Craft Culture in
Early Modern Japan
Materials , Makers, and Mastery
christine m. e. guth
university of california press
in association with the Spencer Museum of Art
and the Kress Foundation Department of Art History ,
the University of Kansas

Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan

the franklin d. murphy lecture series
David Cateforis, Seri es Editor (2 01 4– )
Established in 1979 through the Kansas University Endowment
Association in honor of former chancellor Dr. Franklin D. Murphy,
the Murphy Lectureship in Art brings distinguished art historians,
critics, and artists to the University of Kansas, where they
participate in the teaching of a graduate seminar in the Kress
Foundation Department of Art History and deliver two public
lectures, one at the Spencer Museum of Art and one at the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Those lectures serve as the
basis for the books in this series.
the franklin d. murphy lecturers in art
1979 Pierre Rosenberg
1980 Brian O’Doherty
1981 Xia Nai
1982 Richard Field
1983 Robert G. Calkins
1983 Svetlana Alpers
1984 Nobuo Tsuji
1986 David Rosand
1987 James Cahill
1987 William Vaughan
1988 Walter S. Gibson
1989 Thomas Lawton
1990 Johei Sasaki
1992 Marilyn Aronberg Lavin
and Irving Lavin
1994 Lothar Ledderose
1994 John Szarkowski
1996 Karal Ann Marling
1996 John M. Rosenfield
1998 Serafin Moralejo
1999 Helmut Brinker
2001 Yi Sŏng-mi
2001 Wanda M. Corn
2003 Donald McCallum
2004 Roberta Smith
2005 Tamar Garb
2007 Okwui Enwezor
2008 David M. Lubin
2009 Christopher M. S . Johns
2010 Toshio Watanabe
2012 Michael Brenson
2014 Cynthia Hahn
2017 Christine M. E. Guth
2018 Erika Doss
2020 Carol Armstrong

Craft Culture in
Early Modern Japan
Materials , Makers, and Mastery
christine m. e. guth
university of california press
in association with the Spencer Museum of Art
and the Kress Foundation Department of Art History ,
the University of Kansas

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous
contributions to this book provided by the University of Kansas
Provost ’s Offi ce and the Franklin D. Murphy Lecture Fund
through the Spencer Museum of Art and the Kress Foundation
Department of Art History, the University of Kansas.
Univer sity of California Pre ss
Oakland, California
© 2021 by Christine M.E . Guth
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the
Library of Congress.
isbn 978-0 -520-37981-7 (cloth : a lk. paper)
isbn 978-0 -520-38249-7 (ebook)
Manufactured in Malaysia
30292827262524232221
10987654321

For my colleagues and students at the V&A/RCA

Acknowledgments ix
Prologue 1
Introduction 9
1. Natural Resources 21
2. Picturing the Early Modern Craftscape 57
3. Craft Organizations and Operations 109
4. Tacit Knowledge 139
5. Technology, Innovation, and Craft Mastery 165
Conclusion 193
Notes 197
Bibliography 219
List of Illustrations 2 3 3
Index 237
contents

ix
Writing this book has been central to my life for the past five years, but my
thinking about how to re-present Japanese crafts dates back to 2007, when I
began teaching in the V&A/RCA history of design program. “Craft” featured
in the team-taught course organized around keywords in material culture
and design history. Initially, craft theorist Glenn Adamson led this session;
later, Marta Ajmar, a global Renaissance specialist, and others took it on,
each bringing to the topic fresh and provocative perspectives. The lively dis-
cussions and readings that developed in and around that course first spurred
me to question existing approaches to early modern Japanese crafts.
More than a decade has passed since that time, and it is hard to recall the
many individuals who have influenced my approach to the subject, but col-
leagues and students associated with the design history program figure
prominently among them. I especially want to thank Marta Ajmar, Sarah
Cheang, Sarah Teasley, Simona Valeriani, Verity Wilson, and students Dor-
othy Armstrong, Ning Huang, and Yoshika Yajima. Object handling sessions
led by V&A curators Rosemary Crill, Julia Hutt, Greg Irvine, and Luisa Men-
goni enhanced my understanding of particular craft processes. I also bene-
fited from many fruitful conversations with Rupert Faulk ner on Japanese
acknowledgments

x
Acknowledgments
ceramics and Anna Jackson on Japanese textiles. Shayne Rivers gave me val-
uable insights into lacquer conservation and also led us on a memorable
adventure in Bangkok in quest of thitsi lacquer.
In Japan, I am indebted to Kobayashi Koji, who invited me to present my
research on rayskin in a 2016 conference on Nanban lacquer at the Tokyo
National Research Institute for Cultural Properties and then included me,
together with conservator Ulrike Korber, in a lacquer research trip that took
us from museum storerooms in Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa. I have learned
enormously from both of them. I extend special thanks also to Shirahara
Yukiko, chief curator at the Nezu Museum, who permitted close and
extended examination of Haritsu’s lacquer teabowl.
Once I began writing, an international network of friends and colleagues
read and commented on drafts (more than I want to remember) of individual
chapters and of the full manuscript. Joe Earle helpfully commented on sec-
tions on lacquer and sword making. Leon Kapp helped bring greater nuance
to my presentation of Yoshihara Yoshindo’s work. Sarah Teasley lent me her
expertise on technology by reading and commenting on chapter 5. Louise
Cort, Sherry Fowler, Greg Levine, and Miriam Wattles read the entire manu-
script and offered insightful responses that led to significant revisions that
much improved its structure, flow, and content. I owe a special debt of grati-
tude to Amanda Stinchecum-Mayer, who graciously offered comments and
questions on textiles as well as wise editorial tips. An anonymous reviewer
gave valuable guidance for revisions. Impromptu conversations and email
exchanges with Yukio Lippit and Melissa McCormick sharpened my think-
ing on craft issues. Advice and encouragement from Barry Blesser, Merton
Flemings, Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Linda Salter, and Elizabeth ten Groten-
huis were an enormous help in more ways than I can say.
Gatheri ng the necessary images for a publication such as this is always a
challenge, and I owe a special debt of gratitude to Guenther Heckmann and
Leon Kapp, who provided photos I might not otherwise have secured. I also

xi
Acknowledgments
want to acknowledge the help of members of the Japan Art History Forum
who responded to several requests for assistance in locating photographs.
Finally, I am especially grateful to University of Kansas graduate student
Ying Zhu, my photograph and reproductions assistant, who ably handled the
correspondence with many museums to secure images for this publication.
A monthlong trip to Japan in June 2014 to investigate needles and nee-
dlework was supported by the Pasold Research Fund. In 2015–16 I was fortu-
nate to spend a semester at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
New Jersey. There, in addition to delving deeply into materials on Japanese
natural resources and agricultural practices at the Princeton University
Library, I benefited from discussions with colleagues at the Institute and at
Princeton University. I am deeply grateful to both organizations. I am also
indebted to the Franklin D. Murphy Fund which underwrote the lectures on
which this publication is based.
I also want to extend my gratitude to Archna Patel at University of Cali-
fornia Press, who helped see the manuscript from submission through to
publication, and to Erica Soon Olsen, an eagle-eyed copyeditor who saved
me from many errors.
The writing of this book has carried me through a physical and intellec-
tual journey that I could not have made without the help of family and
friends too numerous to mention, but I owe special thanks to my step-
mother, Jenny; my sister, Germaine; my cousin John; and my children, Elise
and Justin.

1
I met Mr. Fukui, a tatami maker, at work in a small shop not far from my hotel
on Sanjō Avenue on the afternoon of my arrival in Kyoto. As I strolled down
the street assessing how the neighborhood had changed since my last visit, I
saw him attaching the fabric edging to a tatami with a long curved needle. My
curiosity piqued, I stopped to ask about the tools and methods of tatami mak-
ing. Needles for sewing tatami, he told me, could be bought commercially, but
every maker customized them, usually by adjusting the curve to suit the indi-
vidual hand. A curved needle was essential for attaching the border since the
thread had to pass through the thick rice-straw core and rush covering at an
angle. It was demanding work since the junctures of the crest-like pattern on
the edging fabric had to be perfectly matched.
Most tatami today are machine-made, since these cost a fraction of those
made by hand. The rush coverings may even be imported from China, though
the quality of these imports is inferior to domestically made ones. The tatami
Mr. Fukui was finishing, he told me, was machine-made for a hall in Chion-
in temple, but it still required hand-finishing by the addition of the edging.
At a time when demand for tatami in private residences had declined, refur-
bishing the tatami i n temple halls sustained his profession. He was fortunate
to live in Kyoto, where there were so many temples! He worked alone, but
when he needed an extra hand, he hired a student or a graduate of the train-
ing program just outside Kyoto run by the Tatami Makers’ Guild, of which he
Prologue

2
Prologue
was a member. An award he had received from this organization, which pro-
vides solidarity and helps to maintain standards, was displayed on the wal l
of his workshop. Today, as in the past, such organizational networks are crit-
ical to craft culture.
I went to Japan in June 2014 intending to focus on the needle as an early
modern technology that was overlooked because of its simple form, size, and
identity as a gendered domestic instrument. How and where were needles
made? Where were they purchased? Who used them and for what purpose?
What were their implications for the formation of gendered behaviors? Why
was a special ritual carried out for thei r disposal? My chance meeting with
Mr. Fukui made me realize that needles are part of a much wider ecology
than I had imagined and that men were as likely as women to make use of
them. This encounter, followed by visits to the studios of and conversations
with an embroiderer, a specialist in wood joinery, and a lacquerer, by cap-
turing revealing aspects of Japanese craft as they are practiced and experi-
enced today, did much to shape the intellectual trajectory of this book.
An appointment at the Nagakusa Embroidery Workshop (Nagakusa nui
kōbō), a hereditary house specializing in Kyoto-style embroidery located in
the Nishijin district, brought further insights into needles and the wider
culture of which they are a part. Nagakusa Sumie received me in a large
tatami-matted room dominated by a kimono elaborately embroidered by her
husband and displayed on a lacquered wooden stand. Once she had over-
come her surprise at the nature of my questions, she was eager to tell me
about her craft. She and her husband, Toshiaki, who work together, use
handmade needles for their embroidery. She wouldn’t reveal where she pur-
chased them—it was a secret, she said—but I later learned through a simple
Google search that a company in Hiroshima supplies them. I was particu-
larly curious about the shape of the eyes of Japanese needles, which, unlike
those of their Western counterparts, are round rather than elongated. Even
contemporary machine-made needles retain this conventional shape. Why

3
Prologue
was this? I asked. Contrary to my expectation that she would justify this as
“tradition,” she carefully explained the material logic of this featu re: an
elongated oval eye tends to compress the strands of a thread, whereas a
round one helps to keep them separate, thus enhancing their ability to catch
and reflect light when stitched to the fabric surface. This feature of the nee-
dle is critical in achieving the shimmering effect that distinguishes Kyoto
embroidery. Nothing in my readings before or after made mention of this.
Mrs. Nagakusa’s insights drew attention to the importance of tacit knowl-
edge in craft culture.
Our conversation also underscored both the importance and the fragility
of the networks that ensure the transmission of craft skills and knowledge.
Mrs. Nagakusa made a point of explai ning that embroidery involves much
more than putting needle and thread to fabric. In order to make strong, lus-
trous thread, an embroiderer has to know the technique of twisting fila-
ments using a special device that holds the thread taut, whose use she dem-
onstrated while kneeling on the tatami-matted floor. To create a suitable
palette for a kimono, the embroiderer also has to be familiar with the colors
of the threads, whose poetic names and combinations are rooted in the aes-
thetics of the Heian court. Ongoing availability of silk threads in the varie-
gated hues used in her craft was of special concern because the elderly spe-
cialist who dyed them had no apprentice. It was a difficult profession that
held little attraction for young people today, she told me.
Mrs. Nagakusa replied patiently to my many questions while keeping an
eye on the five middle-aged women in the adjacent room who were practic-
ing embroidery stitches. This second-generation family business, like that of
many practitioners of traditional crafts, is partly sustained by teaching hob-
byists, one of many ways in which it has adapted to a changing world. The
Nagakusas have also devised new products, such as embroidered handbags
and eyeglass cases, alongside kimono, Noh costumes, wrapping cloths (furo-
shiki), bags for tea utensils (shifuku), and mountings for paintings. They have

4
Prologue
even filled commissions for Paris fashion houses including Hermès and Jean-
Louis Scherrer. Just as woodblock pri nts and books helped to bring center
and periphery into a wider commercial ambit during the early modern era,
so, too, today, the Nagakusa Embroidery Workshop has overcome the limi-
tations of the domestic market by developing a bilingual website to promote
its business globally. Professional success in the craft world demands
resourcefulness and adaptability.
My introduction to Ichise Kohee, a specialist in joinery, came via a stu-
dent who was a longtime friend of Ichise’s wife. Before I visited Ichise’s stu-
dio, my student gave me some sense of the hidden sociocultural forces that
may inform the life of an aspiring young Kyoto craft professional today. For-
eign visitors are charmed by Kyoto’s traditional wooden houses, but these
are drafty and lacking in the modern conveniences that young Japanese
women have come to expect. Many are reluctant to marry into traditional
craft families because of the behaviors, responsibilities, and lifestyle the
profession imposes on them. Codes of propriety would subtly shape their
manners and mores—how they dress, talk, and relate to their husbands.
Born in 1972, Mr. Ichise was by far the youngest of the professionals I
met. He works out of a small wooden house in central Kyoto with the space
that would normally function as a garage filled with planks of various woods
and sizes, some of them more than one hundred years old. The small air-
conditioned room where clients are received is furnished with overstuffed
armchairs and a handsome shelf made by Mr. Ichise himself. By way of
introduction to the proud lineage to which he belongs, he showed me a
fresh-water contai ner (mizusashi) for the tea ceremony made by his great-
grandfather that was carefully enclosed in multiple boxes, all made by fam-
ily members. He then guided me up a narrow staircase to an insufferably hot,
tiny work space located just u nder the roof. The room was crowded with
tools and a low table designed for working cross-legged on the floor, but it
had been cleared of any work in progress.

5
Prologue
Mr. Ichise belongs to a branch line of the Komazawa, one of the group of
specialists in ten crafts (jūshoku) patronized by the Urasenke school of tea
since the late seventeenth century. As a member of an established craft line-
age, he is enmeshed in a web of relationships with expectations of shared
behaviors, practices, and values. The Komazawa supplied tea masters and
their students with articles ranging from shelves and boxes to hold utensils
to fresh-water containers for the tea ceremony. To a large extent, ongoing
Urasenke patronage also continues to inform Mr. Ichise’s practice by dictat-
ing the creation of forms and styles of wares that conform to the taste of
famous tea masters of the past. He was recently commissioned to fashion a
cypress wood mizusashi joined with nails in a style said to have been favored
by Sen no Rikyū along with a bentwood waste-water container. Both were
made for display in an exhibition centered around Chigusa, a famous tea jar
that had been purchased by the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. That
Mr. Ichise’s talents encompassed both joinery and bentwood, two tech-
niques that were once practiced by different professionals, provoked ques-
tions about patterns of occupational diversification.
The expansive residence and studio of Murose Kazumi in Tokyo was
befitting a makie lacquerer who in 2008, at the age of sixty by Japanese count,
was designated a “Living National Treasure.” The most cosmopolitan of the
craft professionals I met, he has good-humoredly shouldered the national
and international responsibilities that come with this honor. He welcomes
workshop visits, gives demonstrations, speechifies at museums in Japan and
abroad, and has even given a TEDx talk. He is particularly concerned with
managing the international reputation of Japanese crafts, an issue bound up
with the politics of the nation’s “soft power.” The inadequacy of the terms
craft and lacquer to express the specifics of Japanese practice is a recurring
theme in both his public presentations and his private conversations. He
strongly advocates the replacement of the English and other European-
language terms for lacquer with the Japanese urushi to distinguish the latter

6
Prologue
from its counterparts in other parts of the world. A further preoccupation,
si milarly reflecting the projection of modern Western values on Japanese
craft practice, is the failure to recognize the cultural significance entailed in
the making of copies of celebrated works of the past. Making copies does not
necessarily deny creative individualism, he argues. The qualities that make
each individual hand singular are expressed in ways that are difficult to see.
This is a self-reflexive concern since much of Mr. Murose’s work involves
conservation and making copies of historically important makie lacquers.
When I visited his studio, well-appointed with sleek wooden cupboards
for d rying lacquerwares, four apprentices, including two of Mr. Murose’s
sons, and an elderly female hobbyist were working seated on chairs before a
long table. All were polishing small boxes or bowls, but an impressive Edo-
period palanquin awaiting conservation sat in the space beyond. My ques-
tions about the sources of his lacquer were rewarded at the end of the visit
when Mr. Mu rose requested that a tub of lacquer be brought to us. He had
received it recently from the Jōhōji plantation in northern Iwate Prefecture,
where he reserved an annual supply for his exclusive use. Few lacquer plan-
tations are in operation in Japan today, because demand is limited and the
labor is highly specialized, costly, and time i ntensive. Consequently, like
their counterparts in tatami making and papermaking, many lacquerers of
lesser stature than Mr. Murose rely on cheaper imports of raw or semiproc-
essed materials from China or Southeast Asia, even as they claim these to be
of inferior quality. I had had occasion to see raw lacquer in Bangkok during a
conference cosponsored by the National Department of Forestry, which was
leading efforts to expand commercial lacquer production, and the Depart-
ment of Art and Culture, charged with developing quality Thai lacquer prod-
ucts for export. The viscous tarry black thitsi lac was in a tin can with a dirty
printed label. This was i n stark contrast to the experience at Mr. Murose’s,
where a handsome large tub made of cryptomeria wood bound with a bam-
boo belt and sealed with paper and a wooden lid was brought to the master

7
Prologue
by one of his apprentices. It bore a handwritten label with the date when it
was tapped, the weight of approxi mately three and a half kilos, and other
information. The craftsmanship that had gone i nto the creation of the con-
tainer was equal to that of its contents.
One cannot assume that any practice, whether transmitted orally or in
writing, is consistent or resistant to modification over time. Repetition
invariably produces change. Craft cultures have histories, and those histo-
ries account for many of the practices and habits that one sees among craft
makers today. It is common to refer to the “enduring” crafts of Japan, and in
so doing to emphasize the degree to which contemporary practitioners pre-
serve “traditional” practices, but the use of tables and chairs in the Murose
studio serves as a reminder that these traditions remain only up to a point.
Mr. Murose’s early modern ancestors would have worked on the floor, and
only from dawn to dusk. They did not benefit from artificial light, central
heating, or other modern conveniences. They did not share our sense of time
and space. They lacked access to the kinds of scientific knowledge that, even
if not directly applied, informs contemporary making practices. These
developments, to name only a few, have fundamentally altered the environ-
ment in which craft makers operate today. Craft culture is dynamic, and the
passage of time has led to both change and resistance to it. Just as the terms
used to refer to crafts have changed over the centuries, so too have the bod-
ily, cognitive, social, and imaginative processes associated with their crea-
tion. How modern makers navigate their world can provide a guide, but to
understand what made early modern craft culture distinctive, it is impor-
tant to take into account both continuities and discontinuities.

9
Most existing studies of early modern crafts in Japan approach the subject as
a linear historical narrative, from the perspective of individual masters and
media, or within the realms of collecting, curation, and display. This book
takes a different approach. By titling it Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan :
Materials, Makers, and Mastery, I mean to draw critical attention to the
dynamic, multidirectional network of forces—both material and immate-
rial—that underlie the extraordinarily rich, diverse, and aesthetically
sophisticated culture of Japan du ring the period from roughly the 1580s to
the 1860s. This includes the particular materials and tools and the people
who wield them but also the institutions, modes of thought, behaviors, and
the reciprocal relationships among them. Shared assumptions fundamental
to ways and values of making that transcend the specifics of each practice
constitute what I call “craft culture.”
Craft has been defi ned by materials (clay, wood, metal), by techniques
(throwing, carving, forging), and by the functional products of the interac-
tion between them (teabowls, household furnishings, swords).
1
In the
broadest sense, however, it evokes the human capacity to make, with skills
developed through experience. I use the term here very loosely to refer both
to the process of making with specialized skills and techniques and the
results of this activity, ranging from architecture to automata. Consequently,
this book is as much a study of process and practice as it is of product.
Introduction

10
Introduction
Today craft is commonly assu med to mean handmade, in opposition to
machine-made, but this is not necessarily true since craft making has
always required tools of some sort. As woodworker and craft theorist David
Pye wrote in a peevish rebuttal to this misapprehension, “some things actu-
ally can be made without tools, it is true, but the definition is going to be
rather exclusive for it will take in baskets and coiled pottery, and that is
about al l!”
2
Objects made by the hu man hand, even if mediated by tools,
have a unique aesthetic appeal that can evoke a world outside modernity. A
desire to situate beautifully handcrafted objects beyond the quotidian
industrial and postindustrial world and to see them as culturally and his-
torically other has contributed to the enduring esteem that those created in
Japan enjoy among Euro-Americans. This appreciation often goes hand in
hand with their essentialization and decontextualization. The historical and
relational approach adopted here seeks to overcome these tendencies and
bring new insights and nuance to the interpretation of early modern crafts in
Japan.
There are many challenges in addressing this subject. We are far from the
lived material reality of an era in which craft making was based largely on
tacit knowledge. We do not share the sociocultural framework within which
the resulting artifacts were used and understood. In the industrialized Euro-
American world, crafts no longer emerge from within the culture in which
they are consumed and, indeed, are often the products of different cultures
altogether. In early modern Japan, however, crafts—especially dwel lings,
their furnishings, and dress—constituted forms of material culture critical
to daily life. They were also powerful carriers of knowledge, sociality, and
identity. How and from what substances they were made were matters of
serious concern among all classes of society.
Craft theorist Glenn Adamson has argued that crafts today are “supple-
mental” to “the narrative of progress and conceptual discovery” of the his-
tory of modern art.
3
This view is a legacy of Renaissance Europe, where crafts

11
Introduction
were defined epistemologically in opposition and subordinate to the fine
arts. This distinction was not true of early modern Japan, where the category
saiku , the closest analogue to “craft,” included painting as well as utilitarian
objects made of lacquer, ceramics, and other materials. Most craft makers
were officially classified as artisans, shokunin , but could belong to other
classes as well. Their relative social stature was informed by factors includ-
ing patronage, materials, and level of expertise. Because of the intrinsic
value of lacquer, gold, and silver and of the intricate techniques with which
makie lacquerers worked to create articles with luxurious pictorial decor,
they enjoyed higher esteem than potters, who worked with clay. Within a
particular profession, there might be fu rther hierarchies: those (invariably
male) who fired kilns and threw pots enjoyed higher social and professional
status than those who dug and pugged clay (who were sometimes female).
A further challenge to recoveri ng early modern craft culture is the enor-
mous symbolic burden that crafts have carried, especially within Japan.
Kōgei, the modern Japanese term for craft, like its counterpart bijutsu , fine
art, is a recent coinage.
4
It was first used as a collective category for the
ceramics, lacquer, metalwork, and textiles in the context of the Vienna
International Exposition of 1873 in order to bring Japanese taxonomies in
line with those prevailing in Europe. Since that time, its connotations have
evolved in response to a complex interplay of domestic and international
social, political, and economic circumstances. Discourses on tradition,
colonialism, and nationalism, among other forces, have contributed to its
mutations. Today the meaning of kōgei is widely debated, especially by
practitioners and curators seeking to draw a sharp line between Japanese
materials and making practices and those in other parts of the world. This
has i ncluded promoting the use of the word kogei (without the macron)
rather than its local translation in foreign language publications, an effort
bound up with classifying Japanese crafts i n a way that does not imply the
Western dichotomy of fine arts versus crafts.
5
Despite its local inflections,

12
Introduction
the concept of craft in Japan today cannot be disassociated from patterns of
thinking and expectations characteristic of many parts of the industrialized
world.
Whatever the terminology, it is clear that bringing specialized know-
how, skills, technologies, and aesthetic sensibility to making things of use to
society has long been integral to the material culture of Japan. For more than
a century, through world expositions and the exports associated with them,
crafts have been deemed among Japan’s greatest contributions to world
culture—creations that distinguish Japan from and even elevate it above
other modern nations. Japanese craft exceptionalism is widely attributed to
its makers’ special sensitivity to natural materials, technical mastery, and
design sense, as brought equally to vernacular and elite functional and deco-
rative objects. The modern Japanese discourse on craft also has a strong dia-
lectical dimension in the sharp division drawn between useful articles made
for the urban elite and those made for rural commoners. The former are often
associated with celebrity makers such as Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637), Ogata
Kōrin (1658–1716), or Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743). By contrast, folk crafts
(mingei), a subcategory of kōgei , are extolled as the products of nameless
makers, part of a rural aesthetic tradition that represents an authentic Japan
lost to Western modernity.
6
It is widely assumed that these “unknown
craftsmen” were male, despite the fact that women in rural areas were active
participants in many crafts, especially textiles and papermaking.
Whether implicitly or explicitly, perceptions of all early modern Japa-
nese crafts are bound up with the values of “tradition,” commonly under-
stood to be unchanging and rooted in the past. This outlook has been insti-
tutionalized in the modern system designed to protect and preserve the
nation’s craft heritage, wherein contemporary practitioners identified as
holders of the title of “Important Intangible Cultural Property” (Jūyo	mukei
bunkazai), popularly known as “Living National Treasures,” have rigid
guidelines for the “traditional” tools and techniques they may use, even

13
Introduction
when such practices are no longer feasible.
7
In this system, tradition is con-
strued not as a constantly evolving process but as fixed, and thus involving
preservation of an imagined status quo. Setting aside assumptions of Japa-
nese exceptionalism, of a division between “art crafts” and “folk crafts,” and
of tradition as fixed is a necessary precondition for entering the dynamic
world of early modern crafts.
Although this study focuses on Japan, I have framed it as “early modern”
rather than within the Momoyama (1573–1603) and Tokugawa (1603–1868)
periods to overcome parochialism and encourage comparison with artisanal
developments in other parts of the world between the late sixteenth and
mid-nineteenth centuries.
8
While the specifics of Japanese craft making
may differ—for instance, Japanese saws cut on the pull rather than the push
stroke—the deployment of tools must still obey fundamental laws. Making a
physical object is a creative process requiring a plan, spatial thinking,
knowledge of the laws of nature, experimentation, and consideration of the
network of things to which the thing belongs. It has a language bound by
rules that govern the codes of its social production and exchange. These rules
are first and foremost natural, involving as they do the laws of physics and
the limitations of the human body.
A further commonality is that the skill to make most crafts in the early
modern world was acquired primarily through embodied practice rather
than verbal exegesis or symbolic representation in ways that simultaneously
engaged both mental and physical activity. In Th e	Craftsman , Richard Sen-
nett wrote that “ten thousand hours is a common touchstone for how long it
takes to become an expert . . . . This seemingly huge time span represents
how long researchers estimate it takes for complex skills to become so
ingrained that these become readily available tacit knowledge.”
9
Yet art his-
torians have devoted surprisingly little attention to the physiological impli-
cations of this prolonged period of “body work” (roughly the equivalent of a
seven-year apprenticeship) in the context of premodern Japanese crafts.

14
Introduction
There has been a tendency to frame workshop training as mechanical, mind-
less, and lacking in creativity, often by contrasting it to innate “talent.”
10
The
work of sociologists Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu and phenomenologist
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, among others, has challenged this mechanical/tal-
ent outlook, arguing that mind and body are not separate but inextricably
bound up with one another.
11
Historians of science and material culture such
as Lissa Roberts and Pamela Smith have brought this phenomenological
thinking to their studies of early modern Europe. The interpenetration of
mind and body is encapsulated in The	Mindful	Hand :	Inquiry	and	Invention	from
the	Late	Renaissance	to	Early	Industrialisation , the title of an edited volume on
early modern craft production in Europe.
12
As the title indicates, its authors
see craft professionals not just as makers of things but also as makers of
knowledge. This study brings these interpretive approaches to the exami na-
tion of training and practice in early modern Japan.
Situating Japan in an early modern chronology is further justified
because Japan participated in global exchanges that transformed the world
and the way people saw themselves within it. Contrary to oft-cited claims of
national seclusion, interactions with the Asian conti nent and beyond con-
tinued throughout Tokugawa rule. The responses to these interactions had
profou nd implications for political, economic, and sociocultural develop-
ments and, more specifically in the context of this study, for the migration of
craft specialists, the circulation of technical knowledge, and the availability
of raw materials and luxury goods.
The forces of early modern globalization, among others, contributed to
the growth of capitalism and urbanization. By 1700 Edo had a population of
more than a million, Kyoto five hundred thousand, and Osaka four hundred
thousand. Many castle towns had populations of more than ten thousand.
There was also significant rural economic growth thanks to expansion in
arable land, improved agricultural technology, and the development of cot-
tage industries, resulting in increased and accelerated capacity to make

15
Introduction
things. Challenging the sentimentalization of rural craft culture as self-
sustaining, cooperative communities tied to traditional customs and values
as advanced by proponents of mingei, these flourishing cottage industries
were highly competitive and open to innovation. They were also well inte-
grated into nationwide communication and commercial networks through
the mediation of merchants who supplied makers with equipment and
materials, paid them on the basis of piecework, and marketed the finished
products. These developments shaped and reflected a flou rishing market
economy dominated by newly affluent urban and rural commoners with the
desire and the means to buy goods previously exclusive to the elite.
There are many issues at stake in the study of early modern craft culture.
To tease out the interpretive possibilities of all of them is beyond the scope of
this book. Two themes that thread through its chapters follow from “Gender,
Ritual, and Needlecraft” and “Wit and Wisdom in a Japanese Teabowl,” the
Murphy Lectures I gave in Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, in
April and May 2017. The first focused on female agency in craft culture
through the lens of needlecraft and the second on a lacquer simulacrum of a
Raku teabowl created by Ogawa Haritsu (a.k .a. Ritsuō; 1663–1747) and its
material and sociocultural implications. These led, on the one hand, to
exploration of the wider role of women in the crafts and, on the other, to
exploration of craft makers’ relationship with materials. Lacquer, a medium
of exceptional social, cultural, and economic importance in early modern
crafts, is a touchstone throughout this study that serves to illuminate larger
issues concerning the nexus of materials, makers, and mastery.
This study is guided by the conviction that craft production does not
simply involve humans imposing their will on materials using specialized
training and equipment. The craft practitioner is only one actor in a complex
multidirectional network whose functioning depends on and incorporates a
host of other equally important actors, including media representations,
gender, workshops and the social and physiological trai ning these provide,

16
Introduction
the spread of technology and innovation, and the mutually constitutive
relationships among them. The word network in the context of writings on
early modern Japan often calls to mind social practices, especially the par-
ticipatory literary and artistic circles that contributed to many of the peri-
od’s distinctive forms of cultural expression.
13
My thinking about the role of
social institutions such as workshops and patronage is informed by such
research. Yet even as I take an anthropocentric view by positioning the craft
maker as the prime referent, my interpretation of craft culture also draws on
Bru no Latou r’s actor-network-theory.
14
In so doing, it acknowledges the
distribution of agency among both human and nonhuman actors by attend-
ing to reciprocity in the human engagement with materials, tools, and tech-
nologies. Carpenters, for instance, had to take into account the agency of
wood—its ability to expand and contract in keeping with changes in tem-
perature and humidity and to shrink because of moisture loss.
The book is organized thematically. Chronological development is not a
major concern, beyond drawing attention to important economic shifts in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centu ries when craft production expanded
from the urban centers of Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo to rural areas, as farmers
devoted more time to profitable by-employment in crafts ranging from seri-
culture, silk spinning and weaving, to papermaking. The first chapter intro-
duces the range of natural resources available domestically for craft making
and the problems attendant on their sustainable management in an era when
population growth, urbanization, and rising standards of living put increas-
ing pressure on the environment. Also examined is the role of Neo-Confu-
cian practical studies (jitsugaku) and investigating things (kaibutsu) in
bringing about a new awareness of the material world. In discussi ng the
pragmatic, mercantilist outlook that guided thinking about the exploitation
of natural resources and the tools brought to it, questions are raised about
the stereotype of the Japanese love of nature.

