade Association). We are a joint organization of US and Japan.

We are here to introduce Japanese fine fly fishing tackles which are all handcrafted by Japanese professional craftsmen.

 

The history of the Japanese Fly fishing is not that long as ours, and the quality of fishing tackles might had been behind us for decades. But now we cannot stop surprising their super craftsmanship as they did in the field of car, motorcycle, camera, office Multi-Function Device market and maybe Nintendo or Play Station which I don’t care. 

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Now I live in my home-town Brentwood, Tennessee, but spent 5 years in Japan as an expat of Xerox. I am fortunate enough to make so many Japanese friends while I lived there. I had seen so many beautiful fishing tackles and found out they were not known well to the global fishers including USA, Europe countries and even Asian countries.

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I was lucky to know Yuki Bando who is one of the well-known fly fishing writers in Japan. He wrote “American Bamboo Rod Makers” in 1999, and that book gave a tremendous influence to the Japanese fly fishing (He is now a publisher and preparing a book about the Japanese Rod Makers in English). 

 

Yuki worked for Xerox, that is why we knew each other. Yuki took all the hard work to make bridges for me to the Japanese craftsmen. All his efforts brought me here to start introducing Japanese beautiful products to the fly fishermen in the USA, possibly Great Britain or other Europe countries. Thank you, Yuki!

 

Gary Owen