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Kyoto Folding Fans Traditional Skills Produce Beautiful Creations | ||||
Kyoto folding fans are typical Japanese folding fans, born in Kyoto, the origin of Japanese culture. These lovely objects comfort and appeal to the eye. As symbols of aristocratic society, in the Heian period (794-1185) the folding fan started in the form known as hiogi. After the Muromachi period (1333-1573) the folding fans such as winter fans, summer fans,( cypress fans, and the kawahori fan) found application in the incense ceremony, the tea ceremony, classical dance, and the like. | ||||
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Marriage of bamboo and paper The steps involved in making Kyoto fans are distributed among specialists. The ribs, the body paper, the decoration, the folding, the finishing--all are done by specialized craftspeople. We visited two workshops, one involved in making fan ribs and one that decorated the paper. |
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Mr Katsuaki Takishita makes ribs for both paper and silk fans. His output is strictly limited. Usually the ribs for each kind of fan are made by specialists, but the reason he makes both kinds of rib is: "My master said that in the future it may be impractical for a craftsman to make only ribs for paper fans. So he taught me to make ribs for both silk and paper fans." In 1950, when he was 18, Mr Takishita came to Kyoto from Toyama to learn a profession that involved using his hands. From all the possibilities, he chose the making of fan ribs. At that time, it was customary for the son of a craftsman to train at another workshop in the same craft at about 12 years of age and live the life of an apprentice without salary for a few years, then work for one year more in recompense for the master's teaching and effort before succeeding to his father's craft. When he was 18, Mr Takishita was not adept with his hands and had difficulty using tools as instructed by his master. As a live-in apprentice, even on rest days he had no money for play. On days off he saw off the senior apprentices (who were younger than he) and stayed in the workshop leaning the tools. In the late 1950s air conditioners made an appearance and the demand for summer fans decreased drastically. Fan rib craftsmen quit the craft in numbers. His master stated, "You are the only one to decide whether you want to continue in this work. I cannot do that for you." Naturally, this was something of a shock. "When I recollect that time, I can see that my master was very troubled. It was necessary that he let go the apprentices whom he had carefully trained and nurtured. I was quite lost for a few days; that was the nadir of my life. Because learning the craft was so difficult for me, it was inconceivable that I should quit." He figured that he could always quit after a two or three years, so he continued on. |
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When he first arrived in Kyoto at the age of 18, Mr Takishita saw a kawahori style fan. He though to himself that here was something worth making, and that kawahori became the reason he entered the craft. Recently he produced a kawahori fan for an exhibition. "I felt that that kawahori was something of a testament to my interest and mastery of this craft. One person cannot make a folding fan. The collective effort of fine craftspeople made this kawahori possible, and this cooperation gives me great pleasure. The important points of rib making is to allow the folding fan to remain snugly closed and yet allow it to be cleanly and smoothly opened and folded. "In the remainder of my life, I would be happy to make at least one very fine fan, one work that I think is excellent--a fan that its user would admire and enjoy." |
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"For the Tokyo Olympics [1964], over 10,000 folding fans were made. Paper is heavy, so a large stock could not be stored in the second floor workshop. The floor would give way," stated Mr Kazutoyo Kagawa, a decorator of mai-ogi, fans for classical Japanese dance. Mr Kagawa works across a table from his wife, who is a specialist in gold leaf application. "At the time of the imperial poetry reading in the New Year, the theme for the next year's reading is decided, as are themes for classical dances celebrating the New Year. Thus, we start discussion with various masters of traditional dance schools for dance fan designs for the next New Year long before the dance events. We make design samples to show the dance masters, but the difficult thing is to decide on the colors favored by the masters. A dance master may request that we make a fan that has the colors of a certain antique, but since the mineral pigment we use may change color in time, making newly ground pigment emulate an antique color is very difficult. We usually make such a shade by layering three or four colors; it sometimes takes half a day just to get the color right." Mr Kagawa related one amusing incident. "A customer requested that we duplicate the same dark blue as on the Peace cigarette package. I made a number of samples, but they were all rejected and not being correct. After a few more trials, I thought that I had exactly duplicated the blue on the cigarette package in my workshop. Then I brought both cigarette package and color sample to the client and found that his cigarette package has been printed a slightly different shade of blue from mine." With his sensitive sense of color, Mr Kagawa visits department stores to survey the kimono and Western clothing sales corners and check on the colors in vogue. "I got into this work because I like it," he stated. He now has 50 years of experience in this craft, and his skill has been honed to a fine precision. His specialty is the dance fan used by the Nishikawa school of dance, but he makes fans for other schools of classical Japanese dance as well. |
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