Why nine in ten Japanese frames come from one small city

Sabae is a city of about 68,000 people in Fukui prefecture, on the wrong side of Japan for shipping and under deep snow for much of the winter. It makes roughly 90% of Japan's eyeglass frames and, depending on how you count, around a fifth of the world's.

Winter work, 1905

The industry was deliberately introduced by a local landowner, Gozaemon Masunaga, who brought craftsmen from Osaka and Tokyo to teach frame-making to farming families who had no income through the snow months. Crucially, he taught openly rather than protecting the knowledge, and the skill spread across hundreds of household workshops.

Titanium, 1981

Sabae's workshops were the first in the world to solve titanium frame production at scale. Titanium is light, hypoallergenic and does not corrode — and it is difficult to work, because it seizes tools and cannot be soldered conventionally. The city developed the welding and forging methods that made it viable, and that head start is why a Sabae address still means something on a frame.

What beta titanium changes

Beta titanium is an alloy that adds real springiness. A frame can be flexed well out of shape and return true, and it can be made thinner for the same strength — which is how a complete pair lands between 11 and 15 grams. If you have ever taken sunglasses off at the end of a day and found two red marks on your bridge, this is the material that fixes it.