How We Went to the Awagami Paper Factory and Made Paper; Part I

I have made paper before in my life, but I have never climbed a steep road through rice paddies to find a field with rows of young mulberry saplings ready to harvest for the soft fibers of their inner bark. I have made paper before, but I was cheating. Paper, like babies, seems to arrive with the storks. Until you actually go into a field planted with rows of kozo, as the Japanese call these trees, it is hard to really understand that in essence paper is an agricultural product and nowhere more so than here in rural Japan.

With a group of 19 students and a colleague from the art history department at RISD, I have been in Yamakawa, Tokushima Prefecture for just 5 days, and together we have made around 400 sheets of beautiful 100% pure local kozo paper, or Japanese washi. I have been thrilled in this short time, even awed, to participate in the production of paper almost exactly as it has been done for over 1200 years, when paper making first came to the island of Shikoku.

After a breakfast many Americans would find more foreign than a Turkish toilet, we left the hotel on our first morning and walked up into the terraced hills under the gaze of the forested Mt. Koutsu. We climbed past the farm houses with their grey ceramic roofs, the ubiquitous small canals used to irrigate the fields, bamboo forests, cedar trees strait and tall. Along the way we met Shizu Fujimori, the daughter of Mr. Yoichi Fujimori, the current leader of the Awa Washi company.

Awa Washi is the name of the company that runs the Awagami Paper Factory, where we have been for the past week. Just ot give you a glimps of the longevity of this enterprise, Awa Washi is currently under the management of the 8^th generation of the Fujimori family. This company and its principle product, Japanese handmade washi, was designated an Intangible Cultural Property of Tokushima Prefecture in 1976 and Mr. Minoru Fujimori, the father of Yoichi Fujimori, was selected as Master Craftsman and awarded the Metal for Technical Excellence by the Japanese ministry of Labor. His son, Yoichi Fujimori, currently runs the Awa Washi production, and introduced machine made paper in addition to continuing the tradition of handmade paper. His 2 daughters work for the company out of Tokyo, and one of them, Shizu, is currently acting as our translator.

Dogs bark from a nearby farm, their noses up against a tin gate. We follow Shizu up the hills, to a small field with a small garden shed, where her father and two other men are busy at work. The field is not very large at all by American standards, maybe half an acre. It contains perhaps ten rows of kozo trees, each about ten feet tall and 3 feet apart. They are more like elongate bushes than trees, as several shoots spring from the same foot. These long stick-like trees have few if any branches, mostly near the tops. We are instructed to cut the trees to 3-4 inches from the base, leaving a stump where next year’s growth will sprout. We cut down two long rows of trees, and then cut the branches into 4’ lengths and bundle them up with strings. The side braches are cut off and discarded. The bundles which we carry to a small truck, remind me of the many old Japanese prints of workers carrying bundles of sticks on the Tokaido road. Perhaps some of those pictured were working for the Fujimori family and making paper?

Fujimori-san is a very patient man. He is calm, his voice quiet. He shows us a smaller bush, with small bundles of white buds on the end of each shoot. This is mitsumata, the second of the three varieties of plants that produce fibers for Japanese paper makers. Mitsumata grows very slowly, 3-4 inches a year, but the fibers remain soft and you can cut several years growth at once. The kozo fibers from older branches become hard and wooden, so these are cut every year. The third kind of fiber is called gampi, and it has never been domesticated as far as I know. Gampi fibers are the most expensive; they are soft like silk when you touch them. The paper they produce has a lovely sheen and is extremely strong. In olden days, gampi fibers were used for the production of money. We cut the mitsumata bush as well and bundle the sticks.

Halfway down the hillside, we turn down a long drive that disappears into a small forest of cedar and bamboo. Here is located the Awagami log cabin studio, where we will spend the rest of this day and the next first steaming the branches, then removing the bark. The kozo bark has three components, and though they can all be used to make paper, it is the inner most and whitest bark that will give us the nicest sheets of paper. The outermost bark simply flakes away in the process of twisting the bark and pulling it off the branch. The wood part of the branches is discarded at this point.