17
Introduction
The skills, talent, inventiveness, and, above all, industriousness of craft
professionals played a key role in transforming the constructed landscape in
city and country alike. The second chapter turns to these makers, focusing
on the extraordinary occupational diversity and specialization characteris-
tic of the early modern era. To form a historically contextualized picture of
the craftscape, it draws on woodblock-printed books and single-sheet prints
that classified makers by occupational specialty, gender, and locale. Careful
attention is given to the taxonomies and hierarchies that informed images of
and writing about artisanal activities. Publications giving expression to a
classificatory zeal that was a feature of the times make visible the role of
artisans, shokunin , as well as of farm households in the expanding commer-
cial craft economy. They also throw light on gender, a critical but often over-
looked factor that shaped the early modern craft world. In Tokugawa society,
where people were defined occupationally, the professional artisan was pre-
sumed to be male, an assumption reinforced by the reality that women could
not become members of patriarchal craft guilds. Visual and textual ev i-
dence, however, testifies that women in both city and countryside, though
defined by convention as wives and mothers, actively participated in a wide
range of craft activities as an extension of their household duties.
The third chapter turns from visualizi ng craft professionals to the sys-
tems that formed them. The ie, house or household, was an institution that
had a decisive impact on who became a craft maker, how they practiced,
and how their work was made available to the public. It determi ned the
practitioner’s mental framework, language, categories of thought, and
behaviors. Documentary evidence combined with surviving works pertain-
ing to Kōami Nagasuku (1661–1723) and Ogawa Haritsu, two eighteenth-
century lacquer specialists, provide a deeper understanding of workshop
operations as well as of questions of lineage, training, patronage, status, and
innovation.

18
Introduction
Following an examination of this organizational system, in chapter 4 I
analyze how craft skills were reproduced through the transmission of
embodied knowledge, drawing on examples involvi ng both male members
of formal workshops and female members of households. A lso considered
here as part of the mindset resulting from extended training and experience
is “material consciousness”—that is, how makers related to the materials of
their craft.
15
This did not necessarily imply a particular sensitivity to or rev-
erence for nature but rather an intense awareness of the physical properties
of materials and how they interact with one another through the tools and
techniques brought to their manipulation.
Chapter 5 examines the role and nature of technology and innovation as
critical constituents of craft mastery. In the first part of the chapter, a range
of technological transfers from continental Asia and their processes of
domestication are introduced, drawing attention to the degree to which this
involved creative imitation. In the second part, focusing on historical and
cultural contingency, I argue that to fully understand early modern craft
production in Japan requires considering developments on their own terms
rather than using European industrialization as a measure. Rather than
expanding market share through the development of mass production, the
focus in early modern crafts was on product differentiation and the develop-
ment of niche markets. While operational efficiency and economies of scale
did develop in some crafts, in others, innovation brought greater refinement
through technical virtuosity.
At a time when we are increasingly drawn to handmade articles using
natural materials, we are preconditioned to view Japanese crafts through an
aesthetic lens. While there is good reason to admire them from this perspec-
tive, it should not be at the expense of neglecting their function or how their
creators interacted with their environment—or how that environment came
to be in the first place. This multiperspectival study explores the compli-
cated relationship that makers have had with the natural resources required

19
Introduction
in the successful practice of their profession as part of the network of rela-
tionships that u ndergird craft production. It recognizes that practitioners’
lives are crucially shaped by institutions including workshops, family, and
the media that put them in positions of privilege or disadvantage based on
gender. In focusi ng on key nodes in this tightly interwoven system, I hope
this study will provide a framework for wider conversations about craft cul-
ture in early modern Japan.

21
The slender trunk of the lacquer tree (Rhus vernicifera) is scarred by the marks
of repeated tapping (figure 1.1). Clusters of horizontal cuts, at about thirty-
centimeter intervals, beginning just above ground level and continuing to
the height of the tapper, are darkened in patches where the sap has flowed
over the bark. In a few spots, the old bark has been scraped away to prepare
for new incisions. His hands and arms well protected from contact with the
liquid lacquer, a skin irritant, the tapper—seemingly impervious to its nox-
ious fumes—makes a fresh cut. Over a season extending from June to Octo-
ber, he must maintain a balance between his desire to extract the maximum
quantity of lacquer and preserving the tree’s health: too many incisions risk
killing the tree.
Today, when Japanese lacquer, urushiol, a natural polymer, has been
largely replaced by plastic, a synthetic one, few tappers still practice their
craft; most, like the i ndividual photographed here, are i n northern Iwate
Prefecture. Yet both his technique and the curved knifelike tool he uses
would have been familiar to Miyazaki Yasusada, the agronomist who, in
1646, published the first manual for farmers detailing the procedures for
tapping lacquer.
1
At that time, lacquer was ubiquitous in Japanese material
culture. It was used to protect and decorate domestic furnishings, architec-
tural interiors and exteriors, vessels for eating and drinking, and ritual
implements, and even to give thread a lustrous sheen.
chapter one
Natural Resources

22
Natural	Resources
Lacquer’s connotations of luxury made it a valuable natural resource. In
the early modern era, men and women alike were deeply concerned with the
factu re of their houses, fu rnishings, clothing, and other goods—how, by
whom, and of what materials they were made. Indeed, with rising standards
of living and growing purchasing power among commoners in both city and
countryside, many articles that had previously been luxuries now became
necessities. The flourishing market economy fostered growing consumption
across all levels of society, and many craft professionals found employment
in the manufacture of goods for domestic use. Furniture historian Koizumi
Kazuko estimates that by 1800, urban households owned a profusion of arti-
Figure 1.1 . Tapper preparing to draw sap from a lacquer tree. Photo courtesy of Guenther
Heckmann.

23
Natural	Resources
cles: assorted wooden storage boxes and cabinets; folding screens and floor
coverings (tatami, which were movable, were regarded as a form of furni-
ture); devices for lighting and heating; articles for hygiene and beauty, such
as basi ns, mirrors, and cosmetic stands; an array of utensils for prepari ng
and eating food; games and other articles for leisure activities; personal
effects; and articles for devotional needs.
2
Some items, such as wadded cot-
ton bedding and cushions, wooden chests fitted with drawers (tansu), and
sets of glazed ceramic dishes, first made their appearance during this era,
while others, such as folding screens and tatami mats, whose ownership
previously was restricted to the elite, became more widely available. Sump-
tuary laws issued in 1799 in Morioka domain, in modern Iwate Prefecture,
testify to the degree to which such articles became established in commoner
households even in the countryside: “It is said that farmers’ domiciles have
become extravagant, that they employ paper and wooden doors and keep
their possessions in tansu or trunks. This demonstrates a lack of recognition
of their status . . . [T]hey should return to the old form of housing, destroy-
ing that which is not suitable to the lifestyle of farmers.”
3
Sumptuary laws,
which were promulgated frequently over the course of the Tokugawa period,
though often to little effect, gave expression to the overriding importance
the government attributed to making visible official status distinctions
through ownership of goods. Their determination was frequently premised
on the materials or techniques of their manufacture. Makie lacquer, in which
gold and silver powders were used to create elaborate pictorial designs, was
a frequent target of regulation.
4
Just as the volume and variety of goods in the home grew during the
early modern era, so too did that of clothing. Men and women with the
means to do so—predominantly those living in Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo—
owned more than one set of garments, their number and the material from
which they were fabricated determined by disposable income, social class,
and locale. Silk was the fabric of the elite and cotton that of commoners,

24
Natural	Resources
while asa (ramie and hemp), even as it was made into luxury summer gar-
ments, served for farmers’ clothing in northern regions where cotton could
not be cultivated because of the unsuitable climate. The availability of
domestically grown and woven silk and cotton, dramatically lowering the
price of clothing, prompted more frequent pu rchases among commoners.
Men and women alike started out the New Year decked in new clothes and
sported seasonally appropriate wear for special outings, such as cherry blos-
som and autumn leaf viewing or visits to shrines and temples. As dress
became part of a fashion system, the importance of being up-to-date made
fabric choice, textures, patterns, and colors subject to frequent change. The
demand for novelty created a steady market for new (or often second hand)
clothes, making textiles one of the most dynamic craft industries of the
early modern era.
The proliferation of crafted goods in the consumer society of the early
modern era had critical implications for the environment. In constructing an
ever richer and more sophisticated material world, makers often used
resources that were in short supply or unrenewable, or whose extraction
caused ecological damage. The new materials and technologies they brought
to their practice sometimes had unintended consequences. Materials opened
a world of possibilities, but by the same token, resource depletion could
close that world.
Craft professionals, whatever their specialty, depended on a reliable sup-
ply of raw or semiprocessed materials. What kinds of resources were avail-
able for craft making in the early modern era, and how was the need for them
met and sustained when population growth, urbanization, agricultural
expansion, and rising standards of living put increasing pressure on the
environment? To address these questions, this chapter examines the range
of materials most widely mobilized by craft makers, taking into account
as well the farmers, forest workers, and merchants who were critical links
in the supply chain, and the mercantile capitalism that guided resource

25
Natural	Resources
management. The materials and skills of artisanal practice were carried out
in a social context: craft makers did not act in isolation, independent of the
thinking of the times. Their initiatives shaped and reflected the changing
values of the wider environment. Notable among these were policies regard-
ing the exploitation of the natu ral world espoused and promoted by Toku-
gawa government officials under the Neo-Confucian banner of “practical
studies” (jitsugaku) and the “investigation of things” (kaibutsu). This mode of
thinking raises questions about the pervasive myth that Japanese crafts
express a special love of nature on the part of their makers and users.
natural resources and their management
Today, Japan is often regarded as a resource-poor country because of its lack
of oil and the poor quality of its now largely depleted coal deposits, but from
the perspective of early modern craft culture, the archipelago was rich in
natural resources that, if maintained in a sustainable manner, could be
mobilized to fabricate things of use to society. There was an abundant supply
of the “five metals” (gokin), gold, silver, iron, copper, and tin, for crafting
luxury articles such as swords and Buddhist ritual implements as well as
agricultural tools. Japan’s mou ntainous topography and climate, ranging
from subarctic in Hokkaido to subtropical in Okinawa, fostered the growth
of a wide range of evergreen and deciduous trees suitable for construction
and household furnishings. Myths recorded in the eighth-century Chronicles
of	Japan (Nihonshoki) relate that trees were created from various parts of the
body of the deity Susanoo no Mikoto—from his beard came cedars (sugi),
from the hair on his chest cypress (hinoki), from his eyebrows camphor trees
(kusu), and from the hair on his buttocks black pines—but these were only a
few of the many varieties of trees to be found in Japan.
5
There were lac trees
for lacquer and candle wax; mulberry trees, whose leaves fed silkworms;
and shrubs such as kōzo, whose fibers could be used for making paper and
clothing. The islands also boasted hundreds of varieties of bamboo, which

26
Natural	Resources
could be used in construction (for fences, scaffolding, and ladders) as well as
for utilitarian articles such as baskets, sieves, and fish traps. Deposits of clays
suitable for making earthenware and stoneware were also widespread. Kao-
lin, white feldspathic clay used for porcelain, was first discovered in the
Arita region of northern Kyushu, with smaller pockets discovered later in
Kaga, modern Ishikawa Prefecture. The early modern ecosystem was further
expanded and altered through the introduction of commercial crops that
had an impact on the crafts, most notably cotton and indigo. While the craft
maker’s materials of choice were determined largely by domestic availabil-
ity, imported resources were deployed to supplement these. During the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries, huge quantities of rayskin for sword
hilts, sappanwood for dye, deerskins for footwear, raw lacquer, and ivory for
carving netsuke were imported from Southeast Asia.
6
In 1705, in a now famous passage, scholar/bureaucrat and advisor to the
shogun Arai Hakuseki (1657–1725) wrote that “among the types of wealth
extractable from the soil, the five grains and the raw materials used for cloth
were like the blood, flesh, and hair of the human body.” Even if used exces-
sively, they were replenishable, but gold and silver were the “bones of the
earth” and “once used, they will not grow again.”
7
A century later, in 1815,
an anonymous samurai calling himself Buyō Inshi wrote of the exhausting
of the mountains and the forest, the silting up of rivers, and flooding, all
because of greed.
8
These critiques, though motivated by moral outrage at
perceived rampant luxury consumption, spoke to genuine and serious con-
cerns about the despoliation of the environment by unsustainable exploita-
tion of the country’s natural resources—especially gold, silver, copper, and
timber. Although Hakuseki saw substances extracted from the earth as
finite and those grown in the earth as renewable resources, at the time of his
writing, most of the pri meval forests of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu had
been exhausted, and the country’s timber needs were being met by newly
cultivated woods.

27
Natural	Resources
Metalworking in Japan dates to the Yayoi period (300 BCE–300 CE), and
mining is recorded in eighth-century chronicles, but the surging exchange
value of gold, silver, and copper between 1540 and 1700 led to the opening
of many previously untapped mines.
9
Initially, warlords controlled these
mines and used the precious metals extracted from them to finance military
campaigns and castle construction and decoration. With the consolidation
of Tokugawa power, however, most mines were taken over by the shogunate.
In addition to financing the importation of luxury goods such as porcelain
and silk from China, these three metals were used as currency and for craft
making. In the seventeenth century, mining was carried out more system-
atically and efficiently and at greater depths than previously by searching for
ore veins rather than randomly digging tunnels through bedrock. This so-
called “survey mining technique” (sunpō-kiri) was, in turn, made possible
by the production of harder iron chisels, hammers, and picks.
10
Gold and sil-
ver were mined on Sado Island, off the west coast of Honshu, with much of
the labor carried out by convicts.
Interest in mining techniques led to the creation of many illustrated
scrolls on the subject. An anonymous nineteenth-century scroll in the New
York Public Library showing operations at the Sado mines is typical of the
genre (figure 1.2). The scene illustrated shows the labor carried out under-
ground. In the top gallery, surveyors and other officials are preparing to
chisel into the rock wall to determine the quality of a new seam. In the
smaller galleries below, miners extract ore. The wooden pillars holding up a
straw mat and a rooflike structure in the deepest tunnel offer protection
from falling rock.
11
In the early seventeenth centu ry, production of silver from the Sado
mines is estimated to have been between sixty thousand and ninety thou-
sand kilos annually.
12
A substantial amount of the silver circulating in
global trade between the 1540s and the 1640s emanated from the Iwami and
Ikuno silver mi nes, i n modern Tottori and Hyogo Prefectures. The scale of

28
Natural	Resources
production there can be imagined from the fact that in the early seventeenth
century, Tokugawa Ieyasu was sent tribute in the amount of twelve thousand
kilos of silver from a single shaft of the Iwami mine.
13
Much of the silver out-
flow, though mediated by Spanish and Portuguese traders, was destined
for China, where the exchange value of silver was disproportionately higher
Figure 1.2. Sado gold mines, 19th c. Handscroll, ink and colors on paper. H 27.2 × L 1,444
cm. Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library.

29
Natural	Resources
than in other parts of the world.
14
When the global exchange rate of silver
stabilized in the 1640s, copper replaced it as a major export.
15
Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue (Illustrated famous specialties of the mountains
and seas of Japan; 1754) further testifies to the importance of the mining
industry by devoting an entire volume to its various operations.
16
Whereas

30
Natural	Resources
this publication gives locations associated with other famous products,
there is no reference to the specific locations of mines, in all likelihood
because this was privileged information. The illustrations and accompany-
ing brief explanatory captions emphasize the specialist skills, hard work,
tools, and technology that made possible the extraction and refini ng of the
five metals. The reader is guided through the rituals associated with the
building of a mine tunnel, the array of tools required for breaking through
the stone and hauling the ore, work inside the tunnel, the sorting of the pre-
cious metal (a job carried out by women), various smelti ng techniques, the
sluicing and smelting of iron sand, and the packing of large round gold and
silver i ngots for shipment. One double-page spread lays out the array of tools
used in mining: shovels, hammers, pickaxes, baskets for hauling the ore,
and, most importantly, arranged horizontally at the lower edge of the illus-
tration, the wood and bamboo hand-driven hydraulic pumps that were used
to drain water from the tunnels by lifting it into buckets, which were then
hauled to the surface (figure 1.3). Mining was a dangerous profession and
flooding a major concern. It also had consequences for those livi ng nearby
since the poisonous silt from the refining processes could be carried down-
stream and pollute rice paddies.
17
Most of the iron deposits in Japan were in the form of iron sand (satetsu),
found close to the surface in regions in modern-day Shimane, Iwate, and
Aomori Prefectures. Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue shows the iron sand that was
collected in baskets and poured into swiftly flowing water, where the heav-
ier grains sank to the bottom and could be easily retrieved. If charcoal was
available, the iron was then smelted nearby in a clay furnace (tatara) using
foot-pedaled bellows that could push air into the furnace so as to maintain
the temperature of 1400°C necessary to reduce the carbon content suffi-
ciently to produce steel. This bellows system was among the important early
modern innovations in smelting technology.
18
The resulting steel, or hagane,
the text tells us, was also written with the characters for blade and gold , a

31
Natural	Resources
reference both to its preciousness and to the blades into which it could sub-
sequently be forged.
19
Swordsmiths and makers of agricultural tools as well
as craft professionals in other areas of metalwork were all dependent on the
quantity and quality of the smelter’s labor.
Today 67 percent of Japan is covered in forest, one of the highest percent-
ages in the modern industrial world, but by 1600 the archipelago (not
including Hokkaido) was at the brink of ecological disaster due to deforesta-
tion. How did this happen? Wood was historically the primary material for
building temples, residences, and castles. However, it was also essential fuel
for heating and firing the kilns for clay roof tiles, as well as for the charcoal
used for making arms and armor. Profligate use of lumber for these and other
purposes had made deforestation a problem since medieval times. Scarcity
and cost are among the factors that are thought to have contributed to
changes in the residential architecture of the elite such as the replacement of
wood paneling with plaster walls and wood flooring with rush-covered
straw tatami.
20
By the late sixteenth century, the problem had become
increasi ngly acute, as population growth required the felling of forests to
open new land for rice cultivation. Prime cedars and Japanese cypress,
whose height and straight grain made them the preferred timbers for con-
struction, became especially hard to come by. The mountains in the capital
region that had once supplied the wood for the huge temple complexes in
Kyoto and Nara were exhausted and could no longer meet the needs of new
rulers eager to display their power and authority in monumental architec-
tural form. Castle building in the 1570s and 1580s by rival warlords, most
notably Oda Nobunaga’s Azuchi Castle, on Lake Biwa, and Toyotomi Hidey-
oshi’s castles at Osaka, Fushimi, and Jūrakudai, consumed vast quantities of
timber. The warlords’ temple building and repair added to the pressure on
forests. In 1586, when Hideyoshi sought a tree to serve as ridgepole for Hōkōji
temple in Kyoto, one more than eighty feet in length was sent from the foot
of Mount Fuji, some two hu ndred miles away. Transporting it to Kyoto took

Figure 1.3 . Mining tools,
from Illustrated Famous
Specialties of the Mountains
and Seas of Japan (Nihon
sankai meibutsu zue), 1797
edition. Woodblo ck-printed
book. National Diet Library,
Tokyo.

34
Natural	Resources
three months, required fifty thousand man-days of labor, and cost 1,000 ryō
in gold.
21
Later, fires in the metropolitan centers added to the problem. The
Meireki-era fire of 1657, in which 20 percent of Edo’s population lost their
lives, laid waste to Edo Castle, 500 daimyo mansions, and 779 residences of
lesser samurai as well as 350 temples and 400 blocks of commoner houses.
22
Edo Castle’s keep was never rebuilt owing to the cost and difficulty of find-
ing timber of the requisite size. The scarcity of prime timber also led to
sumptuary regulations enacted in 1663 forbidding woodworkers in Edo from
making household articles of Japanese cedar or cypress.
23
This fire is thought
to have been a critical turning point in the shogunal government’s determi-
nation to implement regulations concerning the control and protection of
forests nationwide.
24
In response to the scarcity of timber, Tokugawa government officials as
well as regional daimyo began systematic efforts to manage forests through
use regulations and silviculture. Peasants and the warrior elite competed
over sylvan resources. To satisfy the needs of both, regulations for commu-
nal use of forests and woodlands stipulated that certain forests be reserved
by the shogunate and the daimyo for construction of buildings and public
works; peasants were permitted use of woodland brush for fertilizer, fuel,
and fodder and edibles such as mushrooms; and individual households had
the right to use certain woodlands.
25
The ambiguity of these regulations,
however, frequently put these disparate stakeholders at odds with one
another. Alongside this regimen, government authorities fostered silvicul-
ture on the lands under their jurisdiction. On most plantations, deciduous
broadleaves were cultivated rather than the cypress and cedar characteristic
of the primeval forest. These measures, by helping to bring supply and
demand into balance, led to greater ecological sustainability.
The importance of the timber i ndustry is reflected in many woodblock
prints and illustrated books. “In the Mountains of Tōtōmi Province,” an
inventive pri nt in Hokusai’s Thirty-Six	 Views	 of	Mount	 Fuji, celebrates the

35
Natural	Resources
physical strength and skill sawyers brought to their work as a foil to the
drama of towering Mount Fuji (figure 1.4). Two men usi ng large, rectangular
one-man ripsaws (maebiki	oga) simultaneously saw a giant log propped up at
an angle matching that of Fuji’s slope, one while standing precariously atop
it and the other while crouched beneath. Beyond them another saw yer
sharpens his saw, a reminder of the importance attributed to good care and
maintenance of professional tools. While it may seem strange to cut a felled
log propped in this way, it reflects actual practice: it was much harder to cut
a large log into planks flat on the ground using a horizontal stroke. This way,
the sawyer above could throw his entire weight into his work. It is highly
unlikely, however, that a fellow sawyer would actually work directly
beneath with sawdust falling in his face!
Unlike European saws, the maebiki	oga was held with both hands and cut
on the pull rather than the push: the movement toward the body made it
easier to maintain a straight line. The size and shape of the ripsaw varied, but
according to one eighteenth-century source, it was usual ly si xty-one by
thirty-five centimeters and could weigh as much as four or five kilos. The
maebiki	oga ’s first documented use was at the end of the sixteenth century,
in the construction of Hideyoshi’s Hōkōji temple, where it replaced the older
and more labor-intensive two-man ripsaw.
26
The ripsaw was so efficient and
quiet compared to the ax that in some areas its use was banned to prevent
illegal logging.
27
Provisions to ensure availability of hardwood timber for use in construc-
tion were the focus of major reforestation projects, but demand for lacquer
also led to the establishment of lacquer plantations in at least twenty-four
provinces.
28
These projects were generally undertaken at the direction of
daimyo hoping to develop regional lacquer craft industries, and there was
considerable competition among them. The beginnings of dedicated lacquer
tree plantations in the domain of the Tsugaru, located at the northern
extremity of the Honshu Peninsula, date to the early seventeenth century.

Figure 1.4. Katsu-
shika Hokusai
(1760–1849), “I n the
Mountains of
Tōtōmi Province”
(Tōtōmi sanchū),
from series
Thirty-Six Views of
Mount Fuji (Fugaku
sanjūrokkei),
1830–31. Wood-
block print,
horizontal ōban .
Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston.
William Sturgis
Bigelow Collection.
11.17658.

38
Natural	Resources
Domainal records i ndicate that beginning in 1624, ten thousand trees were
planted annually for five years.
29
A lacquer workshop was opened under
Nobumasa (1646–1710), who undertook a wide-ranging infrastructu re plan
that also included the promotion of sericulture. His domain produced
lacquerware in a distinctive regional style, known today as Tsugaru-nuri,
distinguished by its flat, multicolored mottled background.
30
As will be dis-
cussed in chapter 3, the fifth daimyo Nobuhisa (1669–1746) sought to improve
the quality of local production by sending Ogawa Haritsu to oversee the
workshop. In the eighteenth century, lacquerwares produced there were
commonly referred to as kara-nuri , Chinese-style lacquer, a likely reference
to the Chinese motifs that featured in its decor, as seen in the example illus-
trated here (figure 1.5).
31
The systematic cultivation of lacquer trees in other
domains likewise led to the emergence of other distinctive regional styles of
lacquerware destined for local use rather than gift giving, as was Tsugaru
domain’s kara-nuri . Wajima, on the Noto Peninsula in modern Ishikawa Pre-
fecture, for instance, achieved a reputation for its utilitarian, high-footed,
lathe-turned bowls and other vessels (figure 1.6).
32
Yet it is worth keeping in
mind that such beautifully formed artifacts were sometimes produced at the
cost of the living tree. As noted above, too many incisions to extract lacquer
at one time could kill a tree in a single season.
Lacquer, like paper, cotton, indigo, and other commercial crops, was an
important source of tax revenue for regional daimyo facing chronic budget
deficits. The imposition of unreasonably high taxes, however, often resulted
in protests by rural growers that impacted production. Such was the case in
Yonezawa, the domain of the Uesugi in modern Yamagata Prefecture, where
asa (hemp and ramie) and lacquer were the two main crops. Domain officials
not only required that lacquer sap be sold at a low rate to them but also,
between the 1680s and 1690s, levied a tax increase of more than 200 percent
on the output from each tree. As a result, as historian Mark Ravina has writ-
ten, “farmers found it more economical to uproot their trees than to pay

39
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Figure 1.5 . Oval Tsugaru-nuri inkstone box with Chinese recluse Lin Bu greeting a crane,
dated 1731. Lacquer with inlays, 5.6 × 25.7 × 34.6 cm. 1996.242.25.A-B . Harvard Art
Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, The Elaine Ehrenkranz Collection of Japanese
Lacquer. Photo: © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
taxes on them . . . . Despite edicts banning the destruction of lacquer trees,
lacquer cultivation steadily declined from over 260,000 trees i n 1689 to
some 190,000 in 1772.”
33
Historically, lacquer was produced in many parts of the country. Before
the sixteenth century, the region of modern-day Wakayama Prefecture was
noted for the quality of its lacquer, but over the course of the early modern
era, lacquer tree cultivation became increasingly concentrated in northern

40
Natural	Resources
regions. Although trees could grow on relatively poor soil, they required ten
years to mature, and only very small amounts of sap could be drawn annually
from each one. Trees were tapped three or four times a year, from June
through October, from both the trunk and the branches. Because of the dif-
ferent methods of tapping and the age and health of the tree, it is difficult to
determine the annual harvest, but one modern estimate claims it to be a mere
150–200 grams per tree.
34
The limited output and the labor required to tap
and refine lacquer help to explain the high cost of the goods coated with it.
Lacquer was used as a protective coating on a multitude of household
goods, but in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it was
also extensively deployed in the decoration of buildings such as the
Figure 1.6. Spouted Wajima ware bowl, 18th c. Red lacquer, 21 × 36 × 36 cm. Jeffrey
Montgomery Collection MC 180. Photo © Yuki Seli.

41
Natural	Resources
Chikubushima Shrine, originally built in Kyoto, and the Ōsaki Hachiman
Shrine far to the north in Sendai.
35
So great was the use of lacquer in the inte-
rior and exterior decor of temples, shrines, and residences that local supplies
could not keep up with demand, and raw lacquer had to be imported to fill
the gap. Excavation of an early seventeenth-century lacquermaker’s shop on
Oikedori in Kyoto between 2003 and 2004 brought to light large four-eared
storage jars and tools still bearing traces of Thai thitsi lacquer.
36
Dutch ships
continued to supply large quantities of lacquer from Southeast Asia through-
out the century; between 1650 and 1680, an average of more than four thou-
sand pounds a year was imported.
37
Thitsi was thought to be inferior in quality
to Japanese urushi because of its viscosity, dark color, and long drying time.
Consequently, it was generally applied only to the foundation layers of fine
domestic lacquerwares, but it seems to have been used more extensively for
those goods made for export to Europe, where it was often mixed with urushi.
Price may have been a motivating factor in the use of imported lacquer since
it was considerably cheaper than the domestic product.
38
Lacquer trees were among the shiboku	sansō, the “four trees and three
grasses” that Miyazaki Yasusada (1623–1697) promoted in his Nōgy ō	 zensho
(Complete compendium of agriculture), the first and enduringly influential
agricultural tract to be published during the early modern era. The other
“trees” included mulberry, kōzo, and tea, and the “grasses,” cotton, hemp,
ramie, indigo, and madder (used to produce a red dye). Miyazaki sought to
provide practical information to help farmers increase their output. Though
of warrior class background, he devoted himself to farming before writing
his magnum opus, which takes a systematic approach to the seasons,
weather, local climate, soil conditions, fertilizer, and irrigation, as wel l as
individual crops and forest management. The cultivation of cotton, for
instance, required considerable fertilizer, and at a time when brush and
other plant by-products were scarce, he recommended the application
of commercial fertilizer made from dried sardines and pressed oil waste.
39

42
Natural	Resources
Echoing wider concerns of the time, he also stressed the value of agricultural
management in developing domainal wealth.
40
Kōzo was such an important commercial crop that an entire book, Kamis­
uki	chōhōki (A handy guide to papermaking; 1798), targeting a more general
readership, was devoted to its cultivation and processing.
41
Papermaking
had been an important craft since at least the eighth century, but it assumed
new importance in the seventeenth owing to the vast bureaucratic needs of
the shogunal and domainal authorities as well as the flourishing publishing
industry. Paper was also used to make many articles of daily life ranging
from clothing and umbrellas to hair ties (motoyui). (See figure 3.4.) Distinc-
tive styles of paper were produced in many parts of the country, and even
within one region, there could be considerable specialization. The inventory
of the contents of the shogunal storehouse compiled in 1617, followi ng the
death of the first shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, lists forty-eight varieties, rang-
ing from hōsho, the paper most commonly used for documents and printing,
and paper for shoji screens, to chagami , the special paper used to seal the
mouth of the large jar in which tea was stored.
42
Kunisaki Jihei (act. late 1700s), the author of Kamisuki	chōhōki, was a
paper merchant based in Echizen, historically one of the leading producers
of fine paper. As Jihei notes in his introduction to this well-illustrated pub-
lication, papermaking involved grueling physical labor, which was carried
out chiefly by the female members of farm households du ri ng the wi nter
months. In regions such as Echizen, however, it was such an i mportant
industry that it was made throughout the year. Makers benefited only mini-
mally from its production. Like rice, it was something that peasants pro-
duced but were not permitted to consume since most domainal authorities
required that the output be sold to them at below market rates. Paper may be
made from many organic substances, but the chief sources in the early mod-
ern era were the bast fibers of one of three plants, kōzo (Broussonetia	papy­
rifera), mitsumata (Edgeworthia	papyrifera), and ganpi (Wikstoemia	canescens).

