Uncover the Light of Japan 303607933264
De BISAWiki
"We might just have lost our appreciation for handmade goods." Igarashi san has been making chochin paper lanterns in his small look for his life time. His father too, and his grandfatherand great grandfather and even great, great grandfather. Equipment & the various tools that surround him today, in reality close remove frame, have outlasted his ancestors, their wooden surfaces worn smooth with age. Since the start of the Meiji period (1868 - 1912) Kanazawa people have been buying Igarashi chochin from the store, in the heart of old Kanazawa's merchant district, near the back of the castle. The shelves are stacked high with beautifully decorated lanterns - lively bursts of colour peppering the dusty confines of the tiny workshop.
Chochin lamps have a fairly long history in Japan - there is evidence of them being used in temples in the 10th century - and were used primarily as a portable means of light. Only occasionally used inside, they customarily hung outside a residence, temple or company or else in the entrance, willing to be stopped on a and carried before anybody going out during the night. Igarashi-san reckons that at one time these were so widely used there would have been around 40 or 50 chochin retailers only in Kanazawa. In these days there remain only himself and one other local contractor in the other fellow and the trade (Matsuda-san) has long since diversified, making conventional umbrellas his mainstay.
Creating a chochin is really a tricky, relatively sensitive method despite the beautifully simple appearance of the finish product. And, when asked what are the most important features in his career Igarashi-san responds, his bright eyes dead serious, "patience and concentration". The average measured lantern in accordance with Igarashi-san, at about 30 cm across, can be developed at a rate of about two per day by one man including all of the painting. However some really huge ones have gone the Igarashi look over the years - his greatest was a matsuri monster measuring 5 shaku (1 shaku = 30.3cm in the old Japanese measuring system) in length with an complex year of the rabbit design on it. The old lantern creator is realistic concerning the fact that people want cheaper, mass-produced, plastic protected lamps these times - he even carries them himself - but he's confident in the knowledge that a well-made paper lantern is a wonderful thing, superior in many ways to these garish modern impostors.
"You can fix a great chochin," we are told by him, "you can change one rib or fix a hole in the paper no problem." "Plastic lanterns have no internal body and can not be patched." A paper lantern regardless of how well made lasts only about a year (natural splendor is always fleeting) while a plastic one may possibly last twice that and cost half the maximum amount of. Along with that, we as a culture could have just dropped our appreciation for handmade products. As consumers cost is now our primary inspiration. We do not care to learn how things were made nowadays, or they were made by who, or else Igarashisan will be the prosperous head of a chain of shops.
The walls of his ready-to-hand scrapbook activity and the Igarashi Chochinya numerous monochrome photos and press clippings showing a happy, broad-shouldered young man with strong, thick hands and a fetching smile showing off elegant paper spheres with matsuri lights glimmering in the back ground. Humbly demonstrating us them, his warm, friendly smile just falls slightly as he tells us that he will function as last of his family line making lamps here.
