Name: Hands-on with Japanese Paper, Cabinets, and Knives
Uploaded: 2020-03-23T06:13:12.000Z
Duration: 12 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

We're in Echizen, which is a 75 minute train ride from Japan's former captial: Kyoto.

The thing about Kyoto nowadays, is there's a ton of tourists.

It's for good reason, it's a mesmerizing place.

Over in Echizen, you can get hands-on experience with traditional Japanese culture...

These are all traditional Japanese crafts.

And to tell the truth, I'm not much of an arts and crafts guy.

but I'm much more a sucker for practicality.

So that's why when I saw the Echizen Tansu, the cabinets,

I was surprised that they had a lot of it.

The biggest one was that some of these were meant to be mobile.

As in, if there was a fire, you'd push or pull these away.

I think this was something the merchant class had,

And speaking of money, some even had a built in abacus.

This, by the way, is the not so secret compartment for your katana.

The first shokunin we visited was a master of Echizen Tansu.

I find the word 'shokunin' difficult to translate,

because in English people often say artisan, or sometimes craftsperson.

Like you can't just make a few cabinets and call yourself a shokunin.

After the Meiji period, people stopped making these parts, so I have to do it on my own.

Ah, it's tough to make those little ones.

If you see the back and front, you'll understand if it's a good "tansu" (cabinet) or not.

- What do you make beside cabinets now? - Anything.

- Anything? Like business card holders? - Small things like business card holders, yeah.

I started working at 18 after I finished school.

I've been doing this since 18, but I can't make good things (he said sarcastically).

Remember how I talked about the crowds of people in Kyoto?

So this is a major shrine in Echizen called Otaki Jinja.

This shrine was orginally a Buddhist temple in the Edo period.

But in the Meiji period, became a Shinto shrine.

As such, this place has a mix of both Buddhist and Shinto design elements.

So, these mobile shrines are what kami can ride in.

And twice a year, they are run up the mountain behind the shrine during the washi matsuri, or paper festival.

Last year in 2018 was there 1300th time doing the festival.

The guide was telling me that people carrying the shrines can have specific sores on their shoulders from the weight,

so I'm fairly sure these are more extreme examples of it,

but yeah, people do get calluses on their shoulders from carrying these heavy, heavy portable shrines.

The nice thing about visiting the shrine during non-festival time,

is that you can really spend your time  looking at the details.

Right around the shrine is the heart of the washi, or paper, production in Echizen.

Nowadays, this factory is how paper is made on mass.

It was quite neat to see all the machinery in action.

But what I think most people come for is the handmade paper.

Like the cabinets, paper was something I thought I would have little interest in,

as I've tried to digitize everything I can in my life.

Yet, seeing what these shokunin can do with paper is quite impressive.

We only use the skin of Kozo, Mitsumata, and Gampi.

making it easier to remove the impurities.

Once you remove the impurities, you bring it here,

Traditionally, they hit the fibres, but nowadays, they can use a machine to do it.

If you use the machine, the beater, you only need 30 minutes of hitting.

But if you're only going to do the manual way, it can take half a day.

Little by little the fibre gets softer and loosened up.

It looks small, but in the paper it's long.

makes strong paper when the fibres mesh together.

To get this point it takes hours and hours.

The people in the olden days were great...

Inside there is Echizen water, which I think is very good water.

The fibres I hit are mixed in here with the water.

And we add another ingredient, which is "neri" (glue)

This glue comes from the roots of the 'tororoaoi' plant