43
Natural	Resources
Kōzo and mitsumata were cultivated, while ganpi was harvested in the wild.
Kōzo fiber was used to make about 80 percent of the paper, because it could
be grown almost anywhere on the archipelago, from the Ryukyus in the
south to Niigata Prefecture in the north.
43
Jihei guides the reader through each stage of the laborious papermaking
process, from the cutting of the shrub to the packaging and shipping of
the finished product (figure 1.7). With the exception of the cutting of the
paper mulberry, women figured conspicuously in all these operations. To
prepare the pulp, first, branches were steamed to loosen the black outer
bark. This bark was stripped to reveal the inner white pulp, which was
then washed and cleaned of impurities in a fast-flowing river. Next,
these long white strips were boiled in a cauldron. Finally, the long fibers
were pounded into a pulp and poured into a large vat with cold water and a
binder made from a variety of the hibiscus root. Sheets of paper were made
one by one in a mold by dipping a bamboo screen into the pulpy liquid
and shaking it back and forth until an evenly distributed layer had formed.
(See figure 2.12.) This physically demanding procedu re produces the dense
crisscross pattern of long fibers that gives Japanese paper its exceptional
strength and du rability. Once the sheet was formed, it was removed to a
press to extract the excess liquid and transferred to a wooden frame for dry-
ing in the sun.
Since most paper was made in the provinces, metropolitan readers may
not have been familiar with all the operations involved, but they are likely to
have seen the final stages of pounding the pulp, couching the paper on bam-
boo screens, and drying it in the sun on boards, because these activities
sometimes were carried out in urban workshops, most notably in the vicin-
ity of the Kamisukigawa in Kyoto and in the Asakusa district of Edo.
44
These
steps were also required in the recycling of paper, which was an important
part of the early modern paper industry in most cities, especially in
Edo, where discarded paper, worn secondhand books, and paper scraps

44
Natural	Resources
were systematically collected by door-to-door buyers. In some cases,
wholesalers purchased and distributed the waste paper to papermaking vil-
lages and then bought back the recycled product.
45
Recycled paper was of
low quality, but it was cheaper than new paper. One of its chief commercial
uses was to form the layered inner covers of printed books.
46
Access to material resources tied craft practitioners to particular places
and times, unless the material was readily portable. Thus, smelting metals
Figure 1.7. Kunisaki Jihei
(act. late 18th c.), Cutting
kō zo, from A	Handy	Guide	to
Papermaking (Kamisuki
chōhōki; 1798). Wo odblo ck-
printed book. Photo after
1925 facsimile, Harvard
Yenching Library.

45
Natural	Resources
and firing ceramics generally took place in the vicinity of mines and sources
of clay, respectively, but paper could be made in the city, because kōzo
branches or semiprocessed fiber were light enough to be carried by pack-
horse from farm to workshops elsewhere. The manufacture of some materi-
als could even be distributed across multiple sites, as was cotton, the most
important commercial crop. Cotton had significantly replaced bast fibers,
principally asa , as a material for peasant clothing in the late seventeenth
century and came to be used for household furnishings such as cushions and
bedcovers as well. It had the advantage of being softer, warmer, and quicker
to produce than asa but the disadvantage of requi ri ng the application of
costly fertilizer. It was grown, ginned, spun, and woven in many regions for
household use, but in the eighteenth century, commercial production
became concentrated in the Ki nai region, where both climate and proximity
to the Kyoto and Osaka markets led it to develop rapidly, often displacing
rice in importance.
47
Initially, farmers sent the ginned cotton to Osaka to be
processed, but later, the growth of household-based industry in rural
regions where labor costs were lower displaced urban wholesalers. Rural
cotton production involved a well-organized division of labor spread across
many sites: farmers who harvested and separated the fibers from the seed
often sold the ginned cotton to merchants who in turn gave the semiproc-
essed material to other farm households to make into yarn and cloth.
According to agrarian historian Thomas Smith, “cotton i n the early ni ne-
teenth century commonly passed through fourteen or more hands from raw
material to fi nished cloth.”
48
Weaving, the final stage in this process, was
generally carried out by women. A skilled weaver could produce in one day
as much as one tan (about twelve meters), the amount required to make one
kosode, the precursor of the kimono.
49
Some areas, such as Tanba, northwest
of Kyoto, specialized in cloth with distinctive patterns of woven stripes or
checks while others became known for pressure-resist or stencil-printed
patterns (figure 1.8).

46
Natural	Resources
Cotton was the principal fabric for clothing worn by commoners, and
indigo was its primary dyestuff. The variety grown in Japan was Polygonum
tinctorium (in Japanese, tade	 ai; dyer’s knotweed), a subtropical annual or
biannual plant. Specialist dye shops (kon’ya) had flourished in villages and
metropolitan areas throughout western Japan since the introduction of cot-
ton in the fifteenth century. Although many villages with nearby indigo
fields developed specialty indigo fabrics, in the early modern period, com-
mercial cultivation of this dyestuff was concentrated on the island of
Figure 1.8. Fragment of cloth
of plain silk and cotton
weave with stripes, 19th c.
Tanba region. T.100 Q-1969.
© Victoria and Albert
Museum.

47
Natural	Resources
Shikoku, in the province of Awa (modern Tokushima Prefecture). Indigo
seeds were planted in beds in February and transplanted to the fields in May.
Leaves were harvested twice, once before the flowers appeared in July and
again in September. The harvested leaves were then shredded and win-
nowed, and the resulting leaf mass spread out in sheds, covered with a straw
mat, and dampened and raked periodically to encourage fermentation. After
about three months, when the leaves had darkened and solidified through
oxidation and enzyme action, the compost, or sukumo, was further fer-
mented in a vat with the addition of water and lye. Large commercial enter-
prises might have as many as seventy-two vats, as does Higeta House, in
Mashiko (in modern Tochigi Prefecture), which has been in operation since
Figure 1.9. Indigo vats at Higeta Indigo House, Mashiko, Tochigi Prefecture. Photo by
Lauren L. Lancy, The Kindcraft.

48
Natural	Resources
the Edo period (figure 1.9). Cotton could be immersed in the resulting dye-
bath, or, if the dye was to be sold elsewhere, the indigo dye could be further
reduced in si ze and weight by being pounded into a powder and formed into
cakes that specialist merchants could easily transport.
Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the growth
of merchant networks led to an increasingly integrated market system that
was sustained by a well-maintained network of highways and roads con-
necting even distant regions to one another and to the city. Chief among
them were the Five Highways—the Tōkaidō, Kisokaidō or Nakasendō,
Kōshūdō, Nikkōdō, and Oshūdō—each punctuated at regular intervals by
post stations. Travel on these roads was driven by the sankin	kōtai system, in
which feudal lords and their retinues had to spend alternate years in Edo.
The Tōkaidō, the 560-kilometer (351-mile) coastal road between Kyoto and
Edo, carried the heaviest traffic, but the inland Kisokaidō was also well
traveled. Raw and semiprocessed materials as well as finished goods circu-
lated along these highways as well as on river and sea routes.
practical learning and
the investigation of things
The availability of natural resources and the development of tools and tech-
nologies to exploit them became matters of keen interest among government
officials from the start of Tokugawa rule. While official rhetoric continued to
proclaim that the warrior class should devote itself to the military and liter-
ary arts (bu and bun), practical administrative skills were required to man-
age the country during the prolonged peace that followed the Tokugawa
consolidation of power. The Zhu Xi school of Neo-Confucianism, which
became the shogunate’s guiding philosophy, was chiefly concerned with
ethics, but under the banner of “practical learning,” jitsugaku , and “the
investigation of things,” kaibutsu , it also legitimated the study of natural
history and technology. In the Zhu Xi worldview, nature and its exploitation

49
Natural	Resources
were not separate from political and economic considerations, because it
was held that the morality of the ruler determined the natural order. As the
scholar Kumazawa Banzan (1619–1691) put it, “If the state is immoral, the
ether of Heaven is out of harmony, and the five grains do not ripen com-
pletely.”
50
It is difficult to know to what extent this scholarly discourse
reached beyond elite circles, but there is no doubt that the new culture of
empiricism and the monetization of the natural world that followed from it
impacted those who cultivated and made things from its resources.
Hiraga Gennai’s (1728–1780) development of Gennai-yaki, a green, yel-
low, and brown lead-glazed stoneware, exemplifies the way these material
and economic conditions informed craft practice (figure 1.10). Gennai was a
low-ranking samurai who resigned his position in service to the lord of
Takamatsu to devote himself to the study of the natural sciences (honzōgaku).
Among other accomplishments, he organized exhibitions of flora and fauna,
conducted surveys of mineral resources in northern Akita domain, devel-
oped a technique for glassblowing, conducted experiments with static elec-
tricity, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to develop a fireproof fabric made of
asbestos and to raise sheep for wool. Many of his activities were motivated by
a desire to reduce the country’s dependency on foreign goods by better
exploiting its own natural resources and craft skills and to promote local
industry and enterprise (shokusan	kōgyō). Medicinal ginseng, printed cotton
chintzes imported from India, and silks and ceramics from China loomed
large among the goods for which domestic substitutes were sought.
In 1755, following a visit to Nagasaki, where Gennai became aware of the
importance of international trade, he developed a new style of ceramics in
kilns in his hometown of Shido in Sanuki Province (in modern Kagawa Pre-
fecture). Stonewares called Shidoyaki, after the town, were already made
there, but Gennai immodestly named the new wares Gennai-yaki. These
were predominantly in the form of square, hexagonal, octagonal, and foliate
dishes made serially using press molds that lent themselves to the application

50
Natural	Resources
of pictorial surface designs in sharp relief. By glazing them in a brown, yellow,
and predominantly green enamel palette, Gennai wanted to evoke the luxury
Kōchi wares from Fujian Province in China that were popular among practi-
tioners of the tea ceremony. (The Japanese term Kōchi comes from the Chinese
Jiaozhi, a reference to the region around present-day Vietnam where these
Figure 1.10. Square plate; stoneware with overglaze enamels (Sanuki ware, Gennai type);
18th c.; H 4.4 cm (1 3⁄4 in.); W 22.2 cm. (83⁄4 in.). The Harry G. C . Packard Collection of Asian
Art, Gift of Harry G. C . Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and
Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975.
1975.268.591. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

51
Natural	Resources
ceramics were thought to have been made.) While the wares produced in
Gennai’s kiln shared the palette of brightly colored enamel Kōchi ceramics,
their decorative forms and motifs were adapted from a variety of sources.
Some, like the one reproduced here, feature motifs of Chinese inspiration.
51
Others put Gennai’s global awareness on display by designs of maps of Japan,
Europe, and even the Americas.
Gennai’s grand ambitions for the marketing of his ceramics are clear
from a request to extract clay from Amagusa Island, off Kyushu, submitted to
domainal authorities there in 1770.
The Japanese place great value on foreign things and we lay out great sums of
money for them . . . . In the case of pottery . . . if the Japanese ware is good,
then naturally we will not spend our gold and silver on the foreign commod-
ity. Rather to the contrary: since both the Chinese and Hollanders will come
to seek out these wares and carry them home, this will be of everlasting ben-
efit. Since this is originally clay, no matter how much pottery we send out,
there need be no anxiety about a depletion of resources.52
Contrary to Gennai’s reassuring claim, depletion of clay resources was a
concern. The Nabeshima, who operated domainal kilns in Arita, had guards
protecting their porcelain clay sources.
53
Likewise, in the Seto region, which
was under the rule of the Owari branch of the Tokugawa, the number of
kilns was restricted “in order to avoid exhausting raw materials and fire-
wood or glutting the market with inferior goods.”
54
The pioneers in practical learning were chiefly physicians, botanists, and
scholars who sought to identify, sort, and classify useful medicinal and
other plants on the basis of firsthand observation. The introduction and cir-
culation of Li Shizhen’s Bencao	gangmu (1603), a Chinese publication on mate-
ria	medica known in Japan as Honzō	kōmoku , which included plants, animals,
and minerals thought to have medicinal applications, was a catalyst for their
investigations, but their evidential research, collection, and analysis focused
on Japan. Kaibara Ekken (1630–1714) was an early proponent of jitsugaku

52
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whose exceptional breadth of scholarship had a lasting impact on many
fields, especially botanical studies. His encyclopedic Yamato	honzō (Medici-
nal herbs of Japan; 1709) served as a model for many subsequent botanical
publications. His belief in the importance of agricultural research for the
education and well-being of the people also informed his colleague Miya-
zaki Yasusada’s Nōgy ō	zensho (An agricultural compendium; 1697), for which
he wrote an introduction.
55
Policies implemented between 1716 and 1745 by Tokugawa Yoshimune
(1684–1751) to redress agricultural shortages and the negative balance of
trade with China served as catalysts for the spread of such systematic,
empirical, and commercially oriented interventions into the natural world.
He established a medicinal garden at Edo Castle and urged the establishment
of others across the archipelago. He also ordered a nationwide survey of flora
and fauna, Shobutsu	 ruisan (ca. 1734–36), a landmark in the collection and
classification of authoritative information about the country’s natural
resources. This ambitious publication comprised 638 volumes, naming,
describing, and classifying 3,590 species of plants and animals as well as
metals, stones, and jewels in domains across the archipelago. Yoshimune’s
undertaking led to similar inquiries into exploitable resources and to the
implementation of new agricultural policies in many domains, with the aim
of bringing in additional revenue.
56
The promotion of cash crops and related
craft industries was often framed in terms of the “prosperity of the country,”
kokueki , a reference not to the nation but rather to the domainal state.
57
In many domains, the promotion of new crops went hand in hand with
that of crafts that made use of local resources such as clay. In 1678, for
instance, Yamauchi Toyomasa, the lord of Tosa domain in Shikoku, ordered
Morita Kyūemon, a low-ranking samurai trained as a potter, to travel to Edo
to promote the Odo ceramics he made in a workshop near the domain castle,
where suitable clay had been found. There was precedent for such an
endeavor since the Matsuu ra and Nabeshima lords had been successfully

53
Natural	Resources
sponsoring the production of luxury porcelains since early in the century.
The sources of desirable clays and procedures for forming, glazing, and firing
were closely held workshop secrets, but complex interdomainal negotiations
enabled Kyūemon to stop at various ceramics production sites to collect
samples of finished wares from which he could learn. Information gleaned
by such traveling craft professionals played an important role in the diffu-
sion of specialist knowledge. Ky ūemon carried with him a portable potter’s
wheel and local clay in order to demonstrate his technique before members
of the lord’s house, visiting daimyo, and other government officials in Edo.
Over the course of more than thirty demonstrations, he received guidance
from attendees about desi rable shapes and styles that he carried back to Tosa
together with commissions from a powerful government official. Owing to
the latter’s fall from grace, however, the commission was never completed,
and Odo ware did not succeed in expanding beyond a local pottery that sup-
plied utilitarian wares.
58
No examples are known today.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the “investigation of
things” spread from the daimyo elite to a wider public. Enthusiasts formed
social circles centered on the collection and display of animal, plants, and
minerals. The Osaka sake merchant Kimura Kenkadō’s celebrated collection
of rare shells, bamboo, fish, and insects became the focal point of a convivial
cultural salon that brought together men of different social classes from
across the country with a common interest in the natural world.
59
Informa-
tion about plants, animals, fish, insects, and minerals to be found on the
archipelago was further shared through product exhibitions (bussankai) held
in Edo and elsewhere, where collectors, regardless of background, were
encouraged to display specimens. Gennai organized the most successful of
these exhibitions, held in Edo in 1762. His pragmatic, utilitarian mode of
thinking, in which experience was privileged over text-based knowledge,
was symptomatic of the evolving attitudes and problem-solvi ng habits of
the late eighteenth century, when the focus of practical learning shifted

54
Natural	Resources
from ethical concerns to a stress on material investigations in order to
understand the forces underlying change i n the natural world.
It is often claimed that the Japanese people have an innate love of nature
and live in harmony with it, and that this outlook is expressed in the special
sensitivity to materials evident in its crafts.
60
It is difficult to reconcile this
view with the reality that overexploitation of the forest for timber to build
temples, palaces, and castles, for fuel for kilns and heating, and for fertilizer
for rice fields led early modern Japan to the bri nk of ecological disaster.
61
This
cultural stereotype, as pervasive among Japanese themselves as it is among
Euro-Americans, is said to grow out of the ethos of Shinto, an ancient belief
system in which some trees, rocks, and other natural phenomena were iden-
tified with the divine. However, as environmental historian Conrad Totman
has poi nted out, “The ‘nature’ of this sensibility is an aesthetic abstraction
that has little relationship to the ‘nature’ of a real ecosystem.”
62
Government
policies regarding the management and use of natural resources of all kinds
were unabashedly pragmatic. Forest workers, Totman argues, shared this
outlook: “People who labored to salvage Japan’s forests were not especially
concerned with beauty or driven by any ideological sense of the aesthetic of
nature. They had other matters on their mind.” And, he continues, “we do
not find any themes of Buddhist reverence for ‘sentient beings’ showing up
as reason or rationale in forest policy.”
63
Yet not all saw the forest strictly in the utilitarian light of domainal
administrators. While many exponents of practical learning dismissed
beliefs in Buddhist and Shinto deities as superstitious, peasants and craft
makers nonetheless carried out rituals to appease them when their abodes
were disrupted or to harness thei r creative powers.
64
Nihon	 sankai	meibutsu
zue informs the reader that when a mine was opened, a shrine dedicated to
the deities residing on the mountain was built at its entrance, and on festival
days, theatrical performances and exhibitions were held there to gain their
protection.
65
Craft makers struggling to control materials and processes,

55
Natural	Resources
such as the fermentation critical to making indigo dye, whose workings they
did not fully understand, offered prayers to the deities who were believed to
aid in their successful completion. Even today, many dyers continue to make
offerings of sake to the indigo gods to ensure successful fermentation.
66
Rit-
ual was a given in the daily lives of those involved in extracting, growing,
and making, but the attribution of sacred qualities to a particular place or
process is not synonymous with a love of nature or with environmental sen-
sitivity. The relationship between religion and environmental ethics in Japan
is a modern phenomenon.
Early modern attitudes toward the natural world and its resources were
complex, filled with ambiguities and contradictions. They were informed by
many factors, among them lived experience, religious beliefs, and sentiments
that were colored by class and locale. There were pronounced differences
between those living in urban and rural settings that both shaped and
reflected the gap between the lived realities of nature and how it was repre-
sented in poetry and painting. The idealization of nature was a predomi-
nantly urban phenomenon, a construct manifested in poetry, painting, and
other arts as a surrogate for the actual experience of the natural world.
67
Moreover, thinking about natural resources was neither uniform nor
unchanging. Lacquer, because of its seemingly magical capacity to metamor-
phose from a liquid into a hard, durable, waterproof substance, may have had
magical and spiritual connotations in the ancient and medieval eras, but by
the eighteenth century, it was no longer “the material of the sacred” but just
one of many desirable natu ral products (bussan ) to be exploited for human
welfare.
68
Essentializing claims of a homogeneous and unchanging Japanese
love of nature ignore the social, economic, and political realities surrounding
the cultivation, extraction, and deployment of natural resources.

57
The familiar view of Japan’s early modern craftscape is that it was urban,
structured hierarchically around secretive hereditary workshops comprised
of artisans (shokunin) who were concentrated in the three cities of Kyoto,
Osaka, and Edo. The geographical and human reality, however, was far more
complex. Artisanal work, it is true, was conspicuous in these cities, which
had some 15 percent of a total population that, by the nineteenth century,
had reached roughly thirty million. In the urban environment, craft makers
tended to live in close proximity to one another, facilitating interaction
among them. The areas those of particular professions once inhabited can
still be identified today in names such as Kon’ya-chō (dyers’ quarter) and
Kaji-chō (smithy quarter) in Tokyo’s Kanda district, or the Kamisukikawa
(papermakers’ river) in northwest Kyoto (figure 2.1). During the construc-
tion boom of the early seventeenth century, when the population of many
castle towns swelled to more than ten thousand, dynamic artisanal commu-
nities also formed there, practicing trades that initially supplied basic neces-
sities and later, elite products such as lacquerwares, ceramics, silk textiles,
and metalwork. Artisanal production became increasingly dispersed
over the eighteenth century, as feudal lords sought to stabilize local econo-
mies through a concerted program of diversification from rice monoculture
chapter two
Picturing the Early
Modern Craftscape

Figure 2.1 . Utagawa Hiroshige I (1797–1858), “Dyers’ Quarter, Kanda (Kanda
Kon’ya- chō),” from s erie s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo
hyakkei), 1857. Woodblock print, vertical ōban . Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
William Sturgis Bigelow Collection. 1 1 .36876.50.

59
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
to silk, indigo, lacquer, and papermaking, and rural entrepreneurs also
looked for ways to improve their lives by making salable goods using local
resources. These new centers ranged from small-scale family textile opera-
tions in Echigo, in the northern reaches of modern-day Niigata Prefecture,
to industrial-scale porcelain production in Hizen, on the southern island of
Kyushu.
The print media played a critical role in disseminating information about
artisans, their practices, and their products. Woodblock-printed books and
single-sheet prints made artisans visible as a recognizable class possessed of
a diversity of specialized skills that individually and collectively made pro-
ductive contributions to society. Although thei r motivations, techniques,
audiences, and goals differed widely, these publications were all constitu-
ents of what historian Mary Elizabeth Berry has called the “library of public
information.”
1
Like the contents of any library, the information they pro-
vided was not always up-to-date or even accurate. Their longevity through
circulation and recirculation through lending libraries as well as the reprint-
ing and adaptive reuse of individual images often meant that the stereotypes
they disseminated did not keep up with reality. Nonetheless, they often
continued to inform the way that the public imagined making things long
after their initial appearance.
This chapter uses woodblock-illustrated books and prints in circulation
beginning in the late seventeenth century as a lens through which to under-
stand the world of craft makers, the locales where they worked, and the
things they made. Jinrin	kinmō	 zui (Illustrated encyclopedia of humanity;
1690) offers, as part of its occupational inventory, a particularly comprehen-
sive picture of the profusion of crafts practiced at the time of its publication.
2
Onna	daigaku	takarabako (Treasury of greater learning for women; 1716) is one
of the earliest publications to systematically address women’s work.
3
It is
characterized as a moralizing etiquette book (ō raimono), intended to estab-
lish proper Neo-Confucian patterns of behavior, appearance, and attitude,

60
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
but it is also a household manual that provides illustrated guidance in the
practical skills deemed suitable for women of different social strata both
inside and outside the home.
4
Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue (Illustrated famous
specialties of the mountains and seas of Japan; 1754) and Sankai	meisan	 zue
(Illustrated famous products of mountain and sea; 1799) are publications
organized topographically, highlighting, as their titles indicate, noteworthy
products of mountain and sea ranging from edible delicacies to crafts.
5
Their
depictions of craft making in rural areas across the archipelago complement
those in the Illustrated	 Encyclopedia	 of	Humanity, which is primarily con-
cerned with the three cities.
These books, which represent only a tiny sampling of publications show-
casi ng the manifold talents of craft professionals, reveal the geographic
scope and diversity of the early modern craftscape. It is important to keep in
mi nd, however, that they project idealized images of artisanal activity, not
necessarily accurate, empirically informed representations of reality. All
paint an optimistic picture of the social and economic empowerment of the
artisanal class. Such publications represented a world their creators wanted
to see, but they were also operative images, in the sense that they could
become part of the way both makers and viewers thought and acted.
occupational diversity
Jinrin	kinm ō	 zui is a particularly rich inventory of the range of professional
specializations within the crafts. It became part of a discursive economy of
circulating images made familiar through adaptation and repetition in other
publications. It absorbed and reformulated the pictorial conventions for rep-
resenting artisans from earlier scrolls and screens, but its descriptive scope
is more comprehensive, its approach both more didactic and commercially
oriented, and its intended audience more socially diverse. Its i nventory of
hundreds of professional activities is a microcosm of society at the time of its
initial publication in 1690. Although the precise rationale for the ordering of

61
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
the artisanal activity represented is not always easy to discern, the hierar-
chical structure of its seven volumes clearly expresses the view of an orderly
society where everyone has a designated place. In this sense, the encyclope-
dia sustains and is sustained by the prevailing system of belief and institu-
tional practices in which a benevolent ruler assures a smoothly running
society divided into four classes, from high to low: warrior, farmer, artisan,
and merchant.
Shokunin was the officially designated artisanal class within the four-
part hierarchy instituted by the Tokugawa shogunate.
6
The term is usually
understood today to refer to one whose profession is the making of things
with the hands. This is the definition offered in the Kojien dictionary, but it is
a modern one that does not take into account the range of activities shokunin
engaged in during the early modern era. At that time, its members were
understood to be the possessors of specialized skills of benefit to society, but
these did not invariably involve making things. This class also included sha-
manesses, acrobats, and physicians. In this respect, what was understood as
craft in early modern Japan had much in common with the Greek term techne
(“skill”). As Larry Shiner has written of Greece in Th e	Invention	of	Art, “techne
embraced things as diverse as carpentry and poetry, shoemaking and medi-
cine, sculpture and horse breaking . . . it referred less to a class of objects
than to the human ability to make and perform.”
7
Definitions of shokunin are
further complicated by the fact that the artisanal and merchant classes over-
lapped: the former often sold the products of their labor in shops that were
extensions of thei r workplaces. Because urban artisans and merchants lived
intersecting lives, often inhabiting the same neighborhoods, they were col-
lectively known as chōnin , literally, “people of the quarter.”
The Tokugawa-era designation of those involved in artisanal activity
as shokunin conceals the reality that men, women, and children of all classes
made things, usually within the context of formal or household-based
workshops. Rice straw collected from the harvested fields was braided

62
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
to make rope, sandals, and round mats for seating, an activity most farm
households engaged in during the winter months. Farm families were also
important links in the supply chain for silk, raw lacquer, paper mulberry,
indigo, and other material resources. Many lower-level samurai, especially
those without a government si necure, such as the polymath Hiraga Gennai
(1728–1780) and the lacquerer Ogawa Haritsu (1663–1747), were involved in
artisanal activity in an entrepreneurial or managerial capacity. The well-
known painter Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716) and his brother the potter Kenzan
(1663–1743) belonged to the merchant class. Feudal lords tried their hand at
Raku ceramics under the guidance of professional potters, firing them in
“garden kilns” (niwayaki) on the grounds of thei r castle estates.
8
And even
the Empress Tōfukumon’in (1607–1678) and the court ladies in her circle
created oshie, relief pictures using scraps of fabric pasted onto paper, boxes,
or other surfaces.
9
Despite this diversity, the popular perception of craft makers is inextri-
cably bound up with the portrayal of shokunin as a pictorial genre in painting
and print, a development that was, in turn, bound up with the consolidation
of craft professionals as a recognized social class. In the fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries, men and women of different professions had been repre-
sented as performative proxies for poets in scrolls depicting imaginary
poetry competitions (shokunin	utaawase) commissioned by and for an elite
audience of courtiers and samurai. Although this mode of depiction did not
disappear, it lost its original function as shrine offerings for the gods
and took on aesthetic and entertain ment value. The Shichijūichi	 shokunin
utaawase (Poetry competition among various professions in seventy-one
rounds)—thought to have been composed around 1500, though its earliest
surviving hand-painted copy dates from the 1630s—is symptomatic of this
shift. It retained the conventional poetic format of pairing poets and poems
but was not produced for ritual needs.
10
A further change is the new agency
granted shokunin . Even as they impersonate poets, their own voices also can

63
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
be heard in the cries that are inscribed adjacent to their depictions. For
instance, in Shichijūichi	shokunin	utaawase, the female floss seller calls out,
“Buy my floss! It’s from Shinobu” [Mutsu Province], and the indigo dyer
says, “[This customer] asked me to dye it repeatedly until it is dark.”
11
By the late sixteenth century, the portrayal of artisans had become
increasingly associated with auspicious visualizations of the rebuilding of
Kyoto at the end of a long period of destructive warfare that had left the
imperial capital in ruins. Well-known examples of this genre of imagery are
Rakuch ū	 rakugaizu (Views inside and outside the capital), screens offeri ng
panoramic views of Kyoto and its surroundings with streets bustling with
craftsmen making and selling their wares to strolling customers (figure
2.2).
12
These depictions, however, were more concerned with celebrating
the newly stable and vibrant life in the city than with the specifics of how
craftsmen carried out their professional activities. The conflation of shops
where both making and selling took place speaks to the change from a com-
mand to a consumer society, one in which city dwellers were no longer
devoting all their income to basic necessities. Private commissions contin-
ued to prevail among the warrior elite, some of whom retained the services
of painters, lacquerers, and armorers, but from the late sixteenth century
on, most craft makers were part of a dynamic market economy. This econ-
omy was not confined to Japan but even included unseen consumers in
China and Europe.
Handscrolls of shokunin -as-poets featured as many as 142 professions, but
Illustrated	 Encyclopedia	 of	 Humanity represents many more, a recognition of
new subspecialties within preexisting occupations following from the intro-
duction of new materials, technologies, and fashions.
13
Artisanal activities
figure in the third, fifth, and sixth volumes of Jinrin	kinmō	zui . Among those
who make their living off the land or water (sagyo), for instance, we find
potters, stonemasons, and men fashioning round straw mats and weaving
coarse blinds.
14
The fifth volume, devoted to saikunin , “practitioners of fine

Figure 2.2. Detail of views inside and outside the capital (Rakuchū rakugaizu)
(Funaki version, left screen); 1614–15; pair of six-fold screens, ink and color
on gold ground; each screen H 162.7 × W 342.4 cm; Tokyo National Museum
Image Archives.

