Kofu Welcomes Newborns With Birthstones, Celebrating Japan's Jewelry Capital

In Kofu, a birthstone is more than a gift. The city launched an April program offering birthstones to babies born there, turning Japan’s jewelry capital into a place where a newborn’s first keepsake carries both family meaning and civic identity. The stones were displayed on April 9 around an oak case made from Yamanashi wood, a small detail that gave the presentation the polish of an exhibition rather than a simple handout.

That gesture lands differently in Kofu because the city sits inside one of Japan’s deepest jewelry clusters. Jewelry making in Yamanashi began in the Edo period, when fine rock crystal was mined in the region and polishing techniques took root. A prefectural exhibition page says methods from Kyoto spread to Kofu in the late Edo period through priests at Kanazakura Shrine in northern Kofu, helping define the city’s specialization in crystal carving and gemstone polishing. Today, Yamanashi is home to companies that handle stone carving, gemstone polishing, precious-metal work, distribution, and sales across Japan and abroad.

Kofu’s tourism office describes the city as Japan’s largest jewellery manufacturer, and local industry sources put the number of jewelry-related companies at more than 1,000 in a city of just under 190,000 people. That concentration is what makes a birthstone program feel especially apt here. A generic baby gift fades fast; a gemstone, chosen for the month of birth, carries color, symbolism, and the possibility of being worn later, whether reset into a pendant or set in a ring when the child grows up.

The Yamanashi Jewellery Museum in Kofu gives that heritage a public face. Visitors can observe jewelry production and take hands-on workshops by reservation, a reminder that the city’s jewelry story is not only about luxury but about skilled labor and transmission. The museum’s own account places Yamanashi among Japan’s leading jewelry-producing areas, with a reach that extends from raw material procurement to processing, production, distribution, and sales.

That is the appeal of Kofu’s newborn birthstone program: it ties a family milestone to a place where stone has always meant more than ornament. In a city built on crystal, polish, and craft, the first gift can be designed to last long after infancy, as a small object of memory that still makes sense when worn again years later.