Find the Light of Japan 303601396933


"We may only have lost our appreciation for handmade goods." Igarashi san has been making chochin paper lanterns in his small look for his expereince of living. His father also, and his grandfatherand great grandfather and even great, great grandfather. Equipment & the various tools that surround him today, actually [http://www.paper-boy.org/wiki/index.php?title=WendelRoe492 view site], have outlasted his ancestors, their wooden surfaces worn smooth with age. Since the start of the Meiji era (1868 - 1912) Kanazawa people have already been buying Igarashi chochin from the store, in the heart of old Kanazawa's merchant region, near the back of the castle. The shelves are piled high with beautifully decorated lanterns - vivid bursts of colour peppering the dusty confines of the tiny class. 

Chochin lamps have a rather long history in Japan - there's proof of them being used in temples in the 10th century - and were used mainly as a portable means of light. Only sometimes used inside, they often hung outside a residence, temple or company or else in the entrance, willing to be stopped on a and carried before anyone venturing out through the night. Igarashi-san reckons that previously these were so popular there might have existed 40 or 50 chochin shops only in Kanazawa. Today there remain only himself and one other local contractor in the other fellow and the business (Matsuda-san) has long since diversified, making traditional umbrellas his pillar. 

Building a chochin is a difficult, rather gentle treatment despite the attractively simple appearance of the conclusion product. And, when asked what are the most crucial features in his career his bright eyes dead serious, "patience and concentration" are replied, by Igarashi-san. The average sized lantern according to Igarashi-san, at about 30 cm across, may be made at an interest rate of about two per day by one man including most of the painting. However some truly large ones have gone the Igarashi shop over the years - his biggest was a matsuri creature measuring 5 shaku (1 shaku = 30.3cm in the old Japanese measuring process) in height by having an complicated year of the rabbit design about it. The old lantern maker is realistic about the fact that people need cheaper, mass-produced, plastic covered lamps these times - he also sells them himself - but he's confident in the data that a well-made paper lantern is really a beautiful thing, remarkable in lots of ways to these garish modern impostors. 

"You can repair an excellent chochin," he tells us, "you can replace one rib or fix a hole in the report no problem." "Plastic lanterns haven't any inner body and can not be patched." A paper lantern no matter how well made lasts only about per year (natural beauty is always fleeting) whereas a plastic one might last twice that and cost half the maximum amount of. Along with that, we as a community might have only lost our appreciation for handmade goods. As clients price is becoming our primary drive. We don't care to know how things were made today, or who made them, or else Igarashisan would be the effective head of a string of stores. 

The walls of the Igarashi Chochinya and his ready-to-hand scrapbook activity innumerable monochrome pictures and press clippings showing a proud, broad-shouldered son with strong, thick arms and a fetching grin showing off elegant paper spheres with matsuri lights glimmering in the background. Humbly showing us them, his warm, friendly smile only slips slightly as he tells us that he'll be the last of his family line making lamps here.