Jun
Discover the Beauty of Japanese Latern Light
“We may simply have lost our appreciation for handmade goods.” Igarashi san has been making chochin paper lanterns in his little shop for his whole life. His pop too, and his grandfatherand great grandfather and even great, great granddad. The tools & equipment that surround him today, in truth, have outlasted his ancestors, their wooden surfaces worn smooth with age. Since the start of the Meiji age ( 1868 – 1912 ) Kanazawa citizens have been purchasing Igarashi chochin from the store, in the heart of old Kanazawa’s merchant district, close to the back of the castle. The shelves are stacked high with beautifully decorated lanterns – colourful spurts of colour peppering the dusty confines of the small workshop.
Chochin lanterns have a fairly long history in Japan – there is evidence of them being employed in churches in the 10th century – and were used basically as a transportable method of lighting. Only occasionally used within, they usually 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 a previous point they were so widely used there would have been been around forty or 50 chochin shops just in Kanazawa. These days 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 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 heavy, “patience and concentration.” The average sized lantern according to Igarashi-san, at about 30 cm across, can be produced at a rate of roughly 2 a day by one man including the majority of the painting. However some actually huge ones have left the Igarashi shop over time – his largest was a matsuri monster measuring 5 shaku ( one shaku = 30.3cm in the old Japanese measuring system ) in diameter with an intricate 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 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 repair 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’t be patched.” A paper lantern regardless of how well made lasts only about a year (natural beauty is always fleeting ) while 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 customers. We do not care to understand how things were made these days, or who made them, or else Igarashisan would be the wealthy head of a chain of shops.
The walls of the Igarashi Chochinya and his ready-to-hand scrapbook sport countless monochrome photographs and press clippings showing a proud, broad-shouldered young man with robust, thick arms and a fetching smile showing off stylish paper spheres with matsuri lights glimmering in the background. Modestly showing us them, his warm, friendly smile only slips barely as he tells us that he is going to be the last of his folks line making lanterns here.
If you enjoy traveling and would like to read more on some of the most famous places in the world, visit famouswonders.com and also check out Asakusa Temple.