65
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
craftmanship,” includes, among others, painters, carvers of Buddhist stat-
ues, brush makers, picture mounters, embroiderers, fan makers, specialists
in mother-of-pearl, pipe makers, the makers of bags for tea ceremony uten-
sils, doll makers, and carvers of tea scoops. The class identified under the cat-
egory shoku (the character in shokunin) designates carpenters, plasterers,
roofers, tatami makers, bell casters, palanquin makers, trunk makers, para-
sol makers, and papermakers yet, inexplicably, also those professions that
demanded exacting skills such as drilling holes in Buddhist rosary beads and
embroidering family crests on the backs of robes.
The term saiku (formed from the characters for fi ne or detailed and crafts-
manship) seems to be commensurate with the modern understanding of
craft as an artifact fabricated with finely honed skills and technical know-
how. In Edo-period usage, the label saikunin designated artisans who carried
out activities that required precision and were often small in scale. Until the
Kamakura period (1185–1337), when the term shokunin fi rst came into use,
saiku was used to refer to highly regarded professions such as lacquerer, car-
penter, and woodcarver.
15
The designation of the Tokugawa shogunal office
under which lacquerers worked as the saikudokoro (craft workshop) and of
the overseer of the shogunal workshops as saiku	no	gashira (head craftsman),
with saiku	kiki (skilled craftsman) and saiku	jōzu (able craftsman) working
beneath him, is a legacy of this earlier usage.
16
Although painters were on a continuum with lacquerers, weavers, met-
alworkers, and other artisanal professionals, there were hierarchies among
and within these crafts. That makers of sword guards followed by painters
open the saiku section and carpenters open the shoku section is likely a
reflection of the importance of metal and woodworking in the hierarchy of
crafts. Indeed, according to Portuguese missionary João Rodrigues’s (1561–
1634) account of Japan, prevailing views on the relative standing of these
professions held that “After this [architecture] comes the art of working
iron, pri ncipally for the offensive weapons which the Japanese pri ze so

66
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
highly. This art competes with the previous one [i.e., architecture] as regards
nobility and esteem, and there arise great disputes among them [the Japa-
nese] whether this art or architecture in wood occupies the first place in all
the mechanical arts.”
17
Craftsmen in the building trades—carpenters, sawyers, stonemasons,
plasterers, roof thatchers and tilers, the makers of tatami mats and of doors
and shoji frames—were in high demand in the late sixteenth and early sev-
enteenth centuries. Kyoto was still recovering from a century of warfare that
had left the city in ruins, the shogunal capital of Edo was being built up on
the grounds of a swampy military camp, and across the archipelago, hun-
dreds of daimyo were seeking to grow thriving towns around their castles.
As defensive castle building ceased by order of the Tokugawa shogunate,
attention shifted to palaces and mansions for the military and aristocratic
elite, temples and shrines to ensure the long life and well-being of the cities’
inhabitants, and row houses for the multitudes of artisans and merchants
who supplied their needs. Explosive population growth, not to mention the
frequent fires that swept the cities, guaranteed steady work.
Carpenters, daiku , were at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of those involved
in building the urban infrastructure. Comprising one-third of the artisanal
class, they were a large and diverse group, ranging from those with the
structural knowledge and administrative skills to oversee vast building
projects employing hundreds of workers, to shipbuilders, a specialty of
Osaka, and those specialized in making the wooden drawlooms on which
Kyoto’s famed Nishijin weavers depended. So important were they that in
the late sixteenth century, fifty families of carpenters who had been invited
to Kanazawa, the castle town of the Maeda domain of Kaga, were exempt
from paying taxes on property.
18
There was no profession of architect. Instead, a master carpenter, desig-
nated tōryō (literally “ridgepole”), a new term in the seventeenth century,
oversaw the design and construction of a building.
19
This included responsi-

67
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
bility for the quality and workmanship of materials, for the completion of
the project in a timely manner, and for the feeding, housing, and conduct of
those under his supervision. The master carpenter also had to adapt to unex-
pected local conditions such as topography or the changing demands of a
patron. Little is known about the vast majority of these men, but those
belonging to the hereditary Heinouchi and Kōra lineages, who were
officially retained by the Tokugawa shoguns, left records of their activities.
Heinouchi Yoshimasa, writing in Shōmei , a family design manual of 1610,
outlined the skills expected of a master carpenter: laying out building plans
with a carpenter’s square; making proportional computations (kiwari);
handwork including sawing, chiseling, and joinery; preparing and carving
decorative designs for transoms and other spaces.
20
Sawyers (kobiki) became a profession separate from carpenters as part of
this growing division of specialized labor. Mortise and tenon joinery (sashi-
mono) was common both to architecture and the making of household fur-
nishings, but its practitioners too became a separate profession. The brief
entry on the master of joinery (sashimonoshi) informs the reader: “he makes
a myriad boxes using paulownia, cypress, and cedar. Trunks (nagamochi)
and chests (hitsu ) are made of cedar.”
21
The entry does not mention chests fit-
ted with drawers (tansu), because these were only beginning to be produced
about the time of Jinrin	kinm ō	zui ’s publication.
22
The importance of arms and armor to samurai identity and status, even
after their actual use declined, led to growing specialization in this area as
well. A reflection of this is the separate shops for swords, guards, and rayskin
scabbards shown in the Illustrated	 Encyclopedia	 of	 Humanity.
23
Growing
emphasis on appearance rather than function also led to the development of
new decorative techniques. The use of rayskin to cover sword hilts had a long
history, but from the late sixteenth century, there was a craze for sword
scabbards made from lacquer enlivened with scattered rayskin denticles, a
showy new technique whose effects resembled that of sprinkled gold and

68
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
mother-of-pearl. Over the course of the Tokugawa period, as specialists in
sword scabbards developed many decorative techniques using this material,
the rayskin specialist (sameshi) grew in importance.
24
Rayskin, along with
elephant ivory, was a highly sought-after import from Southeast Asia and an
important constituent of both Chinese and Dutch trade in Nagasaki.
The Illustrated	Encyclopedia	of	Humanity is more focused on inventory and
classification than on detailed explanations of the techniques used to carry
out a particular task. Yet making was clearly understood as involving
embodied knowledge and the ability to use specialized equipment. Body
language and tools are therefore emphasized in order to distinguish each
profession. The carver of wooden calligraphic signboards and the maker of
decorative woodwork shown side by side in the saikunin section, for instance,
are in a characteristic performative pose, mallet in hand, as if about to strike
the adze to carve out a portion of the wooden plaque. Chisels and other tools
lying nearby and the products of thei r work beyond complete the i mage.
Demographics and social stratification among artisans are also emphasized.
Portrayals clearly differentiate between labor carried out indoors (ishoku)
and outdoors (deshoku). Differences in attire—the signboard carver is
clothed, while the woodcarver is bare-chested—also speak to the social dis-
tinctions that existed among various professions (figure 2.3). There were also
status distinctions within a profession. Makie-shi, specialists in black lac-
querwares decorated with auspicious, often literary, pictorial motifs formed
from sprinkled gold and other costly metallic powders, are clearly distin-
guished from nurimono-shi, who simply applied a red or black lacquer coat-
ing to a wooden support, by classifying the former in the saiku section and
the latter in the shoku section.
25
Still further distinctions were made on
the basis of the particular technique applied to lacquer, as in the master of
Chinese-style carved lacquer (tsuimono-shi).
Although all the illustrations in the encyclopedia include short explana-
tory texts i n easy-to-read language, more space is allotted to the images,

Figure 2.3 . Carvers of signboards and decorative woodwork, from Illustrated
Encyclopedia of Humanity (Jinrin kinmō z ui), 1690. Wo odblock-printed bo ok.
National Diet Library, Tokyo.

70
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
suggesting that they activated the reading of the text rather than the other
way around. The text generally describes the activity depicted and its his-
toric roots, but, as noted above, in some instances, information about where
the represented goods could be pu rchased is included as wel l. The shop of
the specialist in rayskin sword hilts, for instance, is accompanied by the
names and addresses of purveyors in Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo; the text accom-
panying the needle maker mentions Misuyabari, a shop on Kyoto’s Sanjō
Avenue still in existence today.
26
Craft makers had much to gai n by these
visual and verbal narratives si nce they gave them professional visibility.
Such information both shaped and reflected the growth of a reading public
driven by the possibility of purchasing the kinds of articles whose manufac-
tu re was represented. The basic consu mer-oriented information included
in Jinrin	kinm ō	 zui parallels the development of dedicated city-by-city and
regional guides to shopping.
women in the crafts
The converging forces of official class distinctions, professionalization owing
to the expansion of the market economy, and Neo-Confucian ideology were
critical in reconfiguring the actual role and public perception of women in
craft making under the Tokugawa regime. With official networks closed to
them, it was difficult for women to gain access to professional skills through
formal workshop apprenticeships, but depending on the nature of the prac-
tice and familial needs, they could and did acquire craft training. For
instance, the wives of several Raku potters who took Buddhist vows after
the death of their husbands are known to have made the low-fire lead-
glazed ceramics that were a family tradition.
27
Indeed, women constituted a significant part of the craft labor force
despite the fact that they were not officially recognized as workshop mem-
bers. They not only shared the labor of their husbands and other family
members but often had specialist skills in their own right as well. Expertise

71
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
in raisi ng silkworms, spinni ng, weavi ng, sewing, and other textile crafts,
for instance, was generally passed from mother to daughter. In a system
where the entire family functioned as an economic unit, women did work
that made it possible for households to function—cleaning, raising children,
cooking, and sewing—and if the family business involved craft making,
mastery in the requisite skills. Whether inside or outside the home, female
labor was a necessity.
While women practiced many crafts, from the seventeenth century they
generally were relegated to secondary status as assistants in operations that
were organi zed along patriarchal lines. Women were conspicuous in the six-
teenth-century “Poetry competition among various professions in seventy-
one rounds,” where they represent 40 of a total of 142 occupations, but there
is a more pronounced asymmetry in Jinrin	kinmō	zui, where they figure in
only a handful.
28
By the time of its publication in 1690, men dominated the
weaving industry in Kyoto’s Nishijin district, and they also figured promi-
nently in commercial embroidery, both activities prev iously specific to
women.
29
Women continued to play a role in single-color dyeing, especially
indigo, but new colors and specialized multicolor resist dye techniques were
developed by dye houses and purveyors of textiles run by men, such as the
Kariganeya, founded by Ogata Kōrin and Kenzan’s grandfather.
Neo-Confucianism held that women’s work was important economi-
cal ly and also morally, since it taught diligence and discipline. All women
were expected to work productively: idleness was deemed morally repre-
hensible. As part of its Neo-Confucian rhetoric, Treasury	of	Greater	Learning
for	Women first and foremost emphasizes the importance of mastery of the
domestic skills of spinning, weaving, and sewing in fulfilling filial piety
among all women, regardless of background. These were activities that
could be practiced by warrior class women in the house, while maintaining
their officially mandated sequestration from men. Aside from these
activities, this publication also represents a variety of nondomestic crafts

72
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
appropriate to women of other classes. The inclusion of such occupational
models supports the contention of recent feminist scholarship that it is
overly simplistic to see Neo-Confucian ideology as rigidly enforcing wom-
en’s role as wife and mother.
30
In the Neo-Confucian doctrine promoted by the Tokugawa regime, nee-
dlework was not simply a practical activity but also a form of female self-
cultivation intimately bound up with filial piety. This ideal, widely circulated
through text and image, was important in supporting the Tokugawa regime
since it was held that needlework materialized the gendered structure, order,
and well-being of cosmically ordained and productive domestic life. Mastery
of the needle was a common denominator among women of all classes in the
early modern era. Homemade garments constituted the bulk of clothing
worn at the time, and it was the responsibility of the female members of the
household to cut, sew, and mend as well as to disassemble and resew them
every time they were washed. Women who hoped to work in the ō -oku ,
women’s quarters of the shogun’s palace, for instance, “had to submit a sam-
ple kimono sleeve to show thei r command of needlework.”
31
Unpicking,
resewing, patching, and quilting worn garments for reinforcement to extend
their lives, like the child’s robe in figure 2.4, were especially important in
poor households in remote rural regions in the northern reaches of Honshu.
Treasury	of	Greater	Learning	for	Women depicts ch ōnin women engaged in a
variety of crafts. They make multicolored silk braid (kumihimo), tie patterns
in silk for dyeing (kanoko	 shibori), fashion decorative cord from twisted
papers (mizuhiki), mold paper, and insert the ribs in folding fans.
32
It is likely
that the various female occupations represented reflected what was already
a social reality, but in so doing, the depictions also helped to validate them.
Braid making was a gender-specific craft that requi red coordination
among eyes, hands, and feet (figure 2.5). The curious device used for this
purpose consisted of a stand with a pole to which one end of the threads was
tied to hold them in tension during the braiding process and, attached to

Figure 2.4 . Infant’s kimono, 19th c. Patchwork of cotton with stripes and double ikat
patterns in indigo and shikon (purple gromwell); red cotton collar. Collection of Marita and
David Paly. Photograph by Ben Cort, Courtesy of Portland Art Museum.

Figure 2.5 . Making kumihimo, from Treasury of Greater Learning for Women
(Onna daigaku takarabako; 1714); 1790 edition. Woodblock-printed book, 26
× 18.5 cm. University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver.

75
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
another support, a knife-shaped piece of wood that served, much like a
beater in weaving, to push the woven threads firmly in place. The braider
raised and lowered this wooden knife by pulling a string tied to her toe.
Braid made in this way was used for obi ties (obijime), for holding together
rolled-up handscrolls, and, especially, for armor.
Kanoko	 shibori is a highly labor-intensive form of tie-dyeing so named
because its pattern of small dots resembles the dappled effect of a fawn
(kanoko). It is created by pinching small bits of cloth and then binding them off
with thread to resist the dye when immersed in the dye vat. In the scene in
Treasury	 of	 Greater	 Learning	 for	 Women , two women are binding cloth with
thread while a third braces herself against the wall in order to bind a cord
tautly around a piece of tied cloth fitted over a wooden core to prevent seepage
during the dyeing process. The aesthetic appeal of kanoko	shibori resided not
only in the decorative pattern but also in that it transformed fabric from a two-
dimensional planar surface into a three-dimensional one by leaving traces of
the binding process in the form of small tactile peaks (figure 2.6). These peaks
reveal the actions of the anonymous craftswomen who bound them.
Mizuhiki are paper decorations of various colors that are arranged in elab-
orate bow-like shapes or knots to enhance wedding and funerary gifts, offer-
ings to Shinto shrines, and decorations made on celebratory occasions (figure
2.7). Decorative knotted paper cords were thought to have protective powers
and assumed symbolic meanings depending on how they were tied.
33
The
illustration of the production of mizuhiki shows the cutting and stiffening of
the paper and packaging of the finished articles in large bundles. The accom-
panying text explains the procedure in detail: “To make [mizuhiki] take any
length of sugihara or hōsho paper and cut it into widths of 1 sun (3.03 cm.),
twist these into 1 shaku (30 cm.) lengths, soak them for a while in starchy
water, then remove and wring them out with a towel. After a day paint half of
them with beni [red]. These are called red and white mizuhiki.”
34
This descrip-
tion of the making process, like those accompanying the other illustrations,

76
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
Figure 2.6. Detail of a furisode (outer kimono) with allover kanoko	shibori (sō	kanoko), ca.
1800. Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 56.133. Asian Art Museum, Seattle.
was probably not intended so much to guide prospective makers as to provide
general knowledge deemed useful for women.
That the manufactu re of folding fans was domi nated by women is con-
firmed by the frequency of its representation in many illustrated books and
prints. The Saiga	 shokunin	 burui (Various classes of artisans in colored
pictures; 1770) is a case in point (figure 2.8).
35
Although the two elegantly
attired women are depicted in a highly idealized manner, the picture accu-
rately conveys the work and the tools i nvolved. The woman on the right
holds a fan she has just pleated. A ruler used to form the creases and
two other pleated fans lie nearby. Her elongated fingers speak to the manual
dexterity required to carry out this work. The large lacquer box behind her
holds unpleated painted fans. The woman facing her holds a completed fan.
Lying next to her and on the ground near her are the bamboo ribs that are

77
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
inserted into the fan and the paste brush used to glue together the front and
back papers.
Papermaking was by far the most economically important of the nondo-
mestic crafts represented here. Although carried out in workshops i n Kyoto
and Edo, it was more common in the provinces where the requisite natural
resources were available. Kunisaki Jihei, the author of Kamisuki	chōhōki (A
handy guide to papermaking; 1798), confirms women’s central role in this
craft, framed in a misogynistic rhetoric typical of the times: “How true the
saying that an ordinary person living at his ease can be up to no good! A
Figure 2.7. Modern mizuhiki knot on a
money envelope for a wedding gift.
Author’s photograph.

Figure 2.8. Tachibana Minkō
(act. 1764–72), Fan making,
from Various Classes of Artisans in
Colored Pictures (Saiga shokunin
burui); 1770; Woodblock- and
stencil-printed book.
1979,0305,0.1 18. © Trustee s of
the British Museum.

80
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
woman with leisure is without doubt the source of all evil and indication of
a degenerate country . . . . Many are the kinds of paper made to profit the
nation by women with a thought to time not spent in the fields.”
36
With the exception of papermaking, which required manipulating large
and heavy pulp-filled screens, most of the crafts depicted in Treasury	 of
Greater	 Learning	for	 Women i nvolved manual dexterity rather than physical
strength. Yet women were by no means excluded from such activities. In
large pottery workshops in Arita such as the one depicted in Sankai	meisan
zue (see figure 2.18), women were often beasts of burden, carrying heav y
loads of clay, and were also assigned the task of kneading the clay. While
they could assist with the delicate task of painting wares, they were excluded
from the use of the potter’s wheel or from firing the kiln. More exceptionally,
women even may have been employed as carpenters i n the Imperial Palace
in Kyoto. Although Ihara Saikaku’s fiction must be used with caution, the
rationale given for the hiring of female carpenters lends credibility to this
account from his Saikaku	 shokoku	 banashi (Saikaku’s tales from many
countries):
In the toolbox, there are drills, planes, an inking device, and a carpenter’s
square. Take a closer look at [the carpenter’s] face and [you’ll see] it’s a
woman . Her nose is flat, and her limbs are brawny. Skillful at carpentry, she
does this for a living, residing in Ichijō Modoribashi. “But why,” you ask,
“when the capital is so big, and there are so many male carpenters and cabi-
net makers, would anyone hire a woman carpenter?” [They are hired] to
fashion the protective spikes over the walls, and the bamboo window lattices
of the women’s quarters in the Imperial Palaces. It’s simple work, but it’s
such trouble to investigate the background of male carpenters. It saves time
to just hire women for the job.37
The distribution of work across gender was i ndispensable to economic
well-being in both city and countryside. Sericulture was valued as an off-
season occupation in farm households since it brought in income that could

81
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
compensate for a poor rice harvest. This was especially true in northern
regions where double cropping was not possible and warm-weather crops
such as cotton could not grow. Mulberry trees were not soil specific and
could be planted at the edges of fields or on other land that might otherwise
be wasted. The rearing of silkworms in the home, immersing the cocoons in
hot water to kill the pupae and reel off silk filaments of u nlimited length,
and combining multiple strands together to make yarn suitable for weaving
were deemed specifically female activities. The skills and know-how for
nurturing silkworms and preparing silk were passed down within families
from mother to daughter. Like other craft practices, however, increasing
specialization and technological advances in the nineteenth century led to
fragmentation of household-based production and a devaluation of the res-
ervoir of women’s embodied knowledge.
38
Sericulture was labor intensive, and women tended their charges with as
much care as they did their children. First the silkworm eggs had to be
scraped off paper into a box for hatching. This was done with a feather so as
not to harm them. Then the pupae had to be fed as many as eight times a day
a diet of mulberry leaves cut into small, digestible pieces; during their forty-
day lifespan, they could consume more than six hundred kilos of leaves (fig-
ure 2.9).
39
After the cocoons had formed, they were boiled in hot water to
loosen the strands for unwinding and twisting into long yarns (figure 2.10).
Nothing was wasted: after this process, even the coarse outer parts of the
cocoon were dried and used for the wadding in cold-weather garments.
40
This was much warmer and lighter in weight than cotton wadding.
Women faced considerable structural and ideological obstacles in gain-
ing recognition for their skills since they could not become official members
of workshops. While their talents might be acknowledged within the
extended household, recognition in the public domain was rare and was
achieved chiefly through forms of mediation domi nated by men, such as
prescriptive literature or woodblock prints in which they are little more than

Figure 2.9. Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806), Feeding chopped mulberry
leaves to larvae, from twelve-part series Women Engaged in Sericulture
(Joshoku kaiko tewaza-gusa). 1754–1806. Woodblock print, vertical ōban .
1906,1220,0.356.3. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 2.10. Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806), Reeling silk from cocoons, from
twelve-part series Women Engaged in Sericulture (Joshoku kaiko tewaza-gusa).
1754–1806. Wo odblo ck print, vertical ōban . 1906,1 220,0.356.9. © Tr ustee s of
the British Museum.

84
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
a genre of beautiful women (bijin) performing craft work. Only exception-
ally, as in the case of the comb maker Oroku, to be discussed in chapter 5, are
they depicted as individuals.
rural craft production
Rural craft activity increased in the second half of the Tokugawa period as a
by-product of agricultural diversification i nto commercial crops such as
indigo, cotton, and paper mulberry. Involvement in diverse activities con-
tributed to the rise of a new, wealthy, land-holding, and entrepreneu rial
class of peasants, many of whom found it profitable to engage in craft mak-
ing by-employment. The expansion of commercial crops and craft making
involved a more intensive use of labor on a year-round basis, a development
economic historian Hayami Akira has called Japan’s “industrious revolu-
tion.”
41
Economic historian Penelope Francks has further argued that the
female members of farm households were the main drivers of this “industri-
ous revolution” since they had to use their time most efficiently in order to
assist in agricultural tasks alongside housework, child-rearing, and craft
making.
42
In thei r study Economic	 and	 Demographic	 Change	 in	 Pre-Industrial
Japan 1600–1868, Susan Hanley and Kozo Yamamura cite the example of “a
village of 180 households in Gōshū (Shizuoka Prefectu re) . . . [that by the
mid-nineteenth century] had 27 households specializing in the weaving of
cotton cloth and ‘several times more’ this number engaged in part-time
weaving.”
43
Statistics from other regions confirm the high percentage of by-
employment among farmers and the i mportance of the income derived from
it.
44
As a result of these developments, standards of living rose, and with
more disposable income, the demand for locally produced commercial
goods rose as well. Even small villages, previously supplied by peddlers,
could support shops with household articles including ink, paper, writing
brushes, pots, needles, pipes, tobacco and pouches, teapots, containers and
dishes, hair ties (motoyui) and hairpins, cotton cloth, towels, tabi (socks),

85
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
footgear, and other daily needs, with some of these goods made by local craft
specialists.
45
The proliferation and specialization of crafts pictured in Illustrated	Ency-
clopedia	of	Humanity reflect the economic growth and commercial expansion
in the three cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo and in large castle towns, such
as Kanazawa. Rural Japan, however, shared in the principal craft specialties
found in the city, though their numbers varied widely depending on locale.
A cadastral survey carried out in 1706 in the villages of Ueda domain (in
present-day Nagano Prefecture), for instance, indicated that there were rep-
resentatives of twenty-four craft professions, among them 340 papermak-
ers, 84 dyers, 87 blacksmiths, and 46 roofers.
46
The exceptionally large
number of papermakers indicates that this was a local industry. The dyers no
doubt supplied the indigo-dyed cottons that most commoners wore. Black-
smiths were prominent figures in farming communities because they made
and repaired agricultural tools.
47
Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, as the population of the three
major cities stabilized or declined, productivity increasingly shifted away
from urban to ru ral centers, leading to an explosion of distinctive regional
crafts.
48
Many factors contributed to this shift. One was the antagonism
faced by newcomers to the city, who competed with members of established
guilds seeking to maintain their monopoly. Another was the increasing
availability of artisanal work in the countryside, closer to the sources of raw
materials and free from the guild system.
49
Directives from regional daimyos
to develop and promote commercial crops and crafts i n order to improve the
domainal economy also played a part. Many successful enterprises involved
collaboration between farm households and merchants in subcontracting
schemes where merchants supplied makers with the raw materials
and equipment to work at home i n small family units rather than formal
workshops and later collected and marketed the semifinished or finished
goods.

86
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
Space is a historical actor that helps to understand why certain things
happen when and where they do, but in the context of early modern Japan,
understanding the cultural connotations that particular places assumed is
equally important. Crafts and the raw materials used in their manufactu re
had regional identities deriving from the locale where they originated. Asso-
ciation with a given locale could imbue goods with cultural and emotional
significance that became inextricably bound up with their commodity
value. Familiarity with famous regional products (meibutsu or meisan ) was an
important constituent of cultural knowledge since these often featured in
poetry but also because such goods were deemed suitable for gift giving.
Kefukigusa (Grasses like wind-blown fur; 1638), a guide to topics suitable for
haiku composition, for instance, lists some 1,800 famous local specialties
(meibutsu) province by province.
50
As this suggests, crafts made outside the
metropolis were generally defined by province (of which there were sixty),
by town, or, if along one of the major highways, by post station. Although
Japan was divided into some 260 semiautonomous fiefs, their names did not
generally serve to identify the goods produced there.
The second half of the eighteenth century saw the proliferation of a pub-
lication genre informed by a growing preoccupation with the acquisition of
empirical knowledge about places and things. Many of these new publica-
tions brought new visibility to craft activity outside the urban setting. Two
works in wide circulation devoted to famous local products help to visualize
the scope and nature of this activity as represented by and for city dwellers.
Nihon	 sankai	 meibutsu	 zue (Illustrated famous specialties of the mountai ns
and seas of Japan) is a five-volume compendium by Hirase Tessai (act. 1754–
80) illustrated by the well-known Osaka ukiyo-e artist Hasegawa Mitsu-
nobu (act. 1724–55), first published in 1754 and reprinted in 1829 and 1840.
51
As noted in chapter 1, it opens with an entire volume devoted to mining and
metallu rgy and then covers topics including tea production in Uji, dried
gourds in Settsu, noodles in Miwa, and seaweed in Matsumae, with a little

87
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
less than a quarter of the entries devoted to crafts, both urban and rural.
Sankai	meisan	zue (Illustrated famous products of mountain and sea; 1799) is
also a large-format five-volume publication organi zed topographically,
showcasing, as its title indicates, noteworthy products of mountain and sea
ranging from edible delicacies to crafts. However, it is less concerned than
the earlier work with the world of made things than with comestibles such
as honey and tree mushrooms from the mountains of Kumano, abalone from
Ise, and flounder from Wakasa. By the time of their publication, thousands
of regional products had already been recognized as “famous,” and it is not
clear on what basis those featured in these two books were selected.
Nihon	 sankai	 meibutsu	 zue and Sankai	 meisan	 zue combine two popular
genres: the regional inventory and classification of famous places (meisho),
an ancient category, and the identification of newer categories, including
famous local specialties (meibutsu) or products (meisan ). The difference in the
titles of the two publications is significant. The term meibutsu (literally
“famous thing” or “thing with a name”) had many meanings, depending on
context. Among naturalists concerned with matching Chinese terms with
Japanese flora and fauna, it was used to mean the correct names of things; in
the tea world, it referred to things such as teabowls having individual names;
in inventories, it denoted things (such as a lacquer writing box discussed in
chapter 3) renowned because of their pedigree; and in publications such as
this, it was a category for famous local products. By their choice of the word
meisan (literal ly, famous product), the authors of the later publication link
their work with the newly fashionable field of bussangaku (“production stud-
ies”), which brought together those interested in sinology, natural sciences,
medicine, and proto-industry. The wealthy Osaka sake brewer and collector
Kimura Kenkadō (1732–1802), who penned the introduction to Sankai	meisan
zue and is thought to have been i nvolved in compiling the text as well, was
active in this movement.
52
Its organization and selection of locales and prod-
ucts may reflect Kenkadō’s personal interests. This is certainly true of the

88
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
first of its five volumes, which is devoted to sake production, the business on
which his fortune was based.
A sampling of entries from the third volume throws light on the dispa-
rate kinds of craft practices highlighted in Nihon	 sankai	 meibutsu	 zue. The
opening entry, titled “Nikkō tray and bowls,” pictures a workshop where
both lathe turning and lacquering are taking place. In the foreground, two
men work at a lathe, one pulling a rope wound around the shaft while the
other shapes a vessel with a knife attached to the rotating mechanism (figure
2.11). Behind them, a man uses a spatula to apply a coat of lacquer to a
wooden vessel, while a young woman places just-finished wares in a dust-
free cupboard to dry. The brief explanatory note informs the reader that
Nikkō is 30 ri (a ri is roughly 4 kilometers, or 2.4 miles) from Edo and that the
footed trays and lacquered bowls produced here are sturdy, serve many
functions, and are widely praised. This is followed by a Chinese-style poem
on the topic.
53
While not recounted here, the backstory to the Nikkō woodworkers is
revealing of the role of itinerants in rural craft making. Many lathe special-
ists (kijishi) were itinerants who roamed remote mountai n regions (often
illegally) in search of wood and set up temporary workshops with a manual
lathe to form si mple, functional utensils that were then lacquered.
54
Over
time, some settled in locales where the necessary resources were readily
available, such as Nikkō, which was surrounded by forests under shogunal
control. Nikkō grew into a sizable town because it was the site of the Toku-
gawa mortuary complex, and members of the shogunate and their entourage
traveled there periodically for ritual events. Although it was primarily an
official cultic site, it also became a tourist destination. These visitors were
the likely clientele for the goods produced in shops like those depicted in
Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue.
Unlike Nikkō’s wooden utensils, which in all likelihood entered the
canon of meibutsu only in the Tokugawa period, the renown of paper from

Figure 2.11 . Nikkō lathe-turned lacquerwares, from Illustrated Famous
Specialties of the Mountains and Seas of Japan (Nihon sankai meibutsu zue), 1797
edition. Woodblo ck-printed book. National Diet Library, Tokyo.

90
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
Echizen (in modern Fukui Prefecture) has a long history as a quality product
since it was sent to the Kyoto capital as tax-in-kind as early as the Heian
period (794–1185). The brief explanatory text declares: “Paper is made in
many provinces (kuni), but that made in Echizen is peerless.” It then goes on
to list the many varieties produced there, all of which exhibit the “true
nature of paper.”
55
The illustration shows only the final stages of the making
process: pounding the kōzo pulp, dipping the screens into the pulpy water,
and laying the finished sheets on boards to dry, as well as the shipping of the
bundled goods (figure 2.12).
The method for tapping lacquer is another topic taken up in the third
volume (figure 2.13). The accompanying text, whose accuracy may be open
to question, informs the reader:
If an incision is made with a sickle in a lacquer tree, the sap that flows from it
can be scraped off with a bamboo spatula. Put the lacquer sap that has been
scraped in a collecting bucket with thin brewed tea, add walnut oil, and it
will not spoil. After the sap has been drawn, trees may dry up and no longer
produce. Some old trees also are not productive. Yoshino in Wakayama and
Kumano in Kii are famous places (meisho) for lacquer. Lacquer is [also] pro-
duced in other provinces. Wax is made from the fruit of the lacquer tree.
56
The brief account in Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue, intended for the general pub-
lic, is in sharp contrast with that in the authoritative agricultural manual
Nōgy ō	zensho (Agricultural compendium; 1697), which was intended to pro-
vide farmers with instructions on every phase of cultivating and tapping
lacquer trees, including the number of cuts to be made on each tree and the
method of insuring that the cypress wood bucket would not leak.
57
Driven by text rather than i mage, Sankai	meisan	zue (Illustrated famous
products of mountain and sea) has scholarly pretensions absent in the earlier
publication. For instance, passages from Tiangong	kaiwu (The works of heaven
and the inception of things), a Chinese publication on technology, presented
within a cosmological framework, are quoted in the section devoted to

91
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
porcelain production in Arita.
58
This publication’s large format and use of
double-page spreads make possible panoramic illustrations, throwing into
relief the local topography while also drawing attention to the work as a col-
lective effort involving multiple processes. Unlike the Illustrated	Encyclopedia
of	Humanity, it does not individualize makers but portrays them as part of a
group enterprise. While the individual identities of rural artisans may not
have been of vital interest to the public, the spectacle of their collective
activity likely appealed because of its unfamiliarity and economic
importance.
The sections devoted to bast fiber textiles (nuno) in northern Honshu and
porcelains on the southern island of Kyushu dramatize the two extremes of
rural craft production—on the one hand, as small-scale family activity, and
on the other, as an industrial-scale operation. Nuno is the generic term for
cloth made from plant fibers, including those from the seed, leaf, and bast.
Before the introduction of cotton cultivation in the fifteenth century, most
peasant clothing was made of bast fibers, particularly hemp and ramie, but
in the Edo period, even as this practice continued in some regions, yarn
made from these fibers became much sought-after for weaving lightweight
summer garments worn by the elite. Sankai	meisan	zue i ntroduces the subject
with a geographical and etymological overview of nuno ’s production. This is
followed by brief comments about its cultivation, harvesting, spinning,
weaving, and dyeing. Bast fiber cloth made from ramie or “China grass”
(choma or karamushi;	Boehmeria	nivea), it tells us, had been produced near the
ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto in Yamato, Nara, and Ōmi Provinces since
ancient times. However, northern Echigo (present-day Niigata Prefecture)
and adjacent provinces, most notably Shinano (present-day Nagano Prefec-
ture), were also important sources of ramie. Because of their high quality,
the fine ramie cloth of Echigo (Echigo	jōfu) and crepe (chijimi) were particu-
larly famous. The harsh climate of northern Echigo Province, where as much
as six feet of snow might fall in winter, keeping peasants indoors “from the

Figure 2.12 . Papermaking,
from Illustrated Famous
Specialties of the Mountains
and Seas of Japan (Nihon
sankai meibutsu zue), 1797
edition. Wo odblo ck-printed
book. National Diet Library,
Tokyo.

Figure 2.1 3. C ollecting
lacquer sap, from Illustrated
Famous Specialties of the
Mountains and Seas of Japan
(Nihon sankai meibutsu
z ue), 1797 edition.
Woodblo ck-printed bo ok.
National Diet Library,
Tokyo.

