Discover How Traditional Light Is Produced In Japan
“We may simply have lost our appreciation of hand-crafted goods.” Igarashi san has been making chochin paper lanterns in his little shop for his whole life. His pa too, and his grandfatherand great grandfather and even great, great grandfather. The tools & hardware that surround him today, in reality, have outlasted his ancestors, their wooden surfaces worn smooth with age. Since the beginning of the Meiji age ( 1868 - 1912 ) Kanazawa voters have been buying Igarashi chochin from the store, in the guts of old Kanazawa’s merchant district, near the back of the castle. The shelves are stacked high with superbly decorated lanterns - vibrant bursts of color peppering the dusty confines of the little workshop.
Chochin lanterns have a fairly long history in Japan - there is evidence of them being used in churches in the 10th century - and were used primarily as a portable means of lighting. Only occasionally used inside, they traditionally hung outside a place, church or business or else in the entrance, ready to be suspended on a pole and carried before anybody going out at night. Igarashi-san reckons that at one time they were so commonly used there would be been around 40 or 50 chochin shops just in Kanazawa. Today there remain only himself and one other local craftsman in the trade and the other fellow (Matsuda-san) has long since diversified, making traditional umbrellas his mainstay.
Making a chochin is a fiddly, fairly delicate procedure despite the attractively simple appearance of the end result. And, when asked what are the most vital qualities in his profession Igarashi-san responses, his bright eyes dead major, “patience and concentration.” The average sized lantern according to Igarashi-san, at about 30 cm across, can be produced at a rate of approximately 2 a day by one man including most of the painting. However some really massive ones have left the Igarashi shop over the years - his biggest was a matsuri monster measuring five shaku ( one shaku = 30.3cm in the old Japanese measuring system) in diameter with a complicated year of the rabbit design on it. The old lantern maker is realistic about the fact that people want cheaper, mass-produced, plastic covered lanterns these days - he even sells them himself - but he is assured in the certainty that a well-made paper lantern is a nice thing, superior in several paths to these garish modern impostors.
“You can correct a good chochin,” he tells us, “you can replace one rib or fix a hole in the paper no problem.” “Plastic lanterns have no internal frame and can not be patched.” A paper lantern no matter how well made lasts only about a year ( natural beauty is always fleeting) whereas a plastic one might last twice that and cost half as much. On top of that, we as a society may have simply lost our appreciation for handmade products. Price has become our main incentive as clients. We do not care to understand how things were made these days, or who made them, or else Igarashisan would be the prosperous head of a chain of shops.
The walls of the Igarashi Chochinya and his ready-to-hand scrapbook sport countless monochrome pictures and press clippings showing a proud, broad-shouldered young man with powerful, thick arms and a fetching smile showing off stylish paper spheres with matsuri lights glimmering in the background. Politely showing us them, his warm, friendly grin only slips a touch as he tells us that he’s going to be the last of his folks line making lanterns here.
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