Founded in 1590. Ibasen boasts a history of more than 400 years as a long-established store manufacturing and selling uchiwa fans and folding fans, and has been loved by many “Edokko.( a person born and brought up in Tokyo)” At its founding, the company was a purveyor of Japanese paper and bamboo to the Shogunate, but during the Edo period they began to use these materials to add value by producing uchiwa and folding fans. Since the Edo period, when it became popular to have ukiyo-e paintings on fans, these uchiwa fans have been popular with a prominent lineup of artists including Utagawa Toyokuni I, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and Utagawa Hiroshige. In this way, Ibasen is still working hard to hand down the Edo culture as a publisher of ukiyo-e.

Of the product array, the Edo uchiwa fans and folding fans stand out as representing the Ibasen brand. The feature of Edo uchiwa fans is that they are made by splitting a single piece of bamboo, unlike Kyoto uchiwa, which produces the body and pattern parts of the fan separately. The large uchiwa fans printed using precious woodblocks using fan paintings by Toyokuni and Kuniyoshi, etc. are also popular as art to decorate rooms.

On the other hand, it is a feature of Edo folding fans that they have fewer, thicker backbones and wider folds. While the Kyoto style fans tend to have a thin backbone and elegant patterns, the Edo style is more simple and bold, with fine patterns and characters, etc. For example, there are auspicious patterns such as wave plovers and nine horses, representative of “everything will be fine.” Just as with the uchiwa fans, there is also a unique Ibasen lineup of folding fans with ukiyo-e prints.

Ibasen is also embarking on new initiatives to widely share the culture of Edo. One, is a collaboration with ukiyo-e and manga. In 2014, the 80th anniversary of the birth of Fujiko F Fujio, a collaborative fan was produced that brought Doraemon (a popular manga character created by Fujiko F. Fujio) into the world of ukiyo-e, and the company has ambitions to continue to play ukiyo-e off against the Japanese culture of today. The company has also released a VR ukiyo-e museum in the metaverse, and has started selling products utilizing NFT technology. This new approach is aimed at not only appealing to Japan, but also actively appealing overseas.