Paper and culture: the Paper Museum in Asukayama Park

  

The first paper was made in Japan in the early 7^th century, using technology transmitted from China via Korea. For some 750 years Japanese paper, or washi, was made from mulberry bark by a laborious manual process. Then in 1875 Shibusawa Eiichi, “the father of Japanese capitalism” founded the first large-scale modern paper mill in Japan in Oji, now part of Tokyo. In 1950 the company’s collections were opened to the pubic in the Paper Making Memorial Museum. In 1998 the museum, renamed as The Paper Museum, moved into a modern building in Asukayama Park, where Shibusawa had his residence , a rea house, and a guest house.

 

The story of paper and printing, is inseparable from the history of culture and power. The museum possesses an example of the oldest datable printed material. In 770 Empress Shōtoku ordered that one million miniature three-story pagodas be made. Printed Buddhist charms were placed inside the pagodas, printed on paper made of hemp and mulberry bark. The early history of paper (and of printing) was intimately related to religious uses such printing sutras, and in turn to political power.

One of the million miniature pagodas and its text.

My book production friends would be especially interested in the largest wood block printing in the world. In 1904 the Mitsumura Printing Co. exhibited a woodblock print of the Peacock God of Wisdom at the St. Louis International Exposition. In 1990 a print was made on washi paper from the original cherry wood woodblocks. The production of the image involved a total of 1,303 impressions – a number so extraordinary that I had to check on the museum’s website that I had not misunderstood the label in the museum. In order to sustain the pressure of so many impressions, the image was printed on two sheets moulded together to a thickness of 0.3mm; the backing sheet was removed when the print was mounted.

Woodblock print of the Peacock God of Wisdom.

Initial sales of industrial-scale Western style paper industry were poor, until 1873. The previous year, the Meiji government had ordered land title deeds as proof of ownership of landed property. The following year, the government ordered that all titles be printed on western-style paper (one suspects lobbying by business interests). This expanded the market for industrial paper.

A land title printed on washi (1872) 

 

A land title printed on western industrially produced paper (1879).

The museum collection is an enthralling display of the many uses of paper. The more obvious were. official documents, textbooks, magazines and books. There were also sample books used by paper salespeople, lanterns for domestic lighting, screens to divide rooms in the home (of course, many traditional Japanese homes included sliding paper screens). More surprising was paper clothing, such as robes worn by Buddhist monks for a ceremony. A 16^th-centruy coat was rendered waterproof using thick washi coated in devil tongue paste (made from the root of the konjac plant) or persimmon tannin. Washi could also be processed to give the paper the appearance of leather, or to produce embossed and colourful wallpaper.

A Hayori (Japanese half coat) made of washi, dated 1596-1615.

 

Meiji era textbooks. On the left, a Japanese reader for Higher Primary School (1901); on the right, a foreign geography textbook for Primary School (1900).

 

A large display was devoted to the work of an origami artist, Yoshizawa Akira (1911-2005). Apparently, he produced more than 50,000 pieces, including a crane feeding her young in their nest, gorillas, fearsome scorpions, and a variety of insects. A large number of his pieces were exhibited at the Stejdelik Museum Amsterdam, and then on a 50-museum tour of the USA, where they were lost. Fortunately, many pieces were eventually found and returned to Yoshizawa in 2004.

A wet-folded bull by Yoshizawa Akira.

Paper is not my speciality, but I did spot one error that is very apparent to a Mexicophile. A map illustrating the spread of paper technology from China records that paper arrived in Mexico in 1757. Well, the Indigenous people of Mexico made books and other objects of fig back paper long before the arrival of Spaniards in 1519. I think that the 1575 date may refer to paper arriving from Manila, where Spanish merchants traded with Asia, through Acapulco, but that was by no means the first use of paper in Japan. The Spaniards brought with them quantities of paper for administrative purposes.