The second layer of bark, what we are calling the green layer, is slightly slimy at this point, and needs to be scraped off the white inner layer. For the rest of the first afternoon and the entire next day we remove the green bark from the white using knives. At this point any imperfections such as scabs on the bark or little black spots needs to be removed or it will end up in the paper. We sit in a circle, a blanket on our laps and plastic gloves over cotton ones on our hands and pass the hours telling stories, or rather, Elena and I told stories. It was cold, and we often took tea breaks to warm ourselves up, though not often enough! Mrs. Fujimori made us some wonderful thick ginger brew that was sweet as molasses and almost as thick. In spite of the cold and tedious nature of the work, the setting was beautiful. Throughout we were very aware that this is an ancient process, demanding its own timing. Fujimori-san tells us that the picking out of defects from the bark was traditionally done by farmers who had spare time in the cold winter months. Think of winter quilting sessions in 18^th century America and you might approach the feeling.

On the third day we went to the main factory in town, where we met Fujimori-san and Shizu-san in a conference room on the second floor. The room is lined with art books on one side and has large glass windows that over-look the factory down one floor on the other. There is an electric tea kettle that is always on, and a bowl of sweets on the side table. We are told that this room will be ours for the duration of the workshop; we will eat lunch here as well as access the internet, and leave our belongings while we work downstairs. Downstairs we are shown how the fibers are washed and boiled with soda ash. At this point we combed through all the fibers by hand in very cold water, once again looking for bits of wood or black spots, removing any and all imperfections.

Now, believe it or not, we begin an activity where we actually get hot and sweaty. Its lasts the rest of this day as well as most of the next. We beat the fibers, placing them on wooden blocks and pounding them with short wooden bats to break up the long strands of bark to release the fibers. This is more pleasant than it sounds, as we can get into the rhythm of the beating, sometimes with a baton in each hand. The fibers fold like millefeuille pastry dough, the dark ochre color turning softer and more buttery. The noise is more than sufficient to block out any conversation. There is a certain Zen in this activity as well. When we are done, we have three grocery sized bags of fiber, hardly much at all I think to myself. It turns out I was way off.

