By Rafe Calder
Paper begins as a plant, and then as a vat of water. What happens between is the craft.
Start with the plants. Wikipedia names three main fibres for Japanese handmade paper: kÅzo, which is paper mulberry, mitsumata and gampi. It says paper mulberry is the most commonly used. Those fibres are not the whole story. The sheet also needs a formation aid, and Wikipedia says that is traditionally neri, a mucilaginous material made from the roots of the tororo-aoi plant.
Two ways to make a sheet
Wikipedia describes two traditional techniques. Nagashi-zuki, it says, produces thinner paper and uses the formation aid. Tame-zuki produces thicker paper without it. It says paper arrived in Japan by the seventh century and that nagashi-suki developed around 805 to 809, during the Heian period, improving on earlier methods. These dates are as the encyclopedia gives them, and we have not found a second source.
The legend
The Echizen washi association tells a story. About 1,500 years ago, it says, a woman taught people in the area how to make paper from the natural materials of special plants, among them kÅzo. She was known as Kawakami Gozen, the upriver princess. She vanished, and she is now enshrined as the paper goddess at the Okamoto-Åtaki Shrine, together with two local deities. A shrine page on the same site says she is documented in historical records dating to 926. It says the shrine complex developed in stages, that the formal structure was founded by a monk in 719, and that it was officially redesignated as a shrine in the Meiji period when Shinto and Buddhism were separated. It adds that the combined main hall is Edo-period architecture, designated an important cultural property in 1984.
We should be plain about what this is. It is a legend, and the association tells it as one. We cannot confirm that any single person taught the whole district. The dates in the shrine’s records and the age of the legend are different kinds of evidence, and we are reporting both.
A village of workshops
The association says the Imadate area is made up of five villages known collectively as Goka. It says the area sustains about 70 washi factories employing roughly 500 people, and that papermaking continues year-round rather than seasonally. It says the area has produced paper since the sixth century. That is the association’s own claim, and we have no independent source for the headcount. It says the imperial family has historically selected Echizen washi for birth announcements and that Echizen sits alongside Tosa and Mino among Japan’s major handmade-paper centres.
The city around it
Wikipedia says the modern city of Echizen was formed on 1 October 2005, when Takefu merged with Imadate. It gives the area as 230.70 square kilometres and the 2020 population as 80,611, in a city bordered by mountains on three sides. It lists washi, cutlery, pottery and lacquer as traditional industries, and calls the region an important centre for over 1,500 years. That matches the association’s age claim, though it is not independent evidence, because it may draw on the same tradition. We are noting the agreement and not treating it as proof.
The point for a traveller is that paper here is one craft among several. If a seller says a thing is Echizen, ask which craft they mean.
A festival
According to the shrine page, villagers hold rituals each year from May 3 to 5 honouring the paper goddess, using a portable shrine. The ceremony includes bringing the deity down from a mountain sanctuary, prayers and a procession through local communities. The page says the practice has been maintained for 1,300 years. We have not checked the dates for the current year.
Legend, record and listing
Three kinds of claim sit next to each other here, and it helps to keep them apart. A legend says a goddess taught the villagers. A record says that the goddess is documented from 926 and the shrine was founded in 719. A listing, in Wikipedia’s account, says that washi craftsmanship was added to UNESCO’s intangible heritage list in 2014. None of them tells you how a particular sheet was made. They tell you why people care. We could not load UNESCO’s own page for the listing, so we are not naming the specific papers or places it covers, and we are not saying that Echizen is part of the 2014 listing.
Where it ends up
Wikipedia says the artist Hasui Kawase chose Echizen washi for his prints, and that contemporary uses include conservation work at institutions such as the Louvre and the Vatican Museums, and watch dials. Those uses show that the paper is treated as a material, not only a souvenir.
How to look at a sheet
We have not profiled any maker here. A few plain questions work with any washi. What are the fibres, and in what proportion? Was the sheet formed by hand, and which method was used? What was the formation aid? Was it dried on a board or a heated surface? Who made it, in which village? If the answer is vague, treat it as information.
There is also the matter of the story. A paper goddess and a shrine are good things to know about. They are not a guarantee about the sheet in your hand. The sheet’s own story is in its fibres, its edges and the person who can tell you how it was made.
Roam first. Shop later.
Fukui makers can find out what’s involved at /sell-with-sephari/