Archival photograph of a local woman scraping the black and green bark from steamed paper mulberry branches in preparation for making papermaking pulp, circa 1950s, photo likely taken by Nobumitsu Katakura. This photo is especially relevant as it shows an elderly person performaing this task. There was a point in the early 20th century where the skills and knowledge related to papermaking almost disappeared in Shiroishi, and it was the task of the Ōshu Shiroishi Local Industrial Art Research Institute in the 1930s to learn from people such as these elderly locals and revive the craft traditions of papermaking and paper finishing
Funding
Endangered Material Knowledge Programme
History
Session
A01
Rights owner
Daphne Mohajer va Pesaran
Cultural group
Japanese
Country
Japan
Place
Shiroishi, Miyagi
Item/object
Branches
Techniques of production
steamed
Materials
Bark-paper mulberry bark
Cultural context/event
General production
Social group setting
Community
Location
Workshop
Temporality
photo taken circa 1950s, harvest and material processing normally takes place in winter time around January. Papermaking was traditionally winter work for farmers who couldn’t grow crops in the wintertime