Daniel Heyman

When the bus stopped

When the bus stopped at the end of the long bridge over the deep ravine, and the driver said that the Fuigo Spa was down the steep drive to the left and we would have to walk, I knew that knowing Japanese would really be an asset on this trip. Unfortunately, it was an asset I didn’t have.
“But that is a spa onsen, and we are looking for a simple country inn, the Fuigo Inn, not the spa.”
“This is it. The road is too steep for the bus, you will have to walk. “
“Are you sure? We are not looking for the spa (nor, I thought can we afford to pay for a spa as we are barely making the budget last as it is). We are looking for the inn.”
“Fuigo Spa,” the driver said emphatically, gesticulating towards a road sign I could not read. “Walk-ee!”
“Did you call? Did he call them,” I asked Elena, my colleague the art historian who as it happens does speak a bit of Japanese.
“He says we are here. I will ask him to call the inn.”
I looked down into the ravine. The oval roof of a Japanese bath house, steam escaping from a roof vent, sat cuddled between the steep tree covered hillsides. It was dark and we couldn’t see much, but there was a red-roofed building attached to the onsen, clearly it was a very nice place. Clearly there was a mistake.
“They are sending a van to come and take us and our bags. He says to take the bags out of the bus.”
It was dark, getting cold and we were high up in the mountains, far from a real town. My internal clock was still a bit jagged, and we were all tired after the long trip over from the US and two intense days of sight-seeing in Osaka and on Awaji Island. Normally, this kind of adventure turns me on, but with 19 college students, my head was full of the repercussions of a night trying to find the right inn after being abandoned on the side of the road.
When we descended to the onsen and were asked to remove our shoes at the door before entering, my queasiness did not disappear. Wouldn’t it seem normal for a group to show up for a bath, without the question of hotel rooms being broached? A few halting conversations between Elena and the inn keeper, more of a non-conversation it seemed to me, where not much was actually communicated even though both parties seemed eager to exchange information (I really envisioned a long night ahead)– and then, like a magic bottle opening, we were simply handed keys and told to be at dinner at 7.
“Please take a bath before dinner.”
I guess this is where we had reserved. Wow!! A week at a rural onsen, what could be better?
In case you haven’t had the pleasure of visiting a Japanese public bath, known as an onsen, let me explain. As Americans we are driven (I might say obsessed) by an overall pursuit of everything individual. By that I mean we want what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. No personal request is ever out of line, no individual pursuit is ever denied. The “I’s” have it. We download our lives to watch alone from our rooms, ears covered by buds not hearing those around us. We text under the table or brazenly out in the open, clearly projecting our desire to be elsewhere and with other people. We like it that way, it corresponds to our sense of individual entitlement. We request any number of ingredient changes in restaurants, we eat on our own schedules, we make our own friends. Though it may seem completely normal for an American to live this way, it would be unthinkable in many other cultures to posit the self as the center of life. In France or Italy the family often comes first and no one complains, and friends tend to also be friends of the family. In Japan where privacy is a place in your head more often than actually being alone, everything seems to be about the group, not the individual, and being a good member of a group is de rigeur.
Consider: In the US, the higher you pay for a hotel room, the nicer the private bathroom is. A motel might have a press mold plastic shower with a moldy curtain. A four star hotel in Chicago had better have marble floors in the bathroom and two sinks, so that husband and wife can each have their own, otherwise you are perfectly in your rights to demand a better room. In Japan, the nicer the hotel, the nicer the public bath facilities. I have been in several hotels at a variety of prices ranges in Japan, from rural to the most urban and I can tell you that a wonderful hotel will have a superlative public bath. A smaller hotel will have a simpler public bath. Guests at both hotels will bath in public before dinner.
So what’s so special about a Japanese bath? After many visits in many towns and cities, I find that the most striking aspect of these baths is a palpable sense of community. Though getting clean is what you do, communing with your neighbors is why you go back often. Here at the Fuigo Spa, in rural Tokushima province, many many miles from anything that might resemble a city, in a bamboo covered hollow surrounded by floating rice paddies and neighborhood Buddhist temples, these two steamy rooms, the male and female public baths are the public square. I don’t know about the women’s side, for obvious reasons, but on the men’s side, there is constant chatter, the ring out of ohio gozimus in the morning and kon bon wa when someone enters in the afternoon. Call me a romantic, but I assume that many of these men have known each other their whole lives, growing up in this town, working, marrying, and raising children all within the confines of this idyllic valley. The bath is not just the place with the best hot water and cleanest hot tub; it is in fact the city square, the coffee shop, the park bench or the church basement, and these men come here for community. And for the children that come with their parents, or the young adults, it is the playground and the hang out.
As with many things Japanese, taking a bath in a Japanese onsen has its rituals that must be observed. For one, you cannot wear a bathing suit; this will prompt someone, almost anyone, to ask you to leave. However, one does not simply strip bare and plunge into the steamy hot waters and admire the view. (Out the very large curved wall of windows of our onsen is the small pools of the river complete with a tumbling waterfall and the wonderful vermillion steel bridge which soars overhead reminding me that I am in the country of Hokusai and Hiroshige.) When you pass the indigo stained banners that serve as a gateway entrance, there is a dressing room, with small square lockers and plastic baskets for your clothes. You bring only a tiny towel for washing in with you to the actual bathing room. Beyond the sliding doors, the inner sanctum, noticeably warmer, divides into two sections. On the right, there is an area of very low plastic stools each paired with a plastic bucket, in front of mirrors, spigots and shower hoses. Next to each set up is a tray with shampoo as well as cake soap. The first ritual, without fail, is to perch yourself on the little stool in front of a mirror and wash your whole body, and I mean really thoroughly wash yourself using the soap, the towel and the shower hose. I have seen men sit before these mirrors for over fifteen minutes washing. You can shave if you want to; brush your teeth if you need to.
Only when you are completely squeaky clean, then you go over to the hot tub for a good long and relaxing soak. It feels so good and should not be rushed. No one rushes this part, though I have wanted to as by this time I am thinking about getting to dinner. In our tub, there are two special areas: one with bubbles that rise from the floor and another with strong jets that massage your back if you sit in front of them. The water says, let go, take this moment and be here now, relax. Heaven on earth.
To the left from the entrance there is another small area containing a sauna – too hot for me –often as not filled with a few chatty old men. There is also a shower that throws down two powerful jets, so that when you stand under it, your shoulders get a good massage. Opposite is a row of chairs for sitting and chatting, and between the massage shower and the main bath is a smaller round tub, with very cold water. I have taken the plunge twice, and that is about enough for this trip I think. The last ritual, of course is to dry off and get dressed, but here, as with everything else, there is a special Japanese twist. For those who live nearby, they simply dress and leave, often stopping in the TV lounge area on their way out. For hotel guests however, there is no need to re-dress in street clothes. Each guest is given a long blue and white cotton robe and a with a fabric belt, as well as a pair of sox for walking in the hotel and a dark blue over coat, a sort of mix between a shawl and a robe, that ties in the front. Many of the guests wear this outfit for the rest of the evening, while dining in the hotel restaurant, or sitting around smoking or talking. For me, I go as far as wearing this outfit on the walk to and from my room, where I will change back to ordinary clothes for dinner. Still, it is fun to walk around in this get up – a bit like a pajama party with people you don’t know.
So if there is a better place to land for the nights after long hours beating mulberry branches into fibers for paper making, I can’t think of it. We simply lucked out.