96
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
tenth until the third month,” provided optimum conditions for growing and
processing ramie.
59
Ramie is a dicotyledonous plant whose inner bast fibers are extracted,
retted, separated into fine strands, and twisted or knotted together to
make yarn. The fiber is stiff and susceptible to breakage, but in the damp
winter climate of Echigo, it remains relatively pliant and thus easy to work.
60
In his Hokuetsu	 seppu (Snow country tales), Suzu ki Bokushi (1770–1842), a
wealthy ramie wholesaler and naturalist, underscored the relationship
between the climate and the production of this cloth: “yarn is washed in
snow water and bleached on snow fields. There is [ramie] crepe because
there is snow.” “Echigo crepe,” he asserted, “owes its fame to the combined
powers of man and snow, working together.”
61
The scene i n Sankai	meisan
zue illustrating the production of Echigo textiles shows men and women
bleaching the cloth in the snowy fields, making visible this relationship
(figure 2.14).
Men and women young and old took part in the production of Echigo
cloth. The backbreaking and labor-i ntensive work began with harvesting
the stalks in the late summer and then soaking them to loosen the outer
skin. Next the woody core had to be separated from the fine inner layer of the
skin and the latter hung to dry indoors, out of the sun. Yarn making began
with soaking the fiber to soften it. Women further moistened it with their
hands and mouths, a practice enacted by the woman with her back to the
viewer in the illustration here. Next the fiber was further separated with
“children beginning their training as early as age two or three, using their
nails to separate the ramie fiber strands.”
62
Finally, these slender, lustrous
strands were twisted together or knotted end to end to form long yarns. The
illustration of women preparing, twisting, and reeling thread and men
weaving conflates a sequence of activities that took place over many months.
The representation of a male weaver weaving on what appears to be a treadle
loom is surprising since by all accounts this was primarily a female occupa-

97
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
tion (figure 2.15).
63
It is likely that the artist had no firsthand knowledge of
this and many of the other rural craft practices he represented.
Like many rural craft enterprises, production of Echigo cloth was a mul-
tisited cottage i ndustry u nderwritten by a well-developed subcontracting
system in which merchants supplied materials and looms and paid by the
piece. They also purchased raw materials at a low price and resold them to
artisans elsewhere for production. This system was common to many capi-
tal-intensive rural crafts because farmers did not have the means to pur-
chase the requisite equipment themselves. Relationships with a particular
merchant ensured the latter exclusive rights to the finished product. Pay-
ment depended on the quality of the product, and, although it provided a
regular income, it was often meager given the amount of labor involved. One
hundred days were required to produce sufficient yarn for one kimono
alone.
64
Echigo yarn and cloth became part of a wider economy thanks to river
and overland transport networks linking western and eastern Japan. Ojiya,
the market town that gave its name to the Echigo crepe called Ojiya	chijimi ,
was on the Mikuni Kaidō, a road linking the Nakasendō and the Hoku riku
Kaidō. Production of Ojiya chijimi reached the height of popularity about the
time when Sankai	 meisan	 zue was published. According to village records
examined by Watanabe Sansei, in 1682, 5,062 bolts of chijimi were made, but
during the Tenmei era (1781–89), annual production increased dramatically
to an astonishing 200,000 bolts (each roughly 28.8 centimeters wide and 10
meters long).
65
Production on a much smaller scale continued into the twen-
tieth century (figure 2.16).
The pages devoted to porcelain production in Hizen (in modern Saga and
Nagasaki Prefectures) are second in number and detail only to those on sake.
Manufacture is thought to have begun around 1610.
66
By the late eighteenth
century, porcelain production in this region was carried out on an industrial
scale in an agglomeration of many kilns. Sankai	meisan	zue lists eighteen, of

Figure 2.1 4. Bleaching Echigo
cloth on snow, from Illustrated
Famous Products of Mountain and
Sea (Sankai meisan zue), 1799.
Woodblock-printed book.
Courtesy of East Asian Library,
Princeton University Library.

Figure 2.15. Making Echigo
cloth, from Illustrated Famous
Products of Mountain and Sea
(Sankai meisan zue), 1799.
Woodblo ck-printed b ook.
Courtesy of East Asian
Library, Princeton University
Library.

102
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
which the Mikawachi and Hirado kilns were under the direct control of the
Nabeshima family, lords of Hizen, and Matsuura, lords of Hirado, with the
remainder independent commercial enterprises.
67
The underglaze blue dish
with decoration of three jars in colored enamels illustrated in figure 2.17 is
typical of eighteenth-century Nabeshima porcelains. To create the design,
the motifs were first outlined in underglaze cobalt blue; then, after firi ng,
they were painted again in overglaze enamel, following the doucai technique
developed in Ming China. Dishes were made in sets of twelve in standard
sizes to conform to banqueting needs. About fifteen centimeters in diame-
ter, this one represents the midsi ze of the three si zes of dishes (the others
were about fourteen and twenty centimeters).
Figure 2.16. Ojiya chijimi (crepe), detail
of kimono with paulownia flowers in
bloom. Taishō era (1912–26). Baur
Foundation, Sugawara Keiko donation,
FB,DSK.201 5.6. © Fondation Baur, photo
Martin Gerard.

Figure 2.17. Porcelain plate with underglaze blue and overglaze polychrome enamels
(Hizen ware, Nabeshima type). 1680s-90s. H 15 1⁄8 in. (4.1 cm), diam. 6 in. (15.2 cm). The
Harry G. C . Packard Collection of Asian Art. Gift of Harry G. C . Packard and Purchase.
Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds. Joseph Pulitzer Bequest
and the Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift 1975. 1975.268.563. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Figure 2.18. View of Arita
porcelain production, from
Illustrated Famous Products of
Mountain and Sea (Sankai
meisan zue), 1799. Wood-
block-printed book. Courtesy
of East Asian Library,
Princeton University Library.

106
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
Until the seventeenth century, Japan had lacked the technical knowl-
edge and equipment to make high-fire vitreous wares. It was only with the
discovery of china stone (kaolin) at Izumiyama in the Hizen region and the
intervention of Chinese and Korean immigrant potters that this new ceramic
type developed in Japan. The text describes porcelain production in consid-
erable detail, underscoring aspects that the general reader might not be
aware of, such as the fact that the kaolin extracted from Izumiyama is not a
clay but a stone that must be pulverized before use; that some wares are
made in a mold, while others are wheel-thrown; the multiple firings
involved; and the use of two kinds of kilns, an ordinary one built on flat
ground near the potters’ houses and a climbing one (noborigama) built on a
slope. The book singles out celadon glaze and Aka-e enamels for special
mention, likening the effect of the latter’s five colors combined with gold
and silver to Kyoto’s silk brocade (nishiki), concluding: “The overglaze enam-
eling techniques used in this kiln are secrets that cannot be spoken of to
outsiders, so they are not discussed here. However, it is said that the glaze
uses glass.”
68
The three accompanying views convey the scale of porcelain manufac-
ture in Arita, as well as the high degree of specialization within it. The first
shows the clay being sieved to remove impurities and men throwing pots on
a wheel. Next, newly bisque-fired pots are being carried out of the kiln,
examined for flaws, and brushed clean in preparation for glazing by both
men and women (figure 2.18). In the final scene, the kiln workers bring wood
to stoke the kiln.
Like other publications discussed here, the objective of Nihon	 sankai
meibutsu	 zue and Sankai	meisan	 zue was the dissemi nation of practical and
useful k nowledge. Although they provide considerable i nformation about
craft processes, they are not how-to manuals; readers are encouraged to
understand and admire making processes rather than expected to learn how
to carry them out themselves. Like the agricultural manuals that became a

107
Picturing	the	Early	Modern	Craftscape
prolific new literary genre about the same time, Sankai	meisan	zue may be
regarded as “the rural literary counterpart to the popular . . . ‘ethnographic
fiction’ about the exploits of the buoyant townspeople.”
69
While it shares
that genre’s economic realism, the information it contained was not always
accurate. Such images rendered the countryside knowable but also consti-
tuted a new kind of geographical database that, at a time when country wide
travel was growing, held considerable touristic appeal as well.
Together, the publications explored here tell a gendered story of occupa-
tional diversity that was bound up with wider social, political, economic,
and geographic forces. They were expressions of a zeal for classification in all
subjects—from people and places to flora and fauna—that drove many publi-
cations during the early modern era. Readers could make use of them in
many ways. They held educational value: the general knowledge about the
world that they provided represented a kind of cultural capital. Thei r value
was also practical: they were sources of information about where to shop,
whether in the city or during provincial travels. In a market economy where
there was a proliferation of consumer goods, consumers wanted reliable cri-
teria on which basis to make an informed choice. By describing the skills of
individual makers, thei r making processes, and the locales where they
worked, and by attaching the publicly validating label meibutsu or meisan to
particular products, these publications both shaped and reflected a material
culture of discerning craftsmanship, quality, and value.

109
It is a picture that invites you to peer. On the ground floor of a two-story house
open to view from the street like a stage proscenium, four men and one woman
sit on a tatami-matted floor, each intent on his or her individual task, yet work-
ing together with a shared purpose (figure 3.1). On the left, a man wearing a
black hat, likely the workshop head, sprinkles metal particles on a saddle; tools
and matching stirrups are laid out before him. Behind him, an assistant holds
up a large makie tray with a cinnabar red interior to which he applies a coat of
lacquer with a spatula. The shelf above him is well stocked with an array of the
individual lacquered tables used in banquet dining. Across from him, another
man, dressed in a black robe, is at work on a mirror stand. A woman, relegated
to the outer edge of the workspace, polishes one of the upright supports for a
lacquered clothing stand using the charcoal in a container next to her. The man
kneeling in front of her with sleeves pulled up throws his body weight into
cutting away the rough gold to make the small pieces for sprinkling. Two young
assistants holding containers of powder stand on the veranda, where a large
gold and black makie lacquer washbasin and ewer, finished products of the
workshop’s collaborative efforts, are on display for the viewer’s admiration.
This carefully choreographed, idealized view of a prosperous lacquer
workshop painted by Kano Yoshinobu (1552–1640) around 1600 as part of a
chapter three
Craft Organizations
and Operations

Figure 3.1 . Kano Yoshinobu (1552–1640), View of lacquer workshop, from Pictures of
Craftsmen , early 17th c. Six-panel screens, ink and color on paper, 58 × 43.7 cm. Kita’in,
Kawagoe City, Saitama Prefecture.

111
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
series of depictions of craft makers at work helps to visualize the operations
and range of goods in a commercial makie workshop run along familial lines.
It speaks to the power relations, range of processes, and efficient and coor-
dinated division of labor among family members working in a small space
that were essential to the success of any workshop.
1
Such collaborative crea-
tivity was the norm in most workshop operations, where agency did not lie
in the hands of any one person but in the interaction among them. The head
of the workshop might delegate assignments according to materials and
level of mastery, but whatever the job, each person had to have the ability to
work in synchronism with others, and to be sensitive and responsive to the
temporal and spatial rhythms of the total making process.
The craft makers portrayed in early modern paintings and prints repre-
sented many things to their contemporaries. They were “people of skill,”
understood to be predominantly male, as defined by their particular occupa-
tions.
2
They were the suppliers of an array of desirable commodities. And they
were individuals who occupied critical positions in the growth of urban and
rural economies. Missing from these representations, however, are the larger
professional, political, economic, and social institutions that sustained them.
This organizational infrastructure is the focus of this chapter, which again
draws attention to the differences between the urban and rural contexts.
It opens with observations about the ie, the house or household, the
basic administrative unit for most craft workshops. Forming a full and inte-
grated picture of all kinds of craft workshops is impossible, but case studies
of two eighteenth-century lacquer specialists, Kōami Nagasuku (1661–1723)
and Ogawa Haritsu (a.k .a. Ritsuō; 1663–1747), provide a granular picture of
the operations in this profession. Although diverse in their particulars,
activities in their workshops underscore the adaptability to changing cir-
cumstances, effective use of division of labor according to skill set, and the
role of patronage and marketplace competition in the development of house
style and individual style.
3

112
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
the ie as house and household
In the early modern era, most craft specialists worked as part of collectives,
usually in workshops organized along familial lines (ie) that took on appren-
tices to provide labor and ensure the future of the organization. The ie, house
or household, was both an economic and a family entity headed by a senior
male.
4
In metropolitan areas, craft ie were often hierarchical, multigenera-
tional families with membership limited to men, while in the countryside,
they tended to be smaller and more informal single household units where
women were acknowledged as active partners.
5
The head of the ie was the
supreme authority in all matters, including the choice of apprentices and the
formation of branch workshops. Succession customarily passed to the eldest
son, or in cases where there was no direct or suitable heir, to an adopted son.
The name of the head of the ie could be passed from one generation to the
next, as in the Raku lineage, whose current head is the fifteenth-generation
Kichizaemon. Second sons and talented disciples with no possibility to rise
within the system often left to form their own branch workshops. Official
relationship to a particular house was usually marked by the conferring
on the disciple of a studio name containing a character of the master’s
name. Many craft houses maintained genealogical records to document such
matters.
In this system, succession was ascriptive—that is, a person was born into
the position rather than achieving it through talent.
6
This prioritization of
heredity assumed that with diligence and proper trai ning, anyone could
develop proficiency in a given craft. This is not to say that there was no rec-
ognition of the different kinds of skills a practitioner might bri ng to the
workshop. As Kōami Nagasuku wrote in the Yuishitsu-shin (Singled-minded
concentration), a guide for his successors, “In this profession there are those
who are talented (jōzu), those who are skilled (saiko), and those who are
worldly (rakujin). Some are very good with small details, others are inventive
or intuitive, and others are very knowledgeable. Beware of all of them.

113
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
Restrain yourself and concentrate on you r own work. Don’t forget the say-
ing: ‘We all have faults.’ ”
7
Intermarriage and adoption among craft families was common and could
be motivated by a variety of circumstances. Rivalries were resolved through
marriage. A fusion of the Kano and Tosa styles of painting is said to have fol-
lowed from the marriage of Kano Motonobu (1476–1559), hereditary head of
the Kano house, and the daughter of his rival Tosa Mitsunobu (1434–1525),
head of the Tosa house.
8
Financial difficulties led Sahei, heir to the Raku
house, to marry the daughter of a lacquer maker and make her family’s home
the site of his workshop.
9
Sahei fathered an illegitimate son by another
woman but rather than designate him as heir, he adopted Ogata Kōrin and
Kenzan’s nephew Heishirō. Heishirō became Kichizaemon (a.k .a. Sō’nyū;
1664–1716), the fifth-generation head of the Raku house. At the time, the
Kariganeya, the Ogata family clothing busi ness, was thriving, and these
family connections brought new prosperity to the Raku house as wel l.
10
Kichizaemon V’s recreation of the matte finish associated with Raku founder
Chōjirō on his own teabowls at a time when Rikyū and Chōjirō were being
glorified by the Senke tea schools may have been part of his effort to materi-
alize his claims to the legacy of this venerable house (figure 3.2).
Hereditary vertical master-disciple relationships premised on the ie sys-
tem were defined by members themselves, but some now well-known line-
ages were fabricated by later writers. This is true, for instance, of the group
of painters and craft specialists known as the Rinpa school that included
Tawaraya Sōtatsu (d. ca. 1640), Ogata Kōrin, and his brother Kenzan, whom
later writers associated with the stylistic tradition of Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–
1637). In Kōga	bikō (Notes on ancient paintings; ca. 1850), written by Asaoka
Okisada (1800–1856), they are characterized as a ry ū (stream, current) rather
than a family (fu; pedigree or genealogy).
11
What is distinctive about this
school, which takes its name from the rin of Kōrin, is that with the exception
of Sōtatsu, who ran the Tawaraya painting workshop, its members began as

114
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
amateur craft practitioners who self-identified with the persona and/or style
of the multitalented Kōetsu, Kōrin, and Kenzan. Kōetsu was a professional
sword polisher and connoisseur but was also a master calligrapher who col-
laborated with Sōtatsu in the creation of many handscrolls. He designed lac-
querwares, was i nvolved in the publication of exquisite printed editions of
literary classics and Noh plays, and was one of the first amateurs to make
Raku-style teabowls.
12
Kōrin and Kenzan, as the sons of the owner of a pros-
perous merchant house, studied calligraphy, painting, Noh, and the tea cer-
emony, cultural practices engaged in by many affluent members of their
Figure 3.2. Raku Sō’nyū V (1664–1716), teabowl, 1691–1716. Hand-built clay with black
glaze. 240–1877. © Victoria and Albert Museum.

115
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
class. They took up painting and pottery in a professional capacity only after
the failure of the Kariganeya. While they had some training in the arts, it
was as amateur practitioners, not as part of a formal apprenticeship system.
Branch lineages were also established when daimyo invited craft spe-
cialists from Kyoto to settle in their castle towns to provide local production
of high quality luxury goods for personal use, gift-giving, and inter-regional
trade. In 1666, Maeda Tsunanori (1643–1724) invited the tea master Sen
Sōshitsu IV (1622–97) and the Raku potter Chōzaemon (1631–1712) to
Kanazawa, the wealthy castle town of Kaga domain. Chōzaemon found suit-
able clay in the nearby village of Ōhi and set up his workshop there, produc-
ing low-fire lead-glazed wares that were in the Raku style but often featured
a brighter, glossier amber finish than those produced in Kyoto. Chōzaemon
had worked with Kichizaemon IV in Kyoto for a decade, but the official gene-
alogy of the Raku house does not mention him, indicating that his workshop
was not authorized by the main house in Kyoto.
13
Urban craft workshops tended to be clustered together in the same dis-
tricts. Sometimes their choice was determined by the availability of
resources or special technological needs, such as kilns for firing ceramics.
The close proximity of different workshops facilitated collaboration among
makers whose products requi red different materials and processes. Bei ng
part of a larger occupational community was particularly convenient for
those, such as carpenters, who were often hired in large groups.
14
Nishijin,
located northwest of the Imperial Palace, was the center of Kyoto’s silk-
weaving industry. Weavers had been invited to settle there by the warlord
Toyotomi Hideyoshi as part of his effort to revive craft production in Kyoto.
When they returned from the port city of Sakai, where they had fled during
the long period of internecine warfare, they brought with them the manu-
facture and use of drawlooms (takarabata ) that made possible the complex
brocades (nishiki) for which they became famous. By 1703 there were thou-
sands of weavers in the Nishijin district making brocades, damasks, silk

116
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
crepe, and velvet (figure 3.3). They were supported by a network of spinners,
dyers, embroiderers, stencil makers, and suppliers of silk wadding and
thread living nearby. The potters Ninsei and Kenzan first worked on the
city’s northwest periphery, but Kenzan later moved to Chōjiyamachi, closer
to the bustling shopping district and, equally importantly, to the potters
who managed the kilns that were concentrated in the city’s Eastern
Mountains at Awataguchi, Otowa, and Kiyomizu, the area now known as
Gojōzaka. In Edo, craft workshops were concentrated in spaces set apart for
chōnin , especially Kyobashi, the low-lying area west of Edo Castle. Tatami
and bucket makers as well as carpenters and blacksmiths were all located in
Kyobashi. Kon’ya-chō, the home of a dynamic dyeing industry, was i n the
Kanda district. The Tsuchiya workshop, official dyers to the Tokugawa sho-
guns, was based there, as illustrated in Hiroshige’s print (see figure 2.1).
Local trade also included yukata , cotton robes worn in summer or after the
bath, and tenugui , long cotton rectangles that were used by commoners as
hand towels and headbands.
15
Many urban ie -based craft workshops were organized into fee-paying
guilds (kumiai), membership in which was required to practice a particular
trade. Guilds sustained the interests of their members by setting standards,
maintaining monopolistic production, and managing trading networks, but
they also constrained them to obey shogunal directives concerning salaries
and other matters. After the great Edo fire of 1657, the shogunate set carpen-
ters’ basic daily salaries at 3 momme of rice; in 1834 it added 1.20 momme,
a wage schedule that, despite inflation, remained in place until 1855. (A
momme was a unit of weight equivalent to 3.75 grams.) Roofers and tatami
makers earned the same amount. Sawyers initially were paid only 2 momme,
though thei r wages later matched those of others in the building trades.
16
As part of the Kyōhō-era (1716–36) reforms, the shogunate obligated those
associated with ninety-six crafts to form professional guilds whose respon-
sibility it was to see that their members refrained from manufacturing and

117
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
sel ling goods deemed extravagant and frivolous.
17
The list includes, among
others, makers of fans, various kinds of paper, pipes, bags for handkerchiefs,
geta, mizuhiki , children’s toys, turned wood products, and inkstones.
To maintain control over the urban economy, guilds restricted access to
newcomers in their profession. Craft specialists were welcomed in Kanazawa
with inducements of free land and tax exemptions in the late sixteenth cen-
tury, but a century later, they had to receive official permission to settle
there.
18
Nishijin maintained a monopoly on the production of luxu ry silks
until the 1730s, when a fire destroyed three thousand of the estimated seven
thousand looms, prompting many weavers to migrate to the provinces.
19
Some settled in Kiryū, a village some one hundred kilometers north of Edo
(in present-day Gunma Province), where they soon developed fabrics of a
quality and quantity matching Kyoto’s. Weavers from Kyoto had introduced
silk crepe, whose distinctive crinkly texture is produced by twisting the
weft threads in alternate directions. In Kyoto, this process had been carried
out by hand, but in 1780, i n Kiryū, a labor-savi ng water-powered twisting
device was introduced, lowering the price of the resulting fabric. Nishijin
weavers were u nhappy about this encroachment on their monopoly and
petitioned the Tokugawa government to order Kiry ū weavers to cease pro-
duction of figured silks. Despite the formation of a guild to protect their
monopoly, their privileged knowledge continued to flow to other regions.
20
Ru ral ie that engaged in craft-related activities tended to be household
based, with the distribution of labor shared by the senior husband and wife
and their extended family.
21
Although the senior male assumed authority, the
farm family (nōka) was prioritized over its individual members. The moral
value of the ie and the importance of its future prosperity is clear from a farm
manual that declared: “The farm family consists of the fields, wealth, and
heirlooms handed down from the ancestors. This property does not belong to
us, the living members of the family. We must not imagine it does, even in
our dreams. It belongs to the ancestors who founded the house; we are only

Figure 3.3. Tachibana Minkō
(act. 1764–72), Weavers in
Nishijin, from Various Classes of
Artisans in C olored Pictures (Saiga
shokunin burui), 1770.
Woodblock- and stencil-
printed bo ok. 1770.
1979,0305,0.118.1 . © Trustees of
the British Museum.

120
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
entrusted with its care and must pass it on to our descendants . . .”
22
Daugh-
ters and younger sons remained within and helped the family until marriage
and the establishment of their own households. While farm households took
on apprentices and temporary workers when necessary, most workshops did
not assume the scale or formality of their urban counterparts. As Thomas
Smith observed in an article on time management among peasants in early
modern Japan, “the discipline of the small family made it possible to move
labour back and forth from farming to by-employment, not only seasonally
but from day to day and within the day, and also to use the off-farm earnings
of individuals for the benefit of the farm and the family.”
23
Entrepreneurial rural ie began to compile genealogies in the manner of
merchant and craft houses only in the nineteenth century. In so doing, they
sought to assert a “house style” (kafu) that included family history and
occupational information, as well as standards of behavior for later genera-
tions.
24
Like those of their urban counterparts, these documents promoting
their authors’ intellectual and social status were intended exclusively for
family reference. Su zuki Bokushi, the trader i n Echigo chijimi cloth who
penned Snow	Country	Tales, cited above, displayed pride in his lineage when
he declared, “Most people worry only about the genealogy of the emperors
or the shoguns, but rather than clarify those issues, it is more admirable to
learn about our own ancestors.”
25
Another author emphasized more practical
matters: “In noting the efforts that my family exerts in cultivation, the
weather conditions, the growth of the five grains, and the practice of seri-
culture, I hope this will increase the preparedness of future generations who
practice agriculture.”
26
Mutually supportive agricultural and craft activity developed in many
rural regions. Karen Wigen’s study of rural Shinano draws attention to the
con fluence of patronage, envi ronment, technology, and communications
that contributed to the formation of such artisanal clusters. In the eight-
eenth century, thousands of workers were involved in papermaking and the

121
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
related industries of umbrellas, mizuhiki , and motoyui production in the Shi-
moi na region around Iida Castle town in Shinano Province (modern Nagano
Prefecture). Papermaking had a long history in this mountainous region
since there were paper mulberry trees to supply the fibers, flowing rivers to
clean them, and abundant sun in the winter to dry the paper. The motoyui
industry, however, developed only in the late seventeenth century under
domainal patronage with the transfer of technology from Mino, one of
Japan’s major papermaking regions, and mobilization of lesser retainers of
samurai status to provide labor. As illustrated here, these paper ties used for
both male and female hairdressing were made by twisting paper into long
cords that were stretched on a frame and sold in balls from which users could
cut the desired length (figure 3.4). The manufacture of umbrellas also devel-
oped nearby when a traveling maker from Gifu disclosed his techniques to
local artisans. Transportation in the form of a network of packhorse traders
enabled local makers to sell their goods to metropolitan markets.
27
the lacquer workshops of kōami nagasuku
and ogawa haritsu
The particulars of workshop operations and output varied considerably
depending on specialty, scale, and locale. However, rare su rvivi ng docu-
mentary and material evidence pertaining to lacquerers of the Kōami lineage
and of Ogawa Haritsu’s workshop throws light on many of the forces that
determined professional success. Sustaining the house over multiple genera-
tions was a critical concern for all, but conditions were not always favorable
to workshop longevity. Yet even when a craft lineage died out after a genera-
tion or two, brand-name recognition could be exploited to enable others to
continue production. While Tokugawa patronage ensu red that the Kōami
dynasty lasted throughout its rule, the Haritsu workshop, which was more
dependent on popular consumer tastes, lasted only a generation beyond the
life of its founder. Yet the novel lacquer style he pioneered, known after him

Figure 3.4. Tachibana Minkō
(act. 1764–72), Making motoyui ,
from Various Classes of Artisans in
Colored Pictures (Saiga shokunin
burui), 1770. Woodblock- and
stencil-printed book.
1979,0305,0.118.1 . © Trustees of
the British Museum.

124
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
as “Haritsu- or Ritsuō-style craft” (Haritsu/Ritsu ō	zaiku), remained influen-
tial among Edo lacquerers until the end of the nineteenth century.
28
The Kōami are representative of a small number of privileged ie that had
prospered under the patronage of successive military rulers from the fif-
teenth century. Their main line workshop produced makie lacquer on a com-
mission basis rather than supplying ready-mades in a shop for anonymous
clientele. Makie lacquerwares were symbols of power and status because of
their aesthetic allure, the intrinsic value of the lacquer and gold from which
they were made, and the time and labor required. Although classed as
shokunin in the Tokugawa period, the Kōami received the income and privi-
leges of ranking samurai, including the right to audiences with the shogun.
They were provided housing and received an annual stipend of 200 koku of
rice, plus a supplementary stipend sufficient to support ten workers. (A
koku —about 150 kilograms—was deemed sufficient to feed one person for a
year.) There was also a separate budget for special commissions.
29
The post of
official lacquerer to the shogun was hereditary.
Kōami Nagasuku (1661–1723) was head of this workshop between the
1680s and the 1720s, during which time he compiled a corpus of family
records with the assistance of his son.
30
Preserved in manuscript form within
the family until the late nineteenth century, these were not intended for
public consumption. While such documents exist for other well-established
craft houses working for the shogunal or daimyo elite, they were by no
means typical of all craft practitioners. The existence of such literature is
evidence of the interest that craft ie had in recording their history and
accomplishments. The family genealogy compiled by Nagasuku contains
biographies of the first twelve generations of the family, spanning from the
1450s, when they enjoyed the patronage of the Ashikaga shoguns, to 1700,
when they were Tokugawa retainers. Writing such a document (even if
intended only for family readership) was a political act, a way of affirming
and confirming the continuity of family authority. Like the Kano family lin-

125
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
eage, compiled by Kano Einō, which aimed to “aggrand[ize] family history
into the history of painting itself,” so too, by extending the Kōami family
lineage i nto the distant past, Nagasuku aimed to make his family history
into a history of makie lacquer.
31
This family pride is made explicit in the
Yuishitsu-shin , Nagasuku’s admonitions for his successors: “You must never
forget that when it comes to sprinkled designs we are the best. But do not
boast, not even a little. In our profession of lacquer and spri nkled designs
there is no one in all Japan whom you need fear.”
32
Nagasuku further bolstered his family’s prestige by compiling a list of
famous (meibutsu) writing boxes and other makie articles owned by shoguns
and warlords. Like the genealogy, it is a validating record. By classifying
works created by members of the Kōami family as meibutsu , famous objects
or masterpieces, Nagasuku gave them canonical status. In so doing, he was
also asserting his role as a connoisseur: one of his responsibilities was the
authentication of works made by earlier family members.
The Yuishitsu -shin is a revealing guide to workshop comportment, train-
ing, managerial skills, and other practical matters. It resembles the house
codes written by merchant houses in its emphasis on diligence, frugality,
respect for the shogunal authorities, and reputation.
33
As shogunal retainers,
the behavior of the Kōami lacquerers had to conform to the social expecta-
tions of the warrior class: “When you are the head of a family your behavior
is very important. Do not imitate the lowly. . . . Never forget the saying: ‘Be
a townsman with the spirit of a samurai.’”
34
Yet at the same time, they had
to demonstrate managerial and administrative competence: “Do not handle
money, but train you r mind to remember everything. Learn to remember
intuitively the sizes of lacquers and sprinkled designs; the gold that is to be
applied; the type of lacquer; the number of laborers; the wages for detail
work; the weight and quantity of the colors that are used; the rice, salt, bean
paste, firewood, and everything else that you need.”
35
The admonition not to
handle money is likely rhetorical. Nonetheless, calculations do not seem to

126
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
have been Nagasuku’s forte. As Andew Pekarik observes in his translation of
this text, the total sum of 53 ryō requested was 6 ryō and 5 bu higher than the
itemized cost of labor and material.
36
The final section of the Yuishitsu-shin devoted to technique consists of
short points to keep in mind in lacquer making, from the importance of a
wooden support made from choice woods and the reinforcement of the box
joints with kokuso (a compound made from lacquer and rice paste) and hemp
cloth, to the application of the primary, middle, and final coatings of lac-
quer.
37
The brevity of this section may have to do with the author’s discom-
fort in using explicit linguistic form to convey the material operations of the
workshop’s specialized techniques. Nagasuku, like most makers, may have
preferred to do and show rather than tell.
Running a business on a sound financial basis, taking into account the
cost of labor, materials, food, and housing, was of paramount concern for
the head of a workshop. So, too, was dealing with difficult patrons. In the
Yuishitsu-shin , Nagasuku stressed the difficulty of working on a commission
basis, observing dryly: “Whenever you receive an order you must be partic-
ularly persevering.”
38
This was a quality that he no doubt had to bring to bear
in creating the replica of a writing box (suzuribako) with a plum motif in
1718, a commission so important that he recorded it in minute detail.
39
The commission involved reproducing a treasu re made by his ancestor
Michikiyo (1432–1500) that had once belonged to Ashikaga Yoshimasa. This
was not an unusual request but part of a long-standing tradition of making
replicas of meibutsu . Nagasuku was given permission to take the writing box
to his studio so he and his associates could examine it closely, but fear of its
loss was such that he had to return it to the castle whenever there was a
threat of fire anywhere in the neighborhood. After guaranteeing the box’s
authenticity, Nagasuku prepared and submitted an estimate of the cost and
time frame for fabricating the replica. He requested and was granted ninety
days to complete the commission, emphasizing that “unless the lower layers

