Japanese Arts and Crafts
The things I will be telling you about are origami, woodblock prints, raku pottery, calligraphy, kite making and doll making. I will also tell you about two of Japan's Living Treasures.
A woodblock print is a design chiselled from wood and then printed. We know quite a bit about woodblock prints because we are most familiar about it. It came from China and priests and the rich people were the only ones allowed to do the woodblock prints. In between the years 1603 and 1867 more and more people started to get more woodblock prints. The way they god the prints is they started to get books of woodblock prints. Some of the prints that were made had insects, for example, grasshopper, and animals and sometimes the woodblock prints could be used in a story. Some woodblock print artists did not put their names on until the mid-17th Century. The woodblock print artist, Kitagawa Utamaro, did some very unique pictures of Edo life. The artist, Katsushika Hokusai, did 36 prints of Mount Fuji. The most famous print is "The Great Wave of Kanagawa". This print shows a giant wave and three boats struggling through the wild water. In the background you see Mount Fuju. In the mid-19th Century people started to lose their interest in woodblock prints, but in the 20th Century, people started to admire them once again.
Calligraphy came from China. Some calligraphy characters take up to twenty strokes. Calligraphy is written top to bottom and right to left. The brushes were made of several different animal hairs such as squirrel, sheep, rabbit, deer and goat. For real big brushes, they used horse of wolf hair. The ink is made from lampblack and glue. A long time ago men wrote a Chinese style and women did not add as many characters in their script. Children aged around ten, they start learning calligraphy in school. They have to learn 15,000 characters. Students have to think carefully before they write because if they make a mistake they are not allowed to paint over their lines. Japanese school children, it takes them two more years to read and write than European children. Boys and girls in all schools, sometimes have a calligraphy contest.
Raku pottery started in Japan 8,000 - 9,000 years ago. Pottery came from China and Korea. In the Kyoto area the raku pottery started with craftsmen who made ornamental tiles. The word "raku" means "ease, comfort or enjoyment". A raku pot should appear natural, that is, it is not smooth and not perfect. The clay for raku may include ground up flints or sand. The surface of the pot should never be smooth like porcelain. Raku is not thrown, it is hand made. The surface of the pottery is very soft and allows thumb prints or other marks to show. The raku glaze has a lot of lead in it, up to 70% and it is generally dark but glazes can also be green, brown and red. After fifteen minutes in the kiln the pottery is taken out and dries very quickly. To take out the pottery from the kiln it takes great skill to judge when it is ready. Raku is fired at a temperature of 750 degrees while porcelain is fired at 1350 degrees and salt glaze stoneware is fired at 1220 degrees. A tea bowl in the summer is very flat so that the heat can escape very quickly but the bowls in the winter are very high so the heat has very little room to get out. 
Many different kinds of dolls can be found in Japan. About the fourth and fifth century the dead were buried with clay dolls shaped like man and animals. In the sixth century dolls were made from grass, wood and paper. There were five traditional ways of making dolls, carved wood, wooden core with a modelling material, cloth, paper and clay. Every day more people are making dolls. Tagoshima uses a 4,000 year old technique to make dolls. Tagoshima was 15 years old when he started to make paper dolls. The body of the doll is made out of plant fibres and clay. How Tagoshima makes the clothing is, he makes his own handmade paper and dyes it. How he makes the clothes is with the dyed paper. He puts layer upon layer of very small pieces on the doll using a special glue. It takes years to make one doll. His apprentices, which are his daughters, are learning to make this type of doll to keep up the tradition. Tagoshima's work has been honoured and he is a National Living Treasure.
Kites came from China and Korea. Kite making started 1500 to 2000 years ago. Kites from Japan cam about 1300 years ago. The religion (Buddhism) used kites for religious purposes. In early Japan kites were called "kami tobi" which means "paper hawks". The shapes they had in Japan were bird, insect, human and dragon. The people of Japan use the words "tako" or "dako" meaning kite or octopus because the kites' tails look like an octopus' tentacles and the shape of the kite represents an octopus' body. A few other names for kites are "ika" which means "squid", "agobata" which means "flying fish", "Komori-bata" means "flying bat", "hata" means "flag or banner".
There are many types of kites in Japan. Some kites are flown for religious festivals. Buddhist priests fly a kite every planting time and if the kite falls to the ground it will be a bad crop and if the kite stays up in the air it will be a good crop. Sometimes rice stalks are put on the kite as a symbol of thanks. People bought kites at temples and shrines because they thought it was a symbol of good health and good fortune. Buddhist priests can predict the weather by flying a kite. Parents were given kites for the first newborn son. Grandparents and other family members will also be given kites for the newborn. On the kites were pictures of god and heros that would protect the newborn son until adulthood. New Year kites are flown for thanks to the gods for the past year and for the new year. Fighting kites are another way of flying kites. In China and Korea fighting kites is quite popular but when it came to Japan, people didn't seem too interested. Fighting kites are small and easy to manoeuvre. Strings are coated with powdery glass, sharp sand, ground up pottery and sometimes knife blades so the won't break easily. A kite fighter can bring down another person's kite by flying his kite up the other person's strings and flying it back and forth. When the string breaks the kite sails away free and the victorious person challenges all bystanders. Some kites that are made today are based on 300 - 400 year old models, the flat and bow-faced kites. Of the two kinds of kites, the bow-faced is the more efficient flyer. The bow-faced kite is as big as a big car and the flat kite is a big as a sports car. The bones of the kite are made out of bamboo. The bones of the kite are thicker at the top than at the bottom so that the weight is more at the top. Horizontal bones at the top are heavier than the bones at the bottom. This gives the kite more stability and can manoeuvre easily. Japanese people use powdered pigments with water for their kite pictures. They paint their kites because if they don't the white blank piece of paper reminds them of a funeral. Japanese people feel not too pleased about having a tail on the kite because it ruins the effect. If you have a tail it should not be too heavy.
The Abai family turn plant fibres into paper. They get saplings which is young trees and then take out the inner bark and soak it in a pond. Next they boil it in soda ash to bleach it and soften it. After they bleach it they rinse it in well water. Next one person uses a big hammer to crush the fibres to spread them and another person moves around the fibres after the first person hits them. Next step is they put in vegetable starch so the sheets of paper won't stick together. They drain the mixture then put the mixture on a screen and then set it out in the sun to dry. When it is dried it is a sheet of paper and ready to use.