About NOELSE
Every NOELSE culinary station is signed, in effect, by one person. This is his story — and the six-decade craft he carries forward.
About Dainichi Kasei
Dainichi Kasei Co., Ltd., the creator behind NOELSE, is a Japanese manufacturer defined by precision stone fabrication and durable craftsmanship since 1964. Combining decades of material mastery with an uncompromising pursuit of perfection, Dainichi Kasei crafts unprecedented architectural solutions that elevate both aesthetics and hygiene for spaces worldwide.
Founder Story
Masatsugu Hirasawa carries a craft passed down from generation to generation. He took his place at Dainichi Kasei from his father-in-law, carrying forward a precision fabrication legacy stretching back to 1964 — more than 60 years that he was entrusted to protect.
That is a different kind of responsibility than starting from nothing. A founder builds a company in his own image. A steward of a generational craft has to decide what that craft already knows, what to keep, and where its own discipline has never been fully applied.
He is a direct descendant of samurai, and has practiced kendo since the age of nine — fifty years of the same discipline, the same blade, the same posture. Bushido teaches that mastery isn’t revealed in what you add. It’s revealed in what you have the discipline to remove.
That discipline is not decoration on a craft passed to him. It is the lens that he was the first at Dainichi Kasei to apply to it.
Why NOELSE Exists
Taking his place at Dainichi Kasei, Hirasawa studied the most considered kitchens in the world — spaces designed by the finest architects, built from the rarest stone, fitted with hardware chosen by hand. In every one, he found the same unresolved compromise: generations of the craft’s own fabrication work had been engineered around it, but never eliminated it. The sink was inserted into the countertop, not integrated with it. Sealed at the seam with silicone caulk — a joint hidden beneath the stone lip, harboring moisture and bacteria no cleaning product could fully reach. The design answer and the hygiene answer, he realized, were the same answer. Yet, no one had reached it. He approached the problem the way fifty years of kendo teaches you to approach anything: as a single, continuous motion with nothing left to subtract. A blade has no seam. Neither should a sink.
A Craft Since 1964
Dainichi Kasei Kougyou Co., Ltd. has operated out of Tokyo’s Suginami district since 1964 — more than 60 years of precision fabrication. What Hirasawa brought to that generational craft was a single organizing principle the company had always practiced but never named: monozukuri, the art of making things with total intentionality.
Under his direction, the company developed a patented three-directional slope fabrication technique that cuts a sink from the same single plate of material as the countertop itself — no laminated joints, no caulk seam, a redefinition of the joint between basin and counter.
Dekton — sintered stone engineered to resist folding — is the clearest proof of that standard. Dainichi Kasei is the only certified fabricator able to fold it the way a craftsman folds origami paper: precise creases in a material never meant to bend.
Recognition & Innovation
NOELSE’s craft has been recognized far beyond the kitchen.
2018 — Milan Design Week. Dainichi Kasei’s Corian® fabrication was featured in Peep, an installation by contemporary design studio we+, shown in Materials Village during Milan Design Week — the same precision fabrication process that would later shape NOELSE.
2021–2022 — Artition. In partnership with Keio University (Associate Professor Hajime Narukawa), Dainichi Kasei co-developed Artition, a curved-surface splash-guard partition combining solid surface and acrylic. It was selected for the inaugural Good Design New Hope Award in 2022.
2023 — NECELA. Dainichi Kasei became the first company in Japan to successfully produce a ceramic-and-glass composite material for countertops, launched under the name NECELA — expanding what’s possible in ultra-thin, gravity-defying tabletop and kitchen design.
2023–2024 — New York. NOELSE and D healing-basin were exhibited at ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) in New York two years running, followed by a NOELSE launch event at the Cosentino New York City showroom, drawing nearly 100 designers and architects.
2025 — U.S. Patent. NOELSE’s kitchen sink design was granted a United States patent, formalizing the fabrication standard for the U.S. market it was built to serve.
The Philosophy
This is mottainai, too good to waste, made operational — the Japanese duty to care for an object of true quality across its entire life. The craftsperson’s responsibility doesn’t end at delivery.
Every client who owns a NOELSE culinary station knows someone personally stands behind it. That isn’t a feature. It’s a founding principle.