Kanna is both the name for a type of woodworking and the planing tool at its heart. Avoiding power tools and sanding of any kind, Kanna is a patient and an intuitive process guided by the hand’s touch. Tokunaga sees the tool as akin to a stethoscope that tells him the condition of the wood and how it will respond. His consciousness as a designer lives as much in his fingertips as in his mind. The process, which resembles sculpting, is a sustained act of attention that involves listening to the sound of the planer makes as it passes over the wood. No two wood blocks respond the same. The result is an immaculate finish that higher-tech methods can’t equal.

Tokunaga’s eye toward the long duration is evoked by the title of his Millennium Bench, an astonishing benchwidth seat backed by a thick bar of dark, rounded wood. As the name suggests, the key ingredient is time: the four decades between conception and execution, the 200 years the Japanese Zelkova spent deepening its grain and hue, and the many centuries of over which woodworking in the kanna style was perfected.