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Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
and sprinkled designs are dried gradually and well, it will be hard to imitate
the original.”
40
His request for a payment of 53 ryō to cover the cost of labor
and materials (especially the powdered and flaked gold required for the
design), however, was refused, and he had to accept 49 ryō. When the ninety
days were up and the box still wasn’t ready, Nagasuku was permitted a fur-
ther month to complete the job.
Nagasuku himself played only a mi nor role in the actual fabrication of
this box. Although the finished product would be ascribed to him, he over-
saw its design and execution but seems to have had little to do with the
actual hands-on work until the final stage. This he delegated to several spe-
cialists including Jūbei, a specialist in joi nery who made the wooden box,
Seigorō, who drew the design, and Denbei, who applied the gold powders.
Although only three specialists are named, it is likely that other assistants
were assigned specific tasks. For instance, in his itemization of costs, Nagas-
uku mentions the special charcoal used to burnish the lacquer but says
nothing of who carried out this process. Polishing was required after
the application of each of the many layers of lacquer and was especially
important in the final stage to produce the brilliant reflective sheen that
characterizes the finest makie. As head, Nagasuku seems to have ensured
operational efficiency, but he worked at a remove from the daily physical
contact with the materials of his profession.
Curiously, there is no reference in the Kōami records to the important
architectural projects in which the house was involved. Yet it is likely that
the members of the Kōami workshop consolidated their position as the lead-
ing makie specialists through their involvement in the intense building and
rebuilding campaigns in and around Kyoto during the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries, when Chōsei (1519–1603) and Chōan (1569–
1610) enjoyed the patronage of successive warlords. To meet surging demand
for their skills, during that era the Kōami developed techniques and organi-
zational strategies that challenge the assumption that their workshop was

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Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
always conservative and unchanging. Their creative adaptation to the need
for increased and accelerated production is exemplified by Kōdaiji lacquer, a
style that flourished from the late sixteenth until the end of the seventeenth
century.
41
It gets its name from the architectural decor of the Kyoto mortuary
temple dedicated to Hideyoshi now in Kyoto’s Kōdaiji temple, whose style is
also used in the design of the personal effects of the warlord and his wife Kita
no Mandokoro (1547–1624).
Kōdaiji makie is distinguished by the use of laborsaving techniques and
standardized motifs. Like the pouring vessel illustrated here, these designs
often featured floral patterns in contrasting fields of black and gold separated
by a bold zigzag (figure 3.5). Unlike the raised decor on the Hatsune dowry
set, discussed below, the sprinkled pictures of Kōdaiji lacquer are flat rather
than built up to create a three-dimensional surface. In this so-cal led “flat”
makie or hiramakie, powdered metals are applied directly to the wet lacquer,
and a thin layer of clear lacquer is applied over them. Further cutting down
on time and labor, a needle is used to scratch through the wet lacquer to cre-
ate the fine lines into which gold powder was sprinkled. The pictorial
designs, comprised predominantly of generic floral motifs, are often
arranged within diagonal bands of contrasting pattern and color, an
approach also found in ceramics and textiles of the same period.
The workshop continued to produce a wide range of goods after the sev-
enteenth century, but it was especially in demand as makers of bridal trous-
seaux, so much so that today the Kōami are largely defined by this output.
These were classified as oku	dōgu, goods intended for use or display in the
privacy of women’s inner chambers, and allowed little scope for innovation.
They included dressi ng tables and accessories, cabinets for combs, mirrors
and mi rror stands, cosmetic boxes, garment racks, boxes containi ng the
accessories for tooth-blackening, ewers and wash basins, shelves and stor-
age cabinets for books, writing desks, assorted document and stationery
boxes, inkstone cases, and games. Their spatial and gendered functions

Figure 3.5. Kōdaiji-style pouring vessel. ca. 1596. Lacquered wood with sprinkled gold
(makie) decoration, H 25.4 × D 17.8 × W 25.7 cm. Purchase, Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, by
exchange, 1980. 1980.6. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

130
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
required the adoption of time-honored styles and courtly decorative subject
matter. They also had to conform to ideas of luxury premised on extravagant
use of gold and silver for the pictorial decor as well as extra-thick layers of
lacquer. The condition of many surviving sets suggests that they were
intended for ceremonial display rather than daily use.
Although the laborsavi ng techniques adopted in the Kōdaiji workshop
were not applied to the production of dowry goods, the operational efficien-
cies achieved through the division of labor likely continued. Fabricating
such lavish dowries often required several years owing to both the scale of
the commission and the drying time necessary for each of the many applica-
tions of liquid lacquer. The third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604–1651), for
instance, ordered Kōami Chōjū to produce fifty-four items for his daughter’s
dowry in 1634, the year she was born. For these showpieces, Chōjū used
takamakie, a labor-i ntensive relief technique in which selected motifs are
built up through a mixture of lacquer and clay dust and then sprinkled with
gold and silver flakes while the lacquer is still wet (figure 3.6). The “Warbler’s
First Song” (Hatsune) and “Butterfly” (Kochō) chapters of The	 Tale	 of	Genji
inspired the auspicious motifs chosen for the decor.
42
The so-called Hatsune
dowry set was delivered on time, three years later, on the occasion of Chiyo-
hime’s official betrothal to Tokugawa Mitsutomo, daimyo of Owari domain.
43
Sometimes, however, dowry goods were barely finished in time for the wed-
ding so that the distinctive odor of lacquer that was not fully set could still
be detected, as evoked in a humorous verse (senry ū): “yome no heya hairu to
urushi kusa nari” (upon enteri ng the bride’s chamber, there is a stink of
lacquer).
44
Although members of the main line of the Kōami family were not part of
the market economy, they nonetheless faced competition from other more
recently founded makie workshops that did not necessarily have the same
constraints on novelty. The shogun alone employed more than twenty-five
lacquerers from different families i ncluding the Koma, Yamada, Kajikawa,

131
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
and En’ami.
45
In addition, there were upstarts such as Ogawa Haritsu, who in
his later years enjoyed the patronage of Tsugaru Nobuhisa (1669–1747), a
notoriously fun-loving and profligate daimyo who had a lively cultural salon
in Edo.
Haritsu provides an example of a craft professional whose reputation was
shaped primarily horizontally, through social networking, rather than ver-
tically through elite patronage.
46
Participation in social settings that brought
together men of different social backgrounds and professions who shared an
interest in aesthetic pursuits such as haikai poetry, painting and calligraphy,
or tea, or who frequented the Yoshiwara brothel district and Kabuki theater
played an important role in channeling commissions. Documentary evi-
dence, though sparse, together with surviving works attributed to him,
throw light on the importance of Haritsu’s relationship with Takarai Kikaku
Figure 3.6. Kōami Chōjū (1599–1651), Hatsune lacquer dowry set with scenes from The	Tale	of	Genji ,
1639. Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya. Tokugawa Art Museum Image Archives/DNP artcom.

132
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
(1661–1707), a disciple of Bashō and founder of a leading haikai circle in Edo,
and with dai myo Tsugaru Nobuhisa, lord of Hirosaki domain. A third over-
lapping sphere of socialization was the floating world of the Yoshiwara and
Kabuki theater, where Haritsu developed a close friendship with the actor
Ichikawa Danjurō II (1687–1757), who was also a keen haikai poet. In 1730, to
honor his father’s memory, Danjurō collaborated with friends and associates
in the publication of Chichi	no	 on (A father’s gratitude), a compendium of
poetry with illustrations by Hanabusa Ippō (1691–1760) and Haritsu.
47
Haritsu did not belong to an established artisanal lineage, and there are
no documented examples of his lacquer work from before the period between
1723 and 1731, when Nobuhisa employed him, by which time he was already
in his sixties. In fact, virtually nothing is known about his artistic training,
and there is no evidence that he ever studied lacquer making. Born in Ise
Province to a family of samurai background, early on he took up haikai
poetry, becoming a member of the circle of Bashō (1644–1694) and later of
Kikaku. It is likely that it was in this context that he met poet, painter, and
book illustrator Hanabusa Itchō (1652–1724), under whom he is thought to
have studied painting.
48
This relationship is confirmed by Haritsu’s collabo-
ration with Itchō’s disciple Ippō (1691–1760) in the illustration of Dokuraku
tozensh ū (Random collection of a spinning top), a woodblock-printed book
containing an eclectic collection of Chinese- and Japanese-style poems that
was published on the occasion of Nobuhisa’s retirement in 1731.
49
It is likely that Haritsu came to Nobuhisa’s attention through these inter-
woven literary and artistic networks. By 1723, when Haritsu was sixty-one by
Japanese count, he must already have achieved a considerable reputation as a
lacquerer in Edo’s lively cultural circles. His warrior-class background and cul-
tural skills, however, have led the late lacquer specialist Haino Akio and other
scholars to suggest that Nobuhisa employed him primarily as an artistic advi-
sor.
50
This would have included the responsibility of overseeing the production
of lacquer goods as well as providing entertainment for official banquets.

133
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
As noted in chapter 1, the Hirosaki domain was a major producer of
lacquer sap. Under Nobuhisa’s predecessors, a local workshop had begun
producing lacquerware in a distinctive regional style. Known today as
Tsugaru-nu ri, it is distinguished by its flat, multicolored mottled back-
ground. Haritsu was probably sent to Hirosaki to improve the quality of this
local ware, possibly by supplying new Chinese-style designs such as those
illustrated in figure 1.5. Nobuhisa clearly attributed considerable importance
to this project, hiring lacquer specialists from Kyoto and paying them very
generous salaries.
51
In a noteworthy example of marriage across craft spe-
cialties, Haritsu also took his wife and sons, Sōri and Eiha (dates unknown),
and a disciple named Karitsu to Hirosaki, but Eiha subsequently left to
marry into the family of a Kano school painter-in-attendance to the daimyo
Date Yoshimura (1681–1751).
52
Hirosaki domainal records provide an overview of the Haritsu workshop’s
wide-ranging duties. In addition to articles for gifting, it made a writing table
and matching box for the lord’s family temple in Edo, inro (containers for
small objects suspended at the waist), ancestral tablets, railings, transoms,
sliding doors, tables, paintings, and the decoration of sword guards (tsuba), as
well as lacquer repairs. More u nusually, the workshop created automata
(ka	rakuri	saikumono) and other curiosities (misemono) for display at Nobuhisa’s
social gatherings, where he seems to have spared no expense in providing
entertainment for his guests.
53
The Hirosaki	 hanch ō	 nikki (Hirosaki domain
diary) does not describe these articles, but it is possible that the replica of a
Raku teabowl made of papier-mâché covered in lacquer discussed in chapter
4 was intended as a misemono, since these were often fabrications that sur-
prised and delighted by their technical virtuosity.
54
(See figure 4.6.) The kara-
kuri	saikumono that Nobuhisa commissioned may have been a novel genre of
makie lacquer writing box incorporating a mechanical device, analogous to a
work now in the Nezu Museum featuring a landscape with waterfall and
waterwheel. The waterwheel, set into the lid and visible through a small

134
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
transparent glass window, is fashioned from ivory. The movement of water
that circulates the wheel is simulated by liquid mercury.
55
Such display pieces
were in keeping with a cultural milieu that set a high premium on demon-
strations of visual, verbal, and material ingenuity and wit.
A brief biography published some forty years after his death in Sōken
kish ō (1781) describes Haritsu as a master (meika) of fashionable things (fū ry ū
naru	mono) and of combining makie, Raku ceramics, carved lacquer (tsuishu),
and horn.
56
Another source relates that by the Tenmei era (1781–89), Haritsu
lacquers were recognized as famous products of Edo.
57
Surviving works con-
firm that combinations of unusual materials and designs that created trompe
l’oeil effects were Haritsu’s stock-in-trade. A writing box in the Tokyo
National Museum features on its lid an inro complete with cord, sliding bead
(ojime), and netsuke rendered in high relief, set against a shimmering ground
of crushed mother-of pearl (figure 3.7). The inro simulates the appearance of
a worn inkstick with a motif of an owl sitting on an oak branch that Haritsu
also used on a document box made for Nobuhisa.
58
The bead made of agate
and the round netsuke of red Chinese-style carved lacquer, the actual mate-
rials from which these were made, represent a kind of reverse trompe l’oeil.
Haritsu’s “Ritsuō” and “Kan” signatures figure on the lower left of the inro,
underscoring the illusion that it is a separate entity. The late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries saw the growth of authorial self-consciousness.
59
Before Haritsu, lacquer craftsmen rarely signed their creations; the new
prominence accorded signatures and seals on his and his followers’ work
reflects the growing awareness that such branding could help to cement a
product’s commercial reputation.
Haritsu didn’t form a lasting lineage, but many makers, including
Shibata Zeshin (1807–1891), adopted his illusionistic lacquer style until the
end of the nineteenth century.
60
Neither of Haritsu’s sons followed in his
footsteps, but he had two disciples, Mochizuki Hanzan (1743–90?) and
Kasama Kyōzan (1736–1802), who carried on his style in a commercial work-

135
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
shop in Edo and in so doing helped to consolidate his reputation.
61
While
these followers signed some of their works in their own name, they also con-
tinued to use the signature and trademark “Kan” seal. Many Haritsu-style
lacquers, especially inkstone boxes and inro, were likely made by them, by
later followers, or by imitators. The problems of attribution resulting from
this practice have led modern scholars to refer collectively to the large
corpus of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century lacquerwares featuring
enamel inlays and material deception as Haritsu- or Ritsuō-style crafts (Ha	­
ritsu/Ritsu ō	zaiku).
62
A case in point is a writing box from the late eighteenth
century with a design of seaweed and shells in the Su ntory Museum, which
features a creative adaptation of a Chinese inkcake motif from the Fangshi
mopu, a Chinese woodblock-printed book known to have been owned
Figure 3.7. Ogawa Haritsu (1663–1747), makie writing box with relief inro design, 18th c.
20.5 × 19.7 × 2.0 cm. Tokyo National Museum. TNM Image Archives.

136
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
by Tsugaru Nobuhisa (figure 3.8).
63
The maker has translated the circular
black-and-white linear drawing of assorted generic seashells in the model
book into a sophisticated and highly naturalistic relief composition of three
bands of shells caught up in seaweed, as if washed ashore by the waves.
Overglaze enamel, mother-of pearl, lead, tin, and ivory, as well as gold and
silver, have been used to capture with remarkable exactitude the shapes,
textures, and brilliant colors of turbo shell, sea urchin, abalone, scallop,
oyster, and other shells, bringing to their salient characteristics the accuracy
of a conchologist cataloguing specimens. The striking degree of naturalism
speaks to popular interest in collecting and classifying flora and fauna fos-
tered by the natural history movement during the second half of the eight-
eenth century.
64
Because dowry goods were invested in a traditional makie style celebrat-
ing classic Kyoto court cultu re, Kōami lacquer production is often charac-
Figure 3.8. Ogawa Haritsu (1663–1747), makie writing box with seashell pattern, 18th c.
22 × 24.5 × 5.0 cm. Photo courtesy Suntory Museum, Tokyo. http://suntory.jp/SMA/.

137
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
terized as regressive and lacking in innovation and creativity.
65
Such views
do not take into account historical and cultural circumstances. While their
output appears to have remained relatively unchanged after the seventeenth
centu ry, working within established parameters was a condition for the
privilege of shogunal patronage. A style that spoke of cultural continuity
from the courtly past was deemed appropriate for articles made for private
female use. Haritsu, as an i ndependent agent, by contrast, could create
works that both mirrored and channeled consumer tastes in new directions.
Many of them capitalized on the authority of Chinese material culture, asso-
ciated with the public realm of men, but in ways that were often irreverent
and witty.
Both Nagasuku and Haritsu were both highly literate lacquer masters
who achieved considerable success during their lifetimes. Work in their stu-
dios was carried out collaboratively and involved, in addition to numerous
subordinates specialized in different stages of the makie process, others,
such as box makers, and in Haritsu’s case, specialists in enamel and mother-
of-pearl inlays, carved lacquer, and mechanical devices. While Nagasaku
seems to have functioned largely in a supervisory capacity in the creation of
the lacquer box with plum motif, he had the training to lend a hand when
necessary, as he did in the final stages of production in order to meet the new
deadline. Haritsu, on the other hand, is more likely to have drawn up designs
and plans for others to execute and then to have overseen their realization.
To successfully carry out a project, however, he still needed to be aware of
the physical properties of his materials, to provide continuous feedback to
assistants, and to modify his i nitial concept if it proved unworkable. In this
respect, his status resembled that of Kōetsu, Kōrin, and later, Hōitsu, who
might be characteri zed as designer-makers—that is, i ndividuals who pro-
vided the initial design concept, in the form of a preliminary drawing with
annotations concerning materials and techniques, but did not carry out
the actual work themselves.
66
Like them also, he later came to be admired

138
Craft	Organizations	and	Operations
because his creative talents developed outside the workshop system and
seemingly broke with convention. Despite their professionalization, these
individuals became aligned with literati painters, who, in keeping with the
Chinese literati ideal of the “amateur,” practiced outside the formal stric-
tures of official workshops and developed highly expressive personal styles.
Unlike Nagasuku, who perpetuated a time-honored house style, Haritsu
developed a fresh, recognizable individual style whose adoption by others
transformed his name into an established brand.

139
Most practitioners learned their craft through apprenticeships lasting from
seven to ten years, during which they lived as members of their master’s
household.
1
This was an economic exchange in the guise of a social relation-
ship that theoretically obliged the master to treat the apprentice as a son and
the apprentice to give a year’s free labor after completing his training.
Apprentices were said to have “stolen their lessons” (nusumi keiko), a
reminder that knowledge is a valuable commodity. Yet even as a disciple,
by his studious observation, “stole” something of his master’s power and
authority, he also reinforced it by perpetuating his teachings in time and
space. Value accrued to the student through a life-enhancing somatic
change that carried with it an officially legitimated occupational status. The
exchange could entail material things such as specialized manuals or mod-
els, but these were less i mportant than the language, gestures, and behavio-
ral patterns that could be transmitted only through personal experience. In
early modern Japan, as in the European workshop at that time, “bodily ges-
tures [took] the place of words in establishing authority, trust, and coopera-
tion.”
2
Formal book learning was of less importance than the development of
tacit knowledge and skills based on mimesis that made actions seem instinc-
tive rather than carefully cultivated. The instructions that Kōami Nagasuku
wrote for his successors elaborate on the nondiscursive, embodied nature
of craft practice: “In general, learn through practice, and other things will
chapter four
Tacit Knowledge

140
Tacit	Knowledge
follow on their own . . . . The profession of lacquerer or sprinkled design art-
ist is such that you must practice and train yourself all the time, sitting or
lying down, twenty-four hours a day, without a break, if you are to mature
and gain fame.”
3
This chapter examines the tacit knowledge that was developed through
extended training and practice. The seamless and seemingly instinctive flow
of activity that constitutes craft making does not lend itself easily to words.
Nor does the ability to perceive and understand the nature of materials that
was equally critical to craft expertise. How were the bodily techniques and
modes of consciousness specific to each craft transmitted from one person to
another? How did practices rooted in sensations, postu res, and gestures and
their interrelationship with materials develop into the ingrained habits,
skills, and dispositions that sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has famously called
habitus?4
embodied knowledge
The body was the principal vehicle for knowledge transfer in early modern
craft practice. Even today, the expression “karada	 de	 oboeru ”—literally, to
remember with the body—is a fundamental modeling principle in many
forms of Japanese education.
5
While the body might be called on to memo-
rize, manage, and protect individual and collective knowledge, exactly how
it functioned as an operational tool is not always easy to discern. When a
master of the performing arts modeled a procedure for a student, he or she
was said to be providing a kata , or pattern, a term that in this context suggests
a kind of self-conscious objectification of movements and gestures. Kata cod-
ified and prescribed the rules of the body language specific to each activity,
aiding the learning process by transforming its complex workings into simple
prescriptions. Such a process of standardization was essential to translate
movements into an idiom that could be understood and transmitted from one
generation to the next. As Rupert Cox has observed, “the repeated imitation

141
Tacit	Knowledge
of standardized patterns of movement is a physical and visual substantiation
of a tradition, connecting the practitioner to the aesthetic qualities, as well as
to all the others, past and present, who also practice.”
6
Richard Schechner, a scholar of performance theory, has usefully charac-
terized this ritualized production of pattern using the body as “restored behav-
ior.” He writes: “Restored behavior is living behavior treated as a film director
treats a strip of film. These strips of behavior can be rearranged or recon-
structed; they are independent of the causal systems (social, psychological,
technological) that brought them into existence . . . . Originating as a process,
used in the process of rehearsal to make a new process, a performance, the
strips of behavior are not themselves process but things, items, ‘material.’”
7
Although both the term kata and Schechner’s concept of restored behav-
ior apply primarily to the performing arts, the same principles also hold true
in the crafts. Learning through prolonged observation, the weaver, the pot-
ter, or the lacquer maker forms a series of mental images of movements (kata )
that are imprinted on the memory through physical repetition until they
become second nature. Although the practice seems to privilege visuality, it
also involves multisensorial corporeal knowledge exchange through hear-
ing, touch, and even smell. For instance, through somatic experience, the
lacquerer learns that the sap of the lac tree may induce a skin rash or that
even when dry to the touch, lacquer may still exude a distinctive smell that
dissipates only when the polymerization process is fully complete.
Corporeal modeling is a technology requiring that a process be decon-
structed into its constituent units—the material of Schechner’s definition—in
such a way that the student can replicate them with precision and in the right
order so as to internalize their underlying principles. No manual can substi-
tute for human modeling, which requires that instructor and student be in
the same place at the same time. Nor can a printed manual substitute for the
kind of physical intimacy involved in the transmission of embodied knowl-
edge. Kata require prescriptive movements that must be adhered to but also

142
Tacit	Knowledge
sufficient elasticity that each body can make them his or her own. Even when
these are fully internalized, no two people perform in exactly the same way—
whether on the stage or in the potter’s workshop. Building up a memory bank
experientially on the basis of kata acknowledges that change inevitably
emerges from within these accepted constraints. Put differently, imitation
begets innovation.
The importance of learning by doing is underscored in the reminiscences
of the Buddhist woodcarver Takamura Kōun (1852–1934). When the twelve-
year-old Kōun sought to be taken on as an apprentice to a carver of Buddhist
icons, his prospective master asked:
“Have you learned to read and write?” I had learned a little from my mother, but
it didn’t count for much, so I answered, “I haven’t.” Upon which he responded,
“I see. It’s just as well. Writing is unnecessary for a craftsman.” To his next
question, “Have you learned how to use an abacus?” I answered that I didn’t
know that either. “The abacus is also unnecessary. It’s not good for a craftsman
to calculate money. If you become a master sculptor, you can hire other people
to write and calculate. All you have to do is work as hard as you can at carving,”
he said. And with that brief oral exam, I became his apprentice.
8
Despite Kōun’s claims that reading, writing, and use of the abacus were
unnecessary, some level of literacy was the norm among most artisans, both
male and female. Craft practitioners needed computational skills to handle
economic transactions. Mathematical k nowledge was also a prerequisite,
more so in some professions than in others. At the most fundamental level,
makers had to know how to calculate measurements using a ruler. More
complex proportional calculations (kiwari) usi ng specialized tools were
required of carpenters.
9
Developing hand-eye coordination and muscle memory in woodcarv-
ing, like any other craft, was achieved by tedious repetition. Kōun recalled
that initially he was given a flat board into which he chiseled decorative pat-
terns again and again “until the tools broke.”
10
Only then, having developed

143
Tacit	Knowledge
a heightened sensitivity to the properties of wood and dexterity in handling
the chisel, was he allowed to move on to carving three-dimensional figures.
While there is a tendency in a modern world that privileges intellectual over
manual activity to see such repetition as a kind of blind routine or mindless
mechanical action, this kind of traini ng was essential for artisans to develop
the ability to think through materials. Through the accumulated memories
of a “mindful hand,” an experienced carver learned to detect irregularities
and other features in the wood that are invisible to others, and to bring this
tacit knowledge to bear on his work.
Sustained practice under the guidance of an expert authority was also crit-
ical to achieve proficiency in those crafts in which women specialized. Spin-
ning, weaving, and dyeing were important female occupations during the
Heian period (794–1185), but by the seventeenth century, they were no longer
practiced in most elite households. Although still identified as virtuous occu-
pations for women of the warrior class, they had largely devolved to artisanal
professionals. In her account of her warrior-class mother Aoyama Chise’s life,
Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980) relates that Chise tried out the loom at her sew-
ing teacher’s residence, “but it was difficult for one without experience to keep
the movement of her hands and feet coordinated. When Chise moved her
hands her feet stopped, and if she concentrated on her feet, she forgot to move
her hands. As she shifted her attention from one to the other, the yarn would
break.”
11
Sewing, however, remained a critical skill for all.
A print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861) portraying a female body in
motion, with her arm gracefully extended to draw a long thread through the
kimono collar she is stitching, with a tiered sewing box and tools at the
ready, makes visible the needle’s role in the Neo-Confucian moral economy
of body and mind (figure 4.1). Her practice is rooted in a seated posture, but
the bearing of her body changes in relation to the movement of needle and
thread. Through its movements, the needle becomes an extension of her
arm, part of her very being.

Figure 4.1 . Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), Wisdom (Chi), from series Mirror of
Feminine Virtue for a Thousand Ages (Teisō chiyo no kagami), ca. 1843. Woodblock
print, vertical ōban . Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. William Sturgis Bigelow
Collection, 1 1.221 43.

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Tacit	Knowledge
Captioned “wisdom” (chi), it is part of a set of pictures titled Mirror	 of
Eternal	Feminine	Virtue (Teisō chiyo kagami; 1841–43). Wisdom, together with
benevolence, loyalty, decorum, and faith, was one of the five cardinal Con-
fucian virtues. The inscription in the cartouche above reiterates the benefits
that come from the tireless cultivation of this virtue. This image also serves
as a reminder that the female body’s value was measured by the labor it car-
ried out, both in the production of goods and, as the child beside her makes
clear, in the production of offspring.
Through their needlework, women developed shared “techniques of the
body,” bodily experiences that produced habits both shaping and reflecting
the gendered society in which they lived.
12
Most training in the “way of the
needle” began in the home under the guidance of senior members of the
family. Aoyama Chise learned the basics of sewing around age ten by watch-
ing her mother and by making clothes for her doll. Formal study in a needle-
work school run by the wife of a low-ranking samurai commenced around
age thirteen. There, her first assignment was to stitch layers of used fabric
together to make cloths for cleaning; next she moved on to the heavy layered
soles of cotton split-toed socks (tabi).
13
Chōnin families sometimes sent their
daughters to warrior households to learn manners and skills, including
embroidery.
14
In many farming communities, preparing a young woman for
her domestic and marital responsibilities also included spending time in a
young women’s lodge (musume	yado) or needle lodge (ohariya), where vari-
ous forms of female knowledge were shared. As the name ohariya indicates,
sewing was an important part of this communal exchange.
15
There, the so-
cal led ohariko (“needle children”) learned practical skills by watching and
imitating the gestures of more senior members, and in so doing were initi-
ated into their socially mandated gender roles.
Embodied knowledge was paramou nt, but making could also rely on
guidance provided in handwritten and printed manuals of various kinds,
some with professional secrets available only to workshop members and

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others widely distributed through woodblock-printed books. Before lifti ng
needle and thread, a seamstress had to know how best to measure and cut
the fabric so as to prevent waste. Japanese textiles were woven i n standard
size bolts (tan), roughly 28.8 centimeters in width and 10 meters in length,
and making the most of each bolt required careful planning.
16
In the eight-
eenth century, cutting layouts and measurements were included in many
household manuals, and some even included tips on how to handle specific
kinds of fabric.
17
For instance, Onna	manzai	takarabunkō (Collected works on
women’s treasures of a thousand years; 1784) provides the followi ng tip for
handling silk crepe (chirimen): “Chirimen stretches out of shape and is dif-
ficult to sew. Here is a secret tip: run a row of stitching along the edge of the
fabric. Make sure the stitching is absolutely straight. If you then follow that
line while sewing you will not sew crookedly.”
18
Craft making created communities of practice that socialized their
members in many ways. They taught apprentices to value collaboration, to
work to exacting standards, and to adhere to given codes of behavior, and
they provided officially recognized credentials. Yet by the same token, they
involved exclusion as well as inclusion: the rules and restrictions they
imposed acted as barriers for nonmembers and stifled competition. Over
time, they inculcated not only occupational practices but also perceptions
and attitudes, as well as gendered ways of being in the world. These outlooks
were inextricably bound up with shared beliefs and rituals. For sculptors,
the felling of trees; for carpenters, determining the building site, delineat-
ing the perimeter, and raising the ridgepole of a building; and for potters,
the firing of a kiln were all occasions marked by communal prayers and
offerings to Shinto and Buddhist deities. Participation in annual festivals
devoted to the patron deities of the profession further enhanced professional
solidarity. Shōtoku Taishi, the seventh-century prince who “built” Hōry ūji,
for instance, was the object of special veneration among carpenters as well
as others in the building trade. Through Prince Shōtoku, even in the absence

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of a formal genealogy, carpenters could trace their roots to an illustrious
progenitor.
19
On the eighth day of the twelfth month, seamstresses held a
ceremony (hari	kuyō) in which broken needles were offered to the deity of
Awashima along with prayers for success in their work.
20
Some crafts practi-
tioners were further bound by religious affiliation. In 1615 Tokugawa Ieyasu
gave Hon’ami Kōetsu a parcel of land at Takagamine, northwest of Kyoto.
Kōetsu settled there with some fifty households, all followers of the Nichiren
sect of Buddhism, most of them involved in some form of craft activity.
Members of this community included Chaya Shirōjirō, who belonged to the
family that developed the chayazome dyeing technique; Ogata Sōtaku, of the
Kariganeya; lacquerer Tsuchida Sōtaku; brush maker Fudeya Myōki; and
papermaker Kamiya Sōji.
21
The socioreligious meanings of craft making as a collective activity also
extended to women, despite the fact that they did not belong to formal
workshops. A passage in Treasury	of	Greater	Learning	for	Women declares, “Of
the many skills necessary to become a woman, sewing is the most impor-
tant. Along with the inability to wield a writing brush, not being acquainted
with the way of the sewing needle (nuibari	no	 michi) is the source of great
shame for a woman.”
22
The character read michi or d ō (righteous path or road)
is a metaphor for the unity of mind and body—the quest for a higher truth
and the physical activity—involved in craft mastery. Its use here is signifi-
cant in that it gave legitimacy to a routine female practice comparable to that
of other crafts, such as carpentry and painting, that were similarly ascribed
ritual meaning by being characterized as michi or dō.
23
For male practition-
ers, professional identity was at stake; for their female counterparts, sewing
was also a gender-defining ritual. It remained so into the twentieth century.
Reformist educator Ushigome Chie recalled that “in the provinces, until that
time [1910–1920s], the idea remained widespread that skill in sewing deter-
mined a person’s value as a woman. I was bad at sewing and calligraphy as
a child, and was scolded at home ‘You’re not a girl.’ This was not simply a

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Tacit	Knowledge
judgment on skill in sewing, but a view of education that believed morality
was nurtured through mastery of the techniques of what one might call the
Way of Sewing. ”
24
Despite the fact that expertise was understood to lie in embodied skills
rather than in text-based knowledge, by the eighteenth century there was a
large corpus of systematic craft knowledge in circulation in manuscript and
print form.
25
Oral traditions of practice were often handed down as family or
trade secrets (kuden). These had the disadvantage of requiring person-to-
person transmission, and over time, inaccuracies invariably slipped in.
Manuscripts were principally intended for i n-house use and were regarded
as workshop capital that had to be protected, while the printed texts were
intended for public diffusion. But how real was secrecy in the early modern
era, when the ability to travel and pass on information by word of mouth, the
circulation of handwritten manuscripts with trade secrets, and above all,
the availability of printed craft manuals offered practitioners both verbal
and nonverbal opportunities to expand their knowledge base?
The belief that embodied craft practice constitutes a ritual act is closely
bound up with the secrecy surrounding the transmission of professional
expertise from one practitioner to another. In this respect, artisanal succes-
sion participated in a wider culture of secrecy prevailing in other professions
including classical literary studies and Noh theater. While Buddhist suspi-
cions about the inadequacy of language to express higher truths, and “mind
to mind” transmission among monks may have contributed to the impor-
tance attributed to professional secrecy, this outlook has deeper roots in the
crafts.
26
In ancient times, artisans were elevated above ordinary mortals
because their skill was attributed to their ability to channel the mysterious
powers of the divine. Such skill could be dangerous and potentially harmful
if not properly deployed. Therefore it was treated as a secret to be passed on
only to initiates. By the early modern era, however, the line between keep-
ing occupational knowledge secret because it conveyed special insights and

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keeping it secret simply because it was valuable proprietary knowledge
became blurred.
27
Professional expertise was exposed by the very system of
transmission from one generation to another that was supposed to protect it.
Further slippage occurred when specialists, such as the Nishijin weavers
who migrated from Kyoto to Kiryū, carried with them previously privileged
knowledge. The growing systematization of oral tradition in the form of
handwritten manuscripts and printed publications further undermi ned the
maintenance of secrecy. Some artisans even commoditized their expertise
by publishing how-to books. For example, the Illustrated	 Compendium	 of
Clever	Machines (1796) reveals the secret springs, cogs, and other mechanical
devices for making a tea-serving automaton, karakuri	ningy ō.
28
The finished
doll, dressed in silk clothes that hid the mechanism, was activated by plac-
ing a small teabowl in its outstretched hands and setting it on a flat surface,
which it traversed u ntil the teabowl was removed (figures 4.2 and 4.3). Given
that verbal exegesis has little place in knowledge transmission, it is not sur-
prising that the mechanism hidden beneath the clothed figure is conveyed
pictorially with only brief instructions. These were likely to be of use only to
someone already possessed of specialized training. Since the mechanisms
used in automata were similar to those used in Japanese clocks, the crafts-
men who made them were generally specialists in this field.
29
Were such
books intended for practical use or merely to induce a sense of technological
wonder and voyeuristic pleasure in their beholders?
Publications such as these suggest that professional secrecy in the early
modern craft world was far more ambiguous than is commonly held. A fur-
ther example suggesting how merely referring to secrecy may enhance the
value of information can be found in the Sankai	meisan	zue discussion of por-
celain production in Arita quoted earlier. “The overglaze enameling tech-
niques used in this kiln are secrets that cannot be spoken of to outsiders, so
they are not discussed here. However, it is said that the glaze uses glass.”
30
What is noteworthy about this passage is that the author reveals a secret of

Figure 4.2. Hosokawa Hanzō
Yorinao, tea-serving
automaton, from Illustrated
Compendium of Clever Machines
(Karakuri kinmō zui), 1796.
Woodblo ck-printed book.
1998.2–18.055. © Trustees of
the British Museum.