Daniel

beautiful

There are many ways for a city to be beautiful. Like a man, a city can be slender or muscular, youthful or mature, impeccably turned out or casually put together. Most cities are beautiful, but not all cities reveal their beauty at first or even second glance. Osaka is just such a city, and this week, on my second visit to the city, on the afternoon before I left, the city unfurled itself before me to contain within it all the beauty and mystery of even the most renowned cities.

When you think of Osaka, if you think of Osaka at all, (even most Japan-o-philes barely consider a visit to Osaka other than to taste its admittedly wonderful food) you think of a mass of energy, an endless tangle of intersecting highways, train routes, pedestrian over passes that creep and crawl with hideous regularity, and the noise, both visual and aural, of pachinko parlors, cheesy trinket stores and oversized abandoned developments, sprinkled with malls of all kinds. The hotel where I stayed on this visit, a non-descript kind of Japanese version of a traveler’s flea ridden stop along the way, the rooms small, the pillow too hard and too big, the walls too thin for any semblance of privacy, but none of it actually offensive, was on a broad boulevard bisected by train lines and crisscrossed by cement towers holding up what back home would be considered interstate highway intersections. Down the street to the left convenience stores and a slots parlor, its bright red neon blinking 24/7; to the right a busy train station, with much of the human traffic spilling outside on again a crisscross of overpasses and subway entrances. Up passed the interstate, on one side an alley led into a warren of small wooden and cement buildings sporting banners of all kinds, and a bit further on no less than four separate shopping malls, each massive, two carrying five or six floors full of sophisticated and elegant Japanese products from the smallest note pad to the most expensive cashmeres. And though the visual noise should have provided a great urban experience, the pleasure was entirely in the small things, the views into a noodle shop, or the scent of meats grilling, the play of textures in a display of woolen scarves and gloves. Osaka is Japanese to be sure, but a beautiful city?

As it happens I am leading, or co-leading, a group of American art students through Japan, our goal to learn traditional paper making on Shikoku Island and draw inspiration from the temples, shrines palaces and museums of the Kyoto/Nara region. Frankly, my goal was simply to return to Japan, and introduce students to culture so full of vital visual ideas. We are 21 – 19 students and a small Russian woman, an art historian whose path, as a Jewish Russian who only left Russia a decade ago, could have been my own had my ancestors not left when they did. Elana took us to Osaka-jo, the rebuilt castle that mimics the seat of the once most powerful and brilliant daimyo Toyotome Hideoshi who unified Japan once and for all, mostly by head cutting in the late 15^th century. Hideoshi’s castle, or jo, with its layers of roofs and gables, sits on stones the size of wooly mammoths, their size dwarfing and enlarging – dwarfing one’s sense of place in the world as the place of the great Lord seems ever bigger. Passing moats and walls, the road climbs as it snakes up to the castle’s perch. The great wings of the gables studded with gold leaf, the massive clay tiles reflecting the winter sun’s silver tones lifting the mass up ever higher. Without noticing we have left the bustling cacophony behind, the chaotic miasma, the clash of materials and speed and entered into another city, a place of wide open spaces and grand vistas. Those lackluster buildings that seem so omnipresent on the city’s streets, and whose ugliness is aggressive like heat rash but cold and damp, fade in a shimmering mass seen from afar, beyond the wide paths and moats of the garden, like distant trees between the earth bound and the heavenly. Now, sitting on one of the steep inner walls almost at the foot of the great castle, the grey mass beyond is pierced and soaring shiny glass boxes which float weightlessly in dialogue one with the other, their corporate voices murmuring stylish chitchat one to the other. I saw Osaka for what it was, a great built mass vaporous, no longer solid, shimmering, no longer foul, expanding ever outward along a vast valley floor, all ringed by jagged whispers of mountains. Here at last was Osaka’s beauty, its mystery, its unknowability.