Photo/Illutration The Megane Museum in Sabae, Fukui Prefecture, displays various tools from the era of manual labor, including work benches and machines. It brings visitors into contact with some of those technologies, along with the history of the frame-making industry. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

It’s a spectacle to see, as a spectator, how spectacles are made.

I had speculated that perhaps there were about 10 steps to making a pair of eyeglasses, but it turns out that there are about 200.

“Megane wa kao no ichibu desu” (eyeglasses are a part of one’s face) went a famed TV commercial many moons ago. Speaking of moons, in French, round eyeglasses connected by a half-circle bridge over the nose are charmingly called “lunettes,” half moons.

Oh, and speaking of eyes, the Japanese phrase “grilled eyeball” for a sunny-side-up fried egg sounds grotesque--but I’ve digressed, as usual. Sorry.

The eyeglasses capital of Japan is not in a big industrial zone like Keiyo in Chiba or Chukyo in Nagoya. Instead, it is the small, unassuming rural community of Sabae, Fukui Prefecture, which comprises about 25,000 households. Why? How? Please read on.

In 1905, Gozaemon Masunaga (1871-1938), an entrepreneur from the poor farming village, invited craftsmen from Osaka to teach the villagers how to make “megane” (eyeglasses) as a side gig during the snowy winters.

Sabae’s humidity made metal frames rust easily, which led to experimentation and development of new materials. In turn, that eventually led to the creation of the world’s first titanium optical frames, which today have become an international standard.

A visit to the sleek Megane Museum, about a 10-minute walk along Megane Street from JR Sabae Station, will answer all your eyeglass frame questions, even ones you didn’t know you had until you saw the historical and educational exhibits.

Inside the tall, iconic white building with the gigantic red frames on top, you’ll find, in addition to the exhibition, a cafe, gift shop, work studio where you can experience frame-making and a shop that sells made-in-Fukui glasses.

I bought a pair of handmade black titanium frames.

When I showed dismay at having to wait two weeks for a prescription lens to be put in them and the impossibility of returning to pick them up, I was told that Fukui Optical Association has a Tokyo showroom in Minami-Aoyama.

I smiled and said I work in Aoyama, so that’s perfect.

“Oshorin,” a film featuring trailblazers of Fukui’s eyewear industry in the Meiji Era (1868-1912), is slated to be released in late 2023 to commemorate the opening of the Hokuriku Shinkansen Fukui-Tsuruga Line the following spring.

Oshorin is an old Fukui dialect word that means a springtime frozen snow surface.

My new spectacles fit spectacularly and are a joy to wear.

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Sept. 4 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s Wanderings Around Japan," which depicts various places across the country through the perspective of the author, a professor at Meiji University.

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