Figure 4.3. Tamaya Shobei IX, tea-serving automaton doll, based on design in Karakuri zui
(1796), 2005. Wood, textile, metal, H 30 cm. 2005.0702.1 © Trustees of the British
Museum.

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Tacit	Knowledge
the glaze even as he emphasizes the importance of concealing it. As Paul
Christopher Johnson, who coined the term “ritualized secretism,” has
observed, “It is through secretism, the circulation of a secret’s inaccessibil-
ity, the words and actions that throw that absence into relief, that a secret’s
power grows, quite independently of whether or not it exists.”
31
material consciousness
Writing in The	Body	of	the	Artisan , a study of artisanal practice in early mod-
ern Europe, Pamela Smith observes that “when artisans looked to nature,
they were interested, not surprisingly, in its powers of generation and
transformation, for they themselves worked with the materials of
nature and struggled to manipulate and control them in order to produce
objects.”
32
While craft makers in early modern Japan experienced the world
in disparate ways, depending on thei r surroundings and chosen medium,
they too brought a heightened material consciousness to the making
process.
33
This did not follow from a love of nature but from practical
considerations.
A spatiotemporal awareness of materials was critical to many profes-
sions. Those who worked with wood needed to know the optimum time and
place to harvest timber, how long to season it to prevent cracking, what type
was best suited to the article into which it was to be formed, and its behavior
when different forces were applied. In his study of Japanese carpentry, Wil-
liam Coaldrake cites the saying that “the carpenter does not buy a piece of
wood but buys the mountain” (ki	o	kawazu	yama	o	kau), a reference to the
importance of knowing the original orientation of the timber to the north or
the south to ensure its suitability to a particular location in a building.
34
Likewise, the lacquer maker’s knowledge of his materials included the
locale, time of harvest, and even the part of the tree from which the sap was
drawn, since these determined its quality: the lower part of the tree, it was
held, produced the best lacquer, and it flowed best in hot weather.
35

154
Tacit	Knowledge
Materials are not defined solely by their objective functional properties:
they may also take on symbolic values that are contingent on the local con-
text. In a culture where the material composition of clothing and home fur-
nishings defined class identities, craft makers had to be keenly aware of the
ascriptive qualities of certain woods, fabrics, and dyes. Objective properties
such as height, girth, and a straight grain were critical to the selection of
structural timbers, but subjective qualities such as color, aroma, texture,
imperfection, and the expression of mutability associated with the aesthet-
ics of the tea ceremony were more i mportant to the decorative interior. In
early modern Japan, the social value ascribed to materials was often bound
up with sumptuary regulations issued periodically by the Tokugawa shogu-
nate and regional dai myo in order to reinforce social distinctions. Because it
was so costly to produce and the dyed cloth so quick to fade, sumptuary laws
restricted the use of the crimson dye made from the petals of the safflower
(benibana) to members of the warrior class. Such regulations acted as both
constraints on and catalysts for material innovation. Ordinances concerning
safflower red, for instance, spurred the use of sappanwood (su ō) imported
from Southeast Asia as a substitute. Experiments with “fake” beni red, in
turn, may have also led to the development of a “fake” purple also made
with sappanwood, using iron as a mordant to fix the dye. This color became
known as Edo Murasaki because of its popularity in that city.
36
Craftwork of all kinds depended on close observation and repeated
experimentation with materials and their interactions. Both cognitive
and manual skills were inextricably entwined in this evidentiary learning
process. Tim Ingold, i n an eloquent challenge to mind-body dualism, has
asserted that “the way of the craftsman . . . is to allow knowledge to grow
from the crucible of our practical and observational engagements with the
beings and things around us . . . . the conduct of thought goes along with,
and continually answers to, the fluxes and flows of the materials with which
we work. These materials think in us, as we think through them.”
37

155
Tacit	Knowledge
Understanding the subtleties of cognitive and corporeal knowledge of
materials among early modern craft makers is challenging since we cannot
observe them directly. However, it is possible to gain considerable insight
into the phenomenology of their practice by observing contemporary pro-
fessionals. Further information may be gleaned by deconstructing finished
works; as fixed traces of material thinking, they can show how ideas were
shaped. Documentary evidence, though rare, can further assist in the
understanding of material consciousness. For most practitioners, it was not
necessary to understand precisely what caused a material to perform in a
certain way or why. What mattered was that they recognized the changes in
their material and acted on them. Swordsmiths recognized very fine details
in their steel, fine structures that appeared in the hamon, or hardened edges,
and other types of crystal structures in the finished steel blades, and these
details guided them in making these blades.
Yoshihara Yoshindo (b. 1943) is a celebrated contemporary swordsmith
whose working methods follow those of his early modern forebears (figure
4.4). A film of him creating a sword from start to finish clearly demonstrates
how makers “think through materials” using tacit knowledge that is made
manifest through the agency of the body.
38
To watch the film is to become
immersed in the heat, noise, sensations, and actions i n the smithy where
Yoshihara and two assistants, using techniques that have changed little
since the Edo period, transform porous lumps of carefully selected semi-
processed steel (tamahagane) into a sword that is as deadly as it is beautiful.
The swordsmith’s body language captures the many seemingly instinctive
decisions he makes in handling his materials. Every movement is purposeful
and exact. The swordsmith’s tools are limited to a forge and assorted tongs
and hammers. He uses no thermometer to gauge the temperature of the
forge, but from long experience of heat felt by his body, the color of the fire,
and the sounds in the forge, he knows when to adjust it using bellows.
He begins by using a long handle welded to a small plate holding stacked

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Tacit	Knowledge
wafer-like pieces of tamahagane and carefully places this into the forge. This
material will eventually form the sword blade. Yoshihara heats it, and when
it is hot enough, he removes it, works on it, and then reinserts it into the
forge. He is constantly monitoring the state of the heat-softened material,
ensuring that it does not overheat but at the same time that it is heated to
high enough temperatures so that the forging activity is effective in shaping
the blade and also in removing any elements other than iron and carbon. He
detects subtle changes in the internal forces of his material visually, through
color and texture, making quick decisions on the basis of an accumulation
of visual memories of how steel looks at various stages of production. These
may not be consciously categori zed but are remembered in such a way that
they can be brought to bear instantaneously as his work proceeds. The
intense concentration Yoshihara brings to this and other manual operations
Figure 4.4 . Sword maker Yoshihara Yoshindo (b. 1943) forging a sword. Photo courtesy
Leon Kapp.

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Tacit	Knowledge
is an indication that he is constantly reflecting on the evolving state of his
materials.
A distinctive feature of Japanese swords—and the source of their excep-
tional strength and flexibility—is that they are made of a hard outer skin and
slightly softer inner core. Each component is fashioned by hammering and
folding the steel over and over again to ensure an even composition of the two
types of steel. In the early stages of the process, hammering serves chiefly to
remove the impurities, distribute the carbon evenly, and lower the carbon
content, which determines the quality of the steel to be used in the finished
sword. During this process, the weight of the tamahagane is gradually
reduced: to produce a sword weighing about 750–950 grams requires three
to four times this weight in steel at the start of this process. Two apprentices
assist Yoshihara in hammering out the impurities. They hammer alternately,
wielding their tools with a syncopated rhythm following their master’s
guidance. He communicates his instructions—to hammer harder or faster—
by tapping his own hammer on the anvil. Auditory sensitivity is an impor-
tant part of the swordsmith’s material awareness since he can’t touch the hot
molten metal but must be guided by the percussive sound it produces.
After the blade has been shaped, the swordsmith brings his knowledge of
the interaction between an insulating clay coating and the steel to help him
design and form the hard cutting edge, or hamon , along with its aesthetics.
The boundary between the body and the hardened cutting edge of every
blade features a distinctive decorative pattern created by coating the roughly
finished sword in a mixture of clay, charcoal, whetstone, and other ingredi-
ents and then carefully heating it in the forge to approximately 950°C . At this
critical, final stage of the operation, the swordsmith works in the dark to bet-
ter detect the subtle changes in color that tell him when the sword has
reached a temperature of about 800°C along the cutting edge and about 750–
760°C above the cutting edge. (The specific temperatures used can vary
among different swordsmiths.) After heating and quenching the sword, it is

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Tacit	Knowledge
roughly polished to reveal the visible hamon or pattern on the hardened edge.
Yoshihara is famous for a pattern likened to a clove blossom, but this is only
one of many patterns used by makers to express their technical skills and
individuality. Like the forging of the sword, the shaping of the pattern on the
surface of the blade reveals its maker’s material consciousness. This is also an
indication that sword making involves a level of craft and aesthetic awareness
that goes beyond what was needed for swords to be effective as weapons.
Not shown in the film is the final polishing of the sword to refine its shape
and sharpen the blade. This is carried out by a specialist in sword polishing
(tōgishi). Like the swordsmith, he brings a deep tacit knowledge of his materi-
als and their interaction. His key tools are a set of stones, each used for a differ-
ent stage of the polishing. (A polisher sharpening a blade may be seen in the
background of the detail of the Rakuchū	rakugaizu screen in figure 2.3 .) So valu-
able were these stones that they were sometimes offered as gifts to feudal lords.
To complete the polishing of a fine sword may take as long as two weeks.
39
Fi nished objects also have the capacity to reveal much about a maker’s
relationship to materials. Makers were constantly engaged in a search for
new materials and new ways of using those already available. Overglaze
enamel was a surface decor that was first deployed in Japan in the early
seventeenth century on porcelain in the Arita kilns. In Kyoto, Ninsei and
workshops in the Eastern Hills soon extended its use to earthenwares and
stonewares produced in Kyoto. (See figure 4.6.) As discussed in chapter 3,
Haritsu pioneered the use of enamel inlays in lacquer. Making them was a
process separate from lacquering since these colorful vitreous inlays had to
be fired separately before being applied to the lacquer. Haritsu’s adaptation
of overglaze enamel to lacquer is an example of the way that makers learned
and responded to one another across media.
Another Haritsu i nnovation was the practice of reproducing the shape
and surface of other materials in lacquer. His simulacra of clay, metal, shell,
and inksticks offer striking indications of a keen interest in and creative

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experimentation with materials. In some cases, this involved separating the
design of the object from its original form and function—as in the translation
of Chinese inksticks into inro. In other cases, the translated object could be
used in much the same way as its model. This is true of a teabowl made of
papier-mâché coated with lacquer imitating a Raku teabowl (figure 4.5). The
bowl is comparable in size, shape, and surface to Raku ware and can, in fact,
serve to prepare and drink tea. A person seeing it for the first time might be
taken in by the masquerade but, upon closer inspection, would notice the
brightly colored, inlaid enamel gourds not used in Raku teabowls and, upon
picking it up, would also feel the difference in weight and texture.
Figure 4.5. Ogawa Haritsu (1663–1747), teabowl made of papier-m âché covered in lacquer
simulating Raku ware, first half 18th c. H .8.3 D.12.1 cm. Nezu Museum, Tokyo.

16 0
Tacit	Knowledge
To convincingly translate Raku ceramics into lacquer required not only
technical skill but also considerable reflection about the nature of these two
very disparate substances. Haritsu had to simulate the physical properties,
texture, and appearance of low-fired and glazed clay characteristic of Raku,
using the skills and techniques of his own medium of lacquer.
40
These mate-
rials required very different material knowledge. While Raku ware is carved
or hand built from clay, a malleable material that hardens through firing in a
kiln, lacquer, a viscous tree sap, is cured by polymerization, a hardening
process carried out by placing the lacquer-covered object in a dust-free cup-
board (as shown in figure 2.11) with an atmosphere with specific relative
humidity and temperature. Lacquer, unlike clay, is a substance that cannot
hold a form on its own until it has polymerized. Consequently, it is generally
applied in many thin layers as a surface coating over a material support, such
as wood, bamboo, or, as here, over papier-mâché, which it renders protec-
tively resistant to water. Unlike clay, which was dipped into a colored slip or
glazed before firing, the liquid lacquer had to be impregnated with an array
of colorants to produce the warm red or deep black effects of Raku. In its raw,
liquid state, the sap of the lac tree—which is related to poison ivy—is a skin
irritant and cannot be manipulated directly with the hands, so its applica-
tion requires the mediation of a spatula, brush, or other tool. While finished
clay vessels register the manual gestures used to form them, the lustrous
polished surface of lacquerwares leave no such traces. Here, however,
Haritsu had to work counterintuitively to produce the appearance of the
handmade, an effect most clearly manifested in the ridged base and spiral
carved into the foot ring that is a hallmark of Raku ware.
As noted above, materials have many properties, some intrinsic and oth-
ers culturally ascribed. In carrying out his material translation, Haritsu was
no doubt aware of the relative social significance of lacquer and clay and its
implications for user reception. Both were culturally charged substances
with recognized places within the tea world, but in the early eighteenth

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century, the viscous substance was primarily used to make containers to
hold powdered tea and incense, not vessels for drinking tea. Unlike lacquer,
the social and cultural distinction of Raku ware did not follow from the
costliness of the material or the amount of time and labor involved in its
manufacture, but rather from its association with the personal taste (konomi)
of Sen no Rikyū (1522–91) and of its principal makers, official potters to the
three tea schools founded by Rikyū’s heirs. By demonstrating his capacity to
make a parodic transformation (mitate), Haritsu playfully threatened the
authority of both the medium and the style of the hereditary line of crafts-
men who had long held a monopoly on patronage ties to the three Senke
schools of tea.
Although Haritsu’s teabowl could serve to drink tea, it is more likely,
given the accounts of his work in the Hirosaki domainal records discussed in
chapter 3, that it was intended as a display piece, a kind of curiosity or mise-
mono. By presenting a Raku teabowl in an unexpected way, Haritsu capital-
ized simultaneously on the appreciation of novelty and of the pleasurable
recognition of something already familiar. By arousing amusement and
curiosity, Haritsu’s lacquer creations also opened up to serious consideration
the material world in which his consumers lived.
Tōkō	hitsuy ō (Essentials for the potter; 1737), a manual of technical secrets
for potters, offers a third lens through which to evaluate craft makers’ con-
sciousness of materials. This handwritten manual was compiled by the pot-
ter Nonomu ra Ninsei (act. 1646–94). Kenzan received it from Ni nsei’s son
Seiemon, under whom he studied for a short time. Kenzan expanded the
repertory of shapes and developed a distinctive painterly approach to deco-
rating stonewares using underglaze and overglaze enamels. His workshops,
first at Narutaki in the northwest hills of Kyoto and later at Chōjiyamachi,
along Nijō, one of its main thoroughfares, produced ceramics in a repertory
of shapes using a variety of techniques: teabowls were wheel-thrown;
flower-shaped bowls were fashioned by drape-molding (pressing a slab of

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Tacit	Knowledge
clay over a wood or bisque-fired clay mold) and then shaping the edges by
hand (figure 4.6); lidded boxes were carefully assembled using slabs of clay;
and square trays were made by press-molding.
41
Kenzan did not make these
forms himself; he had his assistants make them or purchased blanks in
quantity from other potters.
42
However, he transformed these standardized
wares with imaginative pictorial decor using a variety of designs and color-
ful glazes. Applying this decor, like the fabrication of the vessels themselves,
was often left to his assistants.
The Tōkō	hitsuyō testifies to Kenzan’s deep engagement in the study of the
composition of clays and glazes.
43
Because craft making in Japan was largely
a nonverbal process based on tacit knowledge of materials and how they
Figure 4.6. Workshop of Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743), set of five camellia-shaped side dishes
(mukōzuke) with camellia patterns, first half 18th c. Stoneware with white slip and
overglaze enamels, diam. (each) 10.5 cm. Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving; 2019.
2019.193.56a-e . Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

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Tacit	Knowledge
could be worked, the scientific significance of thinking through making has
not been widely acknowledged by modern scholars. And yet, reading Tōk ō
hitsuyo, one may argue that Kenzan engaged in what historian of science
Pamela Smith has called, in another context, the “vernacular science of
matter.”
44
More than a simple recipe book, Tōkō	 hitsuyō records Kenzan’s
experiments and investigative practices with clays and materials for glazes.
It is commonly assumed that the impulse behind such written manuals was
practical—the preservation of successful procedures—but one may argue
that Kenzan’s experimentation was not simply a means to an end but an
expression of his creation of knowledge by thinking through materials.
The entry on the use of white slip, “the greatest secret of the Kenzan
kiln,” offers a case in point. The recipe that Kenzan received from Ninsei for
“benizara style with white painting” stated: “dissolve the finest white clay
from Kurodani, and use it to paint designs on the raw ware. Since the glaze
is transparent with bluish-black mottling, the painting will show up
white.”
45
Kenzan’s own annotations critique this approach:
The technique for white slip is the greatest secret of the Kenzan kiln, so I will
pass it on orally rather than writing it down. I have seen pieces using the
above recipe, but the white does not really emerge as a pure white. Even
when it is made of the finest Kurodani white clay, the color is slightly gray.
Because I thought it impossible to achieve a good white with this mixture, I
attempted to use white clay from Yagi Mountain in Bizen and white clay from
Satsuma. In particular, I used material from Akaiwa village in Kuzu district,
Bungo, which is dug by villagers and used to whiten paper; using this clay I
conceived an original way of painting in white.46
As these comments indicate, Kenzan sought to improve on Ninsei’s recipe
through experimentation. Despite his claim that he would pass on the
secret of his slip orally, in another section of the manual he reveals that he
bisque-fired and then pulverized the white clay before making the slip, with
good results.
47
Yoshihara, Haritsu, and Kenzan were all keenly aware of the

16 4
Tacit	Knowledge
properties of their materials and the changes that could be brought about
through thei r manipulation, but Kenzan was the only one concerned with
systematically articulating why and how they worked.
Craft training for both men and women inculcated socially constructed
bodily dispositions, sensibilities, and skills, so that they acquired a subcon-
scious force. It was through repetition that mundane craft processes and
practices also became invested with ritual meaning. Making involved learn-
ing and knowing with and through materials. Tools, human touch, and body
worked together with mind, acting as channels for transferring intent into
material reality. The ability to work creatively with both the potentialities
and the limitations of their chosen materials underwrote the cultural
authority of makers and the quality of their crafts.

165
Craft making is a dynamic, collaborative activity requiring materials as well
as tools and technologies that extend human capabilities. Together these
elements constitute a complex web of relationships that enables some prac-
tices while constraining others. Material factors significantly determine
what’s possible. The malleability of clay lends itself to applications that stone
does not. Stone has to be worked by cutting away and shaping with force,
but clay can be molded into myriad shapes by hand or on a potter’s wheel
and further transformed through the use of heat technology. To create arti-
cles from clay, stone, or other materials therefore requires intimate knowl-
edge of their intrinsic properties and of the most suitable equipment to work
with them. To be effective, these tools also must work in concert with the
eye, the hand, the body, cognitive processes, and the environment. Manip-
ulating them to transform materials into things further requires skills
perfected through extended observation, iteration, and experimentation,
usually in the context of apprenticeship. Once makers develop the proce-
dures necessary for their specific needs, they may use them over a long
period of time, even while remaining open to adaptations and different
solutions should changing environmental or social conditions such as
cost, shortage of materials, or changing fashions demand them. The ability
chapter five
Technology, Innovation, and
Craft Mastery

16 6
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
to recognize and act on both existing and new possibilities in materials,
tools, and technologies is a critical constituent of craft mastery.
Technology and innovation are not commonly associated with early
modern crafts in the eyes of many people since crafts are assumed to be
“handmade” and their makers bound to “tradition.” Moreover, while aca-
demic historians have pointed out how craft making practices generated
new knowledge, this is not widely acknowledged in popular writings. Yet
technology as the ensemble of knowledge, skills, techniques, and thought
processes brought to bear in the design and execution of a particular project
was integral to most craft practice. In this broad sense of the term, the early
modern workshop may be characterized as a technology—a way of organiz-
ing skilled personnel and providing them with the requisite material
resources and equipment to carry out a given endeavor efficiently. Likewise,
the breeding of silkworms to produce improved strai ns with the qualities
most desirable for silk production may also be considered a technology.
1
Innovation was equally critical to successful craft practice. While there
is no denying that many practices were passed down over the generations,
this was not simply because they were “time-honored,” as is commonly
assumed, but because they were effective at that particular time and in that
particular place. Many factors came into play in the decision to maintain the
status quo. Risk and uncertainty inevitably accompanied efforts to bring
change to established craft practices. Innovation had the potential to revi-
talize craft production, but it could also cause internal workshop dissent as
well as wider social disruptions, as illustrated by the tensions between Kyoto
and Kiryū weavers when the latter developed more efficient technology that
challenged Kyoto’s supremacy in the field. Nonetheless, when new materi-
als, tools, and technologies became available, they were generally tested,
adapted, and, over ti me, adopted. The significance of their adoption may be
overlooked, however, because they brought about incremental rather than
radical changes. This chapter considers some of the technologies introduced

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
to and diffused in Japan over the course of the early modern era, the cultural
contingencies that conditioned thei r adoption, and the changes that they
helped to bring about.
technological transfer from
continental asia and beyond
Technologies, like things, have social lives involving processes of domesti-
cation, legitimation, and meaning through which they become integrated
into or replace other artisanal practices. Many innovations in early modern
crafts practices followed from technological transfers from continental Asia
and their subsequent diffusion from one region to another within Japan.
Transfers across such long distances between disparate cultures were
exceedingly complex processes involving natu ral resources, tools, equip-
ment, and skills, as well as mediation by merchants and translators. Like the
climbing kiln, discussed below, diffusion was often centripetal, from the
periphery to metropolitan centers. The southern island of Kyushu, especially
the port city of Nagasaki, with its cosmopolitan population of Chinese,
Koreans, and Dutch, was the gateway for the introduction of many technol-
ogies, but their subsequent paths of transmission are often difficult to trace.
Knowledge flows from China and Korea came chiefly in the form of human
migration and equipment and, less often, woodblock-printed books. Korean
potters arrived in Japan as captives in the wake of Hideyoshi’s invasions of
Korea; the origins of many late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century
kilns in Kyushu are linked to Korean potters. Migration from China was
spurred by political unrest there and by the welcome given educated immi-
grants by various daimyo. Monks of the Obaku (in Chinese, Huangbo) sect
who fled after the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644 are thought to have
brought with them specialists in various crafts. Their temples in Nagasaki;
in Uji, near Kyoto; and even in northern Hirosaki, the castle town of the
Tsugaru daimyo, were i nfluential centers for the dissemi nation of Chinese

16 8
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
culture.
2
Apocryphal stories about Chinese and Korean immigrants who
“invented” a particular technology abound, but these culture heroes should
be understood as proxies for innovations that were successfully imple-
mented only after experimentation on the part of several generations of craft
specialists.
The d rawloom and the climbing kiln illustrate the synergy of hu man,
material, and technical resources required for successful technological
transfer. The ascendancy of Kyoto’s Nishijin weavers followed from their
adoption of a drawloom with a pattern tower known as a figure harness
(sorahikibata or, in recognition of its Chinese origin, karahikibata ). Japanese
weavers who had fled Kyoto for Sakai during the Warring States era acquired
the technology and requisite skills from Chinese weavers in that port city.
The drawloom was operated by two people, one doing the weaving and
another sitting on the tower, manually drawing the warp threads to create
the figured designs according to the calls by the master weaver. (See figure
3.3 .) Their operation required a great deal of skill, time, and expertise, as
wel l as coordination between master and assistant. Unlike the backstrap
loom (izaribata) and treadle loom (takabata) that had been in use earlier, the
drawloom made it possible to produce complex patterned silk brocades of
the type imported from Ming China.
3
The multichambered climbing kiln (noborigama), introduced from the
Korean peninsula, was first used in Karatsu in Kyushu, an early center of
stoneware production, and, sometime between 1600 and 1630, in the Mino
region of modern-day Gifu Prefecture. Later the climbing kiln was adopted
in other regions as well (figure 5.1). This kiln was an improvement over the
so-called “great kiln” or ōgama , a large single-chambered kiln built into a
slope and supported by pillars, with a side opening for loading and unload-
ing, which had been in use since around 1500. The noborigama, built on a
slope with multiple small chambers stoked individually and connected by
vents, allowed potters to fire at higher temperatures and more efficiently by

16 9
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
taking advantage of the updraft that drew the flames from one chamber to
the next. The earliest one outside of Ky ushu, at Motoyashiki in Mino, with
thirteen chambers and measuring more than twenty-five meters in length,
speaks to the large quantities of vessels that could be fired simultaneously.
4
The implementation of both these technologies was made possible by an
extensive network of material and immaterial forces. This included raw
materials and the means to transport them; those who knew how to build
the looms and kilns; those with the specialized skills to operate them and a
cadre of apprentices to assist them; a suitable environment in which to set
up operations; one or more i ndividuals to manage operations; funds to build
the kilns and looms; institutions to protect the privileged knowledge they
embodied; the mediation of merchants and commercial strategies to get the
finished goods from workshop to market; and, of course, consumers willing
Figure 5.1 . Sixteen-chamber climbing kiln (noborigama) in use from 1832 until 1965,
Nagatani-en, Mie Prefecture. Photo courtesy Nagatani-en .

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
to exchange resources for the goods. The operations of the domainal porce-
lain kilns in Arita well illustrate this nexus. As Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere
has detailed in her study of the birth of Japanese porcelain, there was a clear
division of labor and strict hierarchy in these official kilns. Different officials
were responsible for supervising the mining of the porcelain stone at Izumi-
yama and for the actual mining operations. Hired miners extracted the
stone. The man who supervised the firing was at the top of the hierarchy in
the making process, with vessel formers, designated saikunin , painters, and
apprentices working beneath him. All these positions required a license.
Protection of resources and of trade secrets was also critical to the continu-
ing success of the operation.
5
In the process of diffusion, imported technologies were often reinter-
preted in response to local materials and existing practices. Papermaking
was likely introduced from China in the seventh century, but at some point
makers in Japan discovered that adding neri , a binder made from the root of
tororo-ai , a species of hibiscus, to the macerated kōzo pulp and water gave it
a smooth consistency, much as an egg yolk does when added to vinegar and
oil. This viscous substance helped to make for more even distribution of the
pulp du ri ng the couching process.
6
The use of neri distinguishes Japanese
paper from its Chinese counterpart. This innovation did not come about as
the result of a “eureka moment” but rather from recognition of a shortcom-
ing in the existing method and the devising of a solution, probably over
ti me. Such innovations speak to the curiosity, ingenuity, and tacit knowl-
edge that rural papermakers brought to their practice.
Not all new technologies emerged from functional needs. Some arose from
a desire to replace imported luxuries with domestic ones and, because of the
expense involved, were initially carried out under the auspices of feudal lords.
Import substitution often required reverse engineering—deducing the method
of manufacture from finished works—and resulted in processes and products
that were creative imitations of their models. The decor on dishes made in the

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
Nabeshima domainal kilns may have drawn on the doucai technique of com-
bining underglaze blue with overglaze enamels, but they were transformed by
acts of imaginative recreation on the part of their Japanese makers. (See figure
2.17.) Likewise, late Ming and Qing lacquers with inlays made of a variety of
precious materials may have provided a source of inspiration for Haritsu’s
innovative techniques, as scholar Tahira Namiko and others have proposed,
but these wares bear only a faint resemblance to their Chinese counterparts.
7
Experiments with new technologies developed to replicate luxury
imports whose original materials and methods of manufacture were
unknown were not always successful. Although import substitutes could
lower the cost of desirable goods, sometimes these were of inferior quality.
This was true initially of domestically produced sarasa , made in imitation of
the much sought-after Indian and Southeast Asian cotton chintzes with
colorful printed patterns that were first introduced by Portuguese and Span-
ish traders in the sixteenth century.
8
Imported sarasa was so precious that it
was used chiefly for making pouches for tea ceremony utensils, tobacco, and
other small articles (figure 5.2). Domestic production of sarasa (often referred
to as wa	sarasa to distinguish it from imports) is thought to have started in
Kyushu under the auspices of the Nabeshima, but by the mid-seventeenth
century it had spread to Kyoto and Osaka.
9
Jinrin	kinmō	zui (1690) mentions
sarasa among the many forms of dyeing practiced at the time.
10
Wakan	sansai
zue (Illustrated Sino-Japanese encyclopedia; 1712), compiled by Terashima
Ryōan shortly thereafter, criticizes these local products, claiming that the
floral motifs on domestically produced sarasa easily fade when washed. The
problem was apparently the i nability to fix the red madder (akane) dye. By
the end of the century, however, persimmon tannin was found to be an
effective mordant. This technical information was later made public in
Sarasa	benran (Compendium of sarasa designs), published in 1778.
11
While direct transmission through migration both from the continent
and within the archipelago was the more powerful driver of technological

Figure 5.2. Pouch of printed cotton cloth, probably imported from India,
known in Japan as sarasa , first half of 19th c. H. O. Havemeyer Collection
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929. 29.100.812. Metropolitan
Museum of Art, NY.

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
innovation, printed books also played some role. The ci rculation of Song
Yingxing’s well-illustrated Tiangong	 kaiwu (The works of heaven and the
inception of things; 1637), especially after a Japanese edition was published
in 1770, is evidence of widespread interest i n craft technology in the eight-
eenth century.
12
It covers topics such as agriculture, sericulture and textile
production, porcelain, metallurgy, papermaking, ink making, and jade pol-
ishing. It was not a manual written by a craftsman for other craftsmen but
was the creation of a scholarly observer who set out his view that “allocat[ing]
a crucial role to issues that we identify as ‘technological’ and ‘scientific’ was
critical to world order.”
13
Cu riously, this encyclopedic text was largely for-
gotten in China. The Japanese edition, Tenkō	kaibutsu , was based on a copy of
the original owned by Kimura Kenkadō.
14
The illustrations were important
components of its success in Japan because they helped to convey ideas that
might not be understood from the text alone.
While Tenkō	kaibutsu provided a general overview of various technolo-
gies, to carry out most of the procedures described required the manufac-
ture of specialized equipment and someone to teach its use (figure 5.3). The
text accompanying the illustration from the lengthy section on ceramics
reproduced here, for instance, tells the reader that “small-mouthed jars [like
large-mouthed ones] are also made in two sections; in piecing them together,
however, wooden pegs cannot be used [on the interior], but instead a ring-
shaped circular tile, which has been prefired in another kiln, is placed inside
[where the seam is]. The joint is then reinforced on the outside of the jar with
wooden pegs.”
15
Transforming these words and the accompanying illustra-
tions into practical reality was challenging. Despite the technical detail pro-
vided, only a highly skilled professional who already k new how to throw
large pots and then assemble the two parts as directed could carry out the
procedures.
With its aim of “revealing the nature of things” within a Neo-Confucian
framework, Tenkō	kaibutsu helped to validate artisanal knowledge and the

Figure 5.3. Making large pots, from Exploitation of the Works of Nature (Tenkō
kaibutsu; 1637), Japanese edition 1771. Woodblock-printed book. National
Diet Library, Tokyo.

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
tacit skills that followed from firsthand engagement with the material world
among the ruling elite. It also fostered increasing codification of specialized
knowledge in print, giving rise to a plethora of works on material produc-
tion. Its influence is apparent, as noted in chapter 2, in the emphasis on tools
and technologies in publications about famous products such as Sankai
meisan	zue (Illustrated famous products of mountain and sea; 1799). While it
may have been a source of inspiration for Japanese publications devoted to
technology, it is difficult to assess its influence on actual craft practice.
Tao	 shuo (Discussions on ceramics), by scholar-bureaucrat Zhu Yan, is
another Chinese text that gained circulation through a Japanese translation.
It provides a comprehensive history of ceramics in China, including a great
deal of technical information about porcelains made in the imperial kilns at
Jingdezhen. Published in China in 1794, it was first issued in a Japanese
translation, Tō setsu , in 1807. Earlier, the potter Aoki Mokubei (1767–1833) had
begun translating it, but he was still making revisions in 1807, and his
version was published only posthumously in 1835. Underscoring the
importance of social networks in the circulation of knowledge, Mokubei’s
translation was based on a copy of the original owned by Kimura Kenkadō,
whose salon he frequented. Mokubei was of a scholarly disposition, knowl-
edgeable in Chinese and skilled as a painter and a calligrapher, but also had
some practical knowledge of ceramics since he studied with the Kyoto potter
Okuda Eisen (1753–1811).
16
Translations by craft practitioners such as Mokubei
are rare because few possessed the requisite linguistic skills. Because of its
more specialized subject matter, Tōsetsu did not achieve the wide readership
of Tenkō	kaibutsu .
During the early modern era, some European technologies were also
successfully acculturated through local manufacture. Exotic manufactured
goods—Indian printed cotton, Chinese porcelain, and European glass, to
name only a few—were prestige symbols that found their way into the lives
of ordinary people largely through import substitutes. Japanese glass was

176
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
first manufactured in Nagasaki, but the techniques subsequently spread to
Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo. By the late eighteenth century, glass had become
part of everyday life primarily through spectacles, visual aids that are worn
by many craftsmen portrayed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
sources. (See figures 2.11 and 2.18.) That this craft elicited much public curi-
osity is suggested by the inclusion of a glassblower and his assistant at work
at his furnace in Saiga	shokunin	burui. The assistant is using a tube to draw
molten glass from a metal container atop the furnace while his master blows
a bottle shape at the end of his tube. Both hold pincers for cutting the bottle
from the holder. Under the heading biidoro, the Portuguese-derived word for
glass, the accompanying text informs the reader that “glass is not a native
product. It was brought from abroad. The Dutch introduced its manufacture”
(figure 5.4). Flasks, beakers, and bottles like those shown here were still too
costly to be available beyond the elite, but women’s hair ornaments made of
glass were very fashionable.
17
A haiku by the poet-painter Yosa Buson (1716–
1783) likening glassblowing to the autumn wind is a further indication of the
way that this technology became part of the eighteenth-century cultural
imaginary.
18
Technologies introduced from Europe also had an impact in rural areas,
most notably in sericultu re. One of early modern Japan’s most i mportant
industries, sericulture benefited from financial and technical support from
many domainal authorities. Tsugaru Nobumasa, who fostered the develop-
ment of lacquer plantations, also advocated planting mulberry trees, brought
in silk specialists from Kyoto to advise local farmers, and sponsored the pub-
lication of the first sericulture manual.
19
However, not al l improvements in
this labor-i ntensive field, where good hygiene, ventilation, feeding, and
temperature control were critical, came about from the top down. Members
of farm households who had spent a lifetime living in close proximity to
silkworms also led innovations that fulfilled unaddressed needs or solved
problems. In the early nineteenth centu ry, a silk farmer named Nakamura

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
Zen’emon, drawing on long personal experience, recognized the potential of
thermometers introduced to Japan by the Dutch to regulate the temperature
in silkworm cultivation. Experimenting until he had developed a thermom-
eter expressly for this purpose, he determined that the best results followed
from maintaining the eggs at a higher temperature and then lowering it once
the pupae had emerged. In 1849 he published his findings in a practical man-
ual for other silkworm farmers.
20
Knowledge flows alone are not su fficient to bring about technological
change, of course. For new knowledge to be implemented requires creative,
entrepreneurial individuals or groups to recognize the value of that knowl-
edge and act upon it. Technology is context dependent, with local conditions
informing such choices and actions. A new technology will be adopted or
displace an existing one only if it presents a clear advantage. Hiraga Gennai’s
efforts to raise sheep for wool failed because the climate and the environ-
ment were ill-suited to sheep farming, and woolen cloth, though a prestige
material, did not lend itself as well as cotton and silk to indigenous attire.
Likewise, the use of European and Korean printing presses, with movable
metal and wooden type, respectively, did not catch on because they were
neither cost effective nor suited to the needs of a culture that ascribed great
importance to reproducing the individual calligraphic hand. Woodblock
printing could accomplish this more efficiently, cheaply, and successfully.
As a result of these circumstances, Japan’s printing revolution looked very
different from that of Europe.
standardization and differentiation
Many historians once held that “technologies perform the same work more
or less efficiently in every society” and that, “broadly speaking, the same
technologies are significant in every society.”
21
In this view, the technologies
that retrospectively seem most significant to us today are those that have
contributed to modern i ndustrial capitalism. Most scholars of China and

Figure 5.4 . Tachibana Minkō
(act. 1764–72), Glassblower,
from Various Classes of Artisans in
Colored Pictures (Saiga shokunin
burui). Woodblock- and
stencil-printed illustrated book.
1770. 1979,0305,0.118.1 . ©
Trustees of the British Museum.

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
Japan, however, now argue that the history of technology must be investi-
gated in the context of local culture. One of the great insights of Francesca
Bray, a historian of Chinese science and technology, is to show that attitudes
toward what she calls “ritual technologies” are not the result of irrational
superstition but are founded on a cosmology that ensured order in the social
world. The Chinese beliefs and practices commonly known as feng	 shui
(“wind and water”), for instance, include principles of understanding energy
flows and topography that have a bearing on the proper siting and configura-
tion of a house. Carpenters of necessity had to be familiar with these princi-
ples since even the use of the carpenter’s rule, which was marked with lucky
and unlucky units, involved cosmological computations. If a house was to
bring health, wealth, and happiness to its inhabitants, its design and siting
required the use of such ritual technology.
22
Feng	shui technologies were as
important in architectural and urban planning in Japan as in China, where
the rituals held on the occasion of ground breaking, ridge raising, and com-
pletion of a building all embraced elements of geomantic thinking.
Historian Tessa Morris-Suzuki has emphasized the political, economic,
and environmental conditions that led technological innovations in early
modern Japan in directions that were distinctly different from but in no way
inferior to those in Europe.
Labour-saving innovation, in the eighteenth-century [European] context,
meant standardization, economies of scale and the introduction of more
productive machinery. These strategies, however, made little sense in a
country where restrictions on overseas trade and a stable population size
limited the growth of markets, and where a complex status system frag-
mented the domestic market into a mosaic of small niches. Rather than
attempting large-scale production of standardized goods, it was more profit-
able to pursue what would now be called product differentiation: creating
distinctive local specialties, often using a particular local raw material, and
aimed at a specific segment of the social order.23

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Her observations require some qualification. While standardization and
economies of scale did not develop on the order of those in Europe, such prac-
tices were by no means unknown in Japan. The design of Kōdaiji lacquerware
and of the dowry set made for Chiyohime discussed in chapter 3 was based on
standardized patterns arranged in various ways. Codification and standardi-
zation were conspicuous features of early modern building practices. Modu-
lar timber-frame construction comprised of components assembled with
mortise and tenon joints was the norm for residential and religious architec-
ture across the archipelago. The ken , the bay or space between two pillars,
was the standard unit of measurement for determining the proportions of
such buildings. A ken was si x shaku , a unit of length roughly equivalent to
thirty centimeters that, with further subdivisions into sun and bu , was com-
mon to most craft practices. Proportionality in buildings was established
according to principles known as kiwari that were codified in the seventeenth
century. The use of tatami mats whose dimensions governed the horizontal
proportions of rooms further contributed to spatial modularity. Tatami were
made in standard sizes, with the length twice the width, although the actual
dimensions differed slightly in the Kyoto and Edo regions. (The former was
.95 5 by 1.91 meters, while the latter was .88 by 1.76 meters.) The tatami deter-
mined room area as well as the dimensions of furnishings, such as tansu . This
modular design system based on kiwari proportions and tatami helped to
achieve savings by reducing design costs as well as by making it possible to
prefabricate components of a structure in a workshop and then transport and
assemble them at a chosen building site. Both assembling and disassembling
them was quite straightforward since the structural timbers could be fitted
together using mortise and tenon members.
Even as these efficiencies were common practice i n all major building
projects, new tools and techniques were introduced over the course of the
early modern era that intensified labor and required increasingly specialized
knowledge and skills. For instance, saws, adzes, hammers, chisels, and

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
planes of various kinds are common to most woodworking cultures, but in
Japan, carpenters’ tools underwent a process of increasing specialization
involving many incremental changes, with the result that today they
number around 180 items, far more than the 60 or so typical of other parts of
the world.
24
The introduction of new tools had an impact on the proliferation
of highly specialized joinery techniques as well (figure 5.5). A study by mas-
ter carpenter Seike Kiyoshi describes forty-eight, but during the early mod-
ern era several hundred joinery techniques were in use.
25
These develop-
ments were driven not by the desire to save time and labor but by the
prioritization of technical mastery for its own sake. Tour-de-force displays
of technique simultaneously signaled the talents of makers and the status,
discerning taste, and wealth of their patrons.
Figure 5.5. Full-scale model of interlocking wood bracketing complex in Engakuji Relic
Hall (Shariden). Original late 16th c. Model, 20th c. Photo © Takenaka Carpentry Tools
Museum, Kobe.

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Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
Architecture was a site where the dynamics of political power played out
most dramatically, but other highly visible forms of material culture also
served as potent tools for social engineering. Indeed, what modern econo-
mists call “product differentiation” became integral to production through
sumptuary laws that dictated consumption practices to ensure that those of
lower status would remain visually distinct from those of higher orders.
Class determi ned the location, size, style, materials, techniques, and decor
of housing. Even the forms of gateways of warrior residences were subject to
regulation.
26
An order of 1719 prohibits commoners from wearing wool capes,
having household articles with gold lacquer decoration, using gold and
silver leaf in their houses, and building three-story houses, among other
things.
27
While sumptuary laws may have constrained creativity in some crafts,
in others they were catalysts for innovation. Enterprising textile dyers
became particularly adept at circumventing their restrictions. As already
noted in chapter 4, when the use of beni , the red dye made from safflower,
was banned among commoners, dyers experimented with sappanwood and
in the process developed a fashionable new purple known as Edo Murasaki.
Some scholars believe that the 1682 and 1683 edicts forbidding commoners
from wearing silk robes with allover kanoko	shibori designs may have stimu-
lated the adoption of stenciled imitation tie-dye (kata	 kanoko) to produce
these fashionable fawn-spotted patterns (figure 5.6). Others argue that this
development arose as a way of meeting commoner demand for this type of
pattern more cheaply and swiftly.
28
Imitation of kanoko	 shibori involved
applying resist paste through a stencil and then dip-dyeing the fabric. When
the dye was dry, the paste was removed, leaving the pattern of white dots
characteristic of kanoko	shibori. As can be seen in the design of the holly-
hocks on the outer robe illustrated here, stenciling produces a more regular
pattern lacking in the three-dimensionality and blurring of its hand-tied
counterpart.

Figure 5.6. Stencil-printed imitation tie-dyed (kata kanoko shibori ) and embroidered outer
kimono (furisode), detail, of silk with hollyhock, flowers, and cloud pattern; early 19th c.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Costume Council Fund (ACC 1999.177.2).

185
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
While sumptuary laws, though often flouted, played a considerable role,
market forces were far more powerful drivers of product differentiation.
Increased and accelerated capacity to make ceramics and the concomitant
desire to display the difference between one-off and mass-produced articles
created a heightened awareness of facture. Kenzan’s ceramics, though pro-
duced serially using molds, had the appearance of singular works, suggesting
the way that product standardization and differentiation could go hand in
hand. Molds made possible fast and uniform production of dishes and bowls.
Each piece was made unique, however, by the surface design, color, and glaze
even though the motifs were sometimes created with the aid of stencils. Ken-
zan’s spirited designs further lifted the distinction of ceramics through their
appropriation of the aura of painting, poetry, and calligraphy. In Narutaki, he
collaborated with his brother Kōrin in the decoration of standardized square
trays with designs painted using iron oxide that evoked the motifs and effects
of monochrome ink painting. Another trademark product of his kilns was
sets of square earthenware trays with low rims, each painted in underglaze
enamels on one side with bird and flower motifs associated with the twelve
months and, on the other, the corresponding thirty-one-syllable waka poem
by classical poet Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) (figure 5.7).
Unlike the largely anonymous production in other locales, Kenzan
ceramics capitalized on the cachet of their celebrated designer-maker. They
were among the first commercial ceramics to be branded with the name of
the creative individual who made them. In reality, however, the Kenzan sig-
nature, which continued to figure conspicuously on works made by his suc-
cessors and imitators, was a mark of a house style that merely evoked the
hand of this designer-maker.
29
Recognized throughout the country as
famous products of Kyoto (meibutsu or meisan), Kenzan-yaki became highly
desirable souveni rs and gifts from the imperial capital.
The interplay of local materials and evolving technologies was also a fac-
tor in the ongoing success of many famous products (meibutsu ). Displays of

Figure 5.7. Ogata Kenzan
(1663–1743), plates of the
twelve lunar months, early
18th c. Earthenware with
underglaze enamels. 1 .27 ×
20.32×17.78cm(1⁄2×8×7
in.). Purchased with funds
provided by the Japan
Business Association and
the Far Eastern Council (M.
84.64.1–1 2). L os A ngeles
County Museum of Art.

188
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
technical virtuosity achieved through the introduction of increasingly com-
plex and ingenious weaving and dyeing techniques became a key marketing
strategy in the highly competitive field of regional textile design. Unlike
Kyoto, which specialized in shibori -dyed silk, the towns of Arimatsu and,
later, nearby Narumi (in modern Aichi Prefecture), taking advantage of the
cultivation, spinning, and weaving of cotton in the region, developed a
niche market by specializing in cotton shibori. Like so many other local
industries, Arimatsu shibori developed under the sponsorship of the local
daimyo, the Owari branch of the Tokugawa. The local specialty, hand towels
(tenugui) and cotton robes for the bath (yukata ) dyed in indigo blue, became
popular among travelers who traveled along the Tōkaidō Road. A print of the
Narumi post station by Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865), in his series Fifty-
Three	Pairings	for	the	Tōkaidō	Road , depicts a woman at work, tying the little
bundles of fabric in preparation for dyeing, with samples of finished textiles
on view behind her (figure 5.8). By 1845, when this pri nt was published,
however, the binding technique shown here had been augmented by a host
of technical innovations that made possible a striking range of novel decora-
tive effects. Unusually, the identity and gender of one of the individuals who
introduced them have been recorded. The wife of a doctor named Miura
Genchū who settled in Arimatsu in 1650 is said to have introduced a looped
binding technique using a metal hook that held the fabric taut during bind-
ing and made it possible to shape it into even pleats. This simple tool acceler-
ated the binding process and also made it possible to create intricate, very
closely bound patterns. Later, Suzuki Kanezō (b. 1837–?), in a striking depar-
ture from conventional practice, devised an i ngenious method of creating
diagonal patterns by wrapping cloth around a long pole, pushing it into tight
folds, and then immersing it in the dye vat. The pattern created in this way
was called “storm,” or arashi	shibori , because of the diagonal lines’ resem-
blance to wind-driven rain. Although fashionable already in the late years of
Tokugawa rule, arashi	shibori enjoyed great popularity in the Meiji era.
30

Figure 5.8. Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865), “Narumi: Woman Doing
Arimatsu Shibori Tie-Dyeing,” from series Fifty-Three Pairings for the Tōkaid ō
Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan ts ui); 1845–46; woodblo ck print; vertical oban .
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, 11.30436.

190
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
Pri nt media, of course, also played a considerable role in the promotion
of many innovations, both urban and rural. Woodblock prints and illus-
trated books such as those discussed in chapter 2 drew attention to the locale
where crafts were produced, the use of resources specific to that region, the
techniques used in their manufacture, and the identity of their makers in
ways that identified them as different from others of the same type. A meib-
utsu ’s status as an authentic cultural object also depended on a web of local
historical or literary associations and resonances. Whatever connotations
the meibutsu evoked, the label served as a niche marketing tool that gave the
product a reputation allowi ng it to be sold at a premium price compared to
similar products.
A rare portrayal by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) of a named female
craft maker in a series of fan pri nts titled A	Compendium	 of	Famous	Artisans
(Meiyo shokunin zukushi no uchi; 1843–47) illustrates the role of such
diverse factors in the reputation of Roku combs (figure 5.9).
31
The print’s sub-
ject is a young woman named Roku (also known by the honorific Oroku)
who is shown carving a wooden comb with a handsaw. According to the
caption, Roku, the devoted daughter of poverty-stricken parents, prayed to
the god of Suwa for assistance. Her prayers were answered when the deity
recommended that she carve combs from minebari —Asian alder, a wood in
plentiful supply in the mountain passes near the village where she lived—
and sell them to travelers on the Kisokaidō Road. According to other versions
of the origin story, combing her hair repeatedly with these combs alleviated
the chronic headaches from which Oroku suffered.
Combs distinguished by their exceptionally fine teeth carved from Asian
alder had been sold at the mountainous Narai post station on the Kiso Road
since the Kyōhō era (1716–36). Their nationwide celebrity, however, dates to
the first decade of the nineteenth century, when the prolific writer and
influential cultural luminary Ota Nanpō mentioned them in his 1802 trave-
logue and shortly thereafter his associate Santo Kyōden (1761–1816) wrote a

191
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
Figure 5.9. Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), “Kiso no Oroku Combs,” from series Compendium	of
Famous	Artisans (Meiyo shokunin zukushi no uchi), 1843–47. Fan-shaped woodblock print. Leicester
Harnsworth Gift. E .2918–1913. © Victoria and Albert Museum.
play called Orokugushi	 Kiso	 no	 Adauchi (Oroku combs and revenge in Kiso;
1807) in which they figure. The story of Oroku was further elaborated in an
1812 novel by a third literary star, Kyokutei Bakin, that was turned into the
kabuki play Aoto	 zōshi (Book of Aoto) in 1846. Narratives like these made
generic products part of the popular social and cultural fabric through a
process of singularization. Buyers, faced with a range of choices among geo-
graphically distinct products, welcomed fashionable goods that were pub-
licly certified in this way. Even as fine crafts resulted from the appropriation,

192
Technology,	Innovation ,	Craft	Mastery
adaptation, and adoption of new techniques, they were also dependent on
prints, popular literature, and theater to publicize and legitimize their value.
Craft practitioners were not embodiments of tenacious traditions. They
were flesh and blood problem solvers who used available materials, techni-
cal know-how, and ingenuity to adapt to changing environmental, social,
economic, and political circumstances. While Japan was the beneficiary of
many technologies i ntroduced from continental Asia, thei r adoption was
never guaranteed or a matter of simple imitation, but rather of creative adap-
tation. Innovation is often framed as a disruption to the old order, but most
inventions did not burst onto the scene, sweeping away older skills; rather,
they were small-scale, incremental adaptations of existing practices. Nor
were they all successful. New techniques often coexisted and mingled with
older ones. Potters continued to make unglazed earthenware vessels even
after high-fired porcelain had been developed, each for a different market.
Time-honored techniques were often put to new purposes, as in the case of
stencil printing, an ancient technique of replication used on textiles and
paper that was adapted to create repeat patterns on ceramics as well as lac-
quer. Sumptuary regulations and market conditions were drivers of such
changes, generating innovations with both quantitative and qualitative
aspects. In order to reach a growing commoner consumer base, new materi-
als, tools, and techniques were introduced with an eye toward labor, cost
efficiency, and profit. However, for some master carpenters or for Kenzan,
the desi re to improve methods of production quantitatively that resulted in
codification and standardization coexisted with the use of quality materials,
virtuosic techniques, or processes of individuation that set the resulting
crafts apart from their generic counterparts. These mutually constitutive
processes were markers of early modern craft mastery.

193
A focus on the material, sociological, physiological, and technical aspects
of making practices adds to our understanding of early modern Japanese
crafts by helping to see patterns of thought and action within the wider
culture of the times. This approach offers a coherent framework for appreci-
ating the vitality of crafts in relation to a constellation of disparate but
interconnected factors. It underscores that crafts emerge from cooperative
and, i nevitably, competitive expressive env ironments involvi ng human
but also nonhuman forces. There is enormous diversity in early modern
crafts, but this holistic approach also helps us to see cross-modal common-
alities that transcend distinctions between urban and rural, known and
unknown craftspeople.
Scholarly writings about early modern Japan privilege its culture of
visuality. The many publications depicting craft professionals at work are
examples of the era’s preoccupation with creating order and k nowledge of
the visible world through its pictorialization. Yet this emphasis on learning
by looking fails to acknowledge the degree to which the circulation of
knowledge also took the form of and unfolded from material things. The
hand was as important as the eye in the perceptual and mental operations
carried out in the process of craft making. As sumptuary laws with minute
regulations concerning materials, texture, and methods of manufacture tes-
tify, the haptic was equally so in crafts consumption.
Conclusion

194
Conclusion
It is important to be alive to the role of the dialogic relationships between
humans and the raw materials with which they work. To give form to the
myriad varieties of crafts that flourished during the early modern era, mak-
ers joined forces and worked with nature. Just as makers made demands of
materials, so too materials made demands of them. The resulting porcelains,
textiles, or lacquers were both products and producers of changing relation-
ships with the shared natural environment. Early modern craft makers
understood the consequences of their actions in and on the natural world,
because they had to work with the resources available to them and readjust
their practice when circumstances changed. They were sensitive to the
transformative and generative powers of their chosen materials and how to
put these to best use with suitable tools and technologies.
Craft making is as much a social process as one involving the transfor-
mation of materials, one requi ring not only individuals with highly devel-
oped skills but also cooperation, shared values, and mutual trust, even when
conditions of inequality prevailed. The ie system shaped and reflected this
need, regulating human interactions and guiding individuals through train-
ing and professional life beyond. It was through training in a household or a
formal workshop that makers developed the tacit knowledge and the man-
ual dexterity, as well as a sense of the collective self, that were required in
early modern craft practice. Women, who were indispensable to many forms
of craft, also developed skills and commu nity identity through this social
system. Historical records and signed works may privilege the importance of
individuals such Ogawa Haritsu or Ogata Kenzan, but early modern crafts
were, for the most part, products of collaborative creativity.
Repetition until bodily movements become so deeply ingrained as to be
unconscious is integral to craft practice. Through extended training, early
modern makers brought to their practice dexterous, rhythmic movements
and a highly developed sensitivity to the potentialities of materials. This
reservoir of embodied knowledge did not lend itself readily to verbal

195
Conclusion
translation. Practitioners learned by feeling their way with and through
wood, clay, cotton, and silk. Making, whatever its specificities, was thus a
sensate experience involving both mind and body.
Early modern craft professionals were resourceful pragmatists filled
with ambition and curiosity. They engaged with vast amounts of new infor-
mation about materials, processes, and practices, both domestic and for-
eign. While print culture played a role in its dissemination, for the most part
information was transmitted in embodied form. Craft professionals took an
empirical approach to applying new information, derivi ng knowledge
through experimentation, observation, and experience. Systematic records
of experiments like Kenzan’s are exceptional, but all craft practitioners
mentally catalogued the changes that occurred in the process of making an
object, whether a ceramic pot, a lacquer writing box, or a sword. Aware
that—as Haritsu demonstrated—sight alone can deceive, they relied equally
on the senses of touch, sound, and smell to gain insight into the properties of
materials and the nature of their transformation. While personalities such as
Hiraga Gennai are often cited as important innovators, technological change
was not necessarily from the top down or sweeping in scale. Makers at all
levels of the craft hierarchy adapted to changing expressive and economic
circumstances. Craft making is fundamentally about problem-solving in
particular geographic spaces at particular times. Makers deploy materials,
tools, and techniques in the ways that best suit local needs and purposes.
Whatever their origins, and even as they sometimes disrupted existing
power structures, technologies that improved efficiency, quality, and singu-
larity were tested and embraced in the early modern era. Balancing stand-
ardization with innovation, cost, and, above all, quality was paramount.
Taking into account these multifaceted considerations makes us more aware
of the remarkable resourcefulness, resiliency, skill, ingenuity, and creativity
of early modern craft makers.

197
introduction
1. On the evolution of the word craft, see Paul Greenhalgh, “The History of
Craft,” in The Culture of Crafts, ed. Peter Dormer (Manchester: University of Man-
chester Press, 1997), 20–52.
2. David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
ver sity Press, 1968), 9.
3. Glenn Adamson, Thinking through Craft (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 14.
4. There are instances of the use of the cognate k ōgei in early modern sources,
such as the opening passage of Kano Einō’s 1691 Honcho gashi (Painting in our
land), but they are rare, and the exact connotations of the usage are not clear. I
thank Melissa McCormick for drawing this to my attention.
5. On this movement, see Daisuke Murata, “The Kogei Tragedy,” Journal of
Modern Craft 8, no. 1 (March 2015): 22–23. For contemporary practitioners, distin-
guishing kōgei from their own varying styles of craft and, especially, distancing
dentō kōgei , traditional crafts, has been a particular preoccupation. In their eyes,
traditional craft implies an approach that limits individual expressiveness and
originality. This attitude has given rise to the term bijutsu kōgei, art crafts, a des-
ignation intended to give contemporary creations fabricated from textiles or
ceramics and other nongraphic materials something of the cachet associated
with the fine arts, which in Japan today, as in Europe and America, occupy a
notes

198
Notes
much higher status than crafts. On this development, see Takuya Kida, “Tradi-
tional Art Crafts (dent ō	kōgei) in Japan: From Reproductions to Original Works,”
Journal	of	Modern	Craft 3, no. 1 (March 2010): 19–36.
6. On mingei theory, see Yuko Kikuchi, Japanese	Modernisation	and	Mingei	The-
ory:	Cultural	Nationalism	and	Oriental	Orientalism (London: Routledge/Curzon, 2004).
7. This is the predicament faced by the potters of Onta Valley in Kyushu. See
Brian Moeran, “Materials, Skills, and Cultural Resources: Onta Folk Pottery
Revisited,” Journal	of	Modern	Craft 1, no. 1 (March 2008), especially pp. 39–42.
8. For a good discussion of the rationale for using “early modern” in the con-
text of Japan, see Karen Wigen, “Japanese Perspectives on the Time/Space of
‘Early Modernity,’” XIX	International	Conference	of	Historical	Sciences,	Oslo,	Norway
(August 7, 2000), 1–18.
9. Richard Sennett, The	 Craftsman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2008), 172.
10. Typifying this approach to painting are the essays in Copying	the	Master
and	Stealing	His	Secrets:	Talent	and	Training	in	Japanese	 Painting, ed. Brenda G. Jor-
dan and Victoria Weston (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003).
11. Marcel Mauss, “Techniques of the Body,” in Incorporations, ed. Jonathan
Crary and Sanford K. Winter (New York: Zone, 1999), 455–77. See Pierre Bourdieu,
The	Logic	of	Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990); Maurice Mer-
leau-Ponty, Phenomenology	of	Perception , trans. C . Smith (London: Routledge, 1962).
12. Lissa L. Roberts, Simon Schaffer, and Peter Dear, eds., The	Mindful	Hand:
Inquiry	 and	 Invention	 from	 the	 Late	 Renaissance	 to	 Early	 Industrialisation (Amster-
dam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007); Pamela H.
Smith, The	 Body	of	the	 Artisan:	 Art	 and	Experience	 in	 the	 Scientifi c	 Revolution (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
13. Noteworthy among them are Eiko Ikegami, Bonds	of	Civility :	Aesthetic	Net-
works	and	the	Political	Origins	of	Japanese	Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2005); Tanaka Yūko, Edo	wa	nettowaku (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1993); and,
especially pertinent to this study, Nakamura Shinichirō, Kimura	Kenkad ō	no	saron
(Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2000).
14. Bruno Latour, Reassembling	 the	 Social:	 An	 Introduction	 to	 Actor-Network-
Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
15. I borrow this term from Sennett, chap. 4 in Craftsman.

199
Notes
chapter one. natural resources
1. Miyazaki Yasusada, Nōgyō	 zensho, in Nihon	 nōsho	 zenshū , ed. Yamada
Tatsuo, vols. 12–13 (Tokyo: Nōsan-gyoson bunka kyōkai, 1978), 13:107–8.
2. Koizumi Kazuko, Dōgu	to	kurashi	no	Edo	jidai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan,
1999), 2.
3. Cited in Kazuko Koizumi, Traditional	Japanese	 Chests:	 A	 Definitive	 Guide
(Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2010), 106.
4. See Donald H. Shively, “Sumptuary Regulation and Status in Early Toku-
gawa Japan,” Harvard	Journal	of	Asiatic	Studies 25 (1964–65): 129, 135, 148.
5. Nihongi:	Chronicles	of	Japan	from	the	Earliest	Times	to	A.D. 69 7, translated by
W. G. Aston, 2 vols. (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1972), 1:58.
6. Between 1633 and 1663 alone, over 450,000 rayskins were imported from
Siam. These were shipped together with other semiprocessed luxury materials
including silk, buffalo horn, deerskin, raw lacquer, and sappanwood. George
Vinal Smith, The	Dutch	in	Seventeenth-Century	Thailand , Center for Southeast Asian
Studies Special Report 16 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 1977), 80.
7. Kate Wildman Nakai, Shogunal	 Politics:	 Arai	 Hakuseki	 and	 the	 Premises	 of
Tokugawa	 Rule, Harvard East Asian Monograph 134 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1988), 111.
8. Lust ,	Commerce,	and	Corruption:	An	Account	of	What	I	Have	Heard	and	Seen ,	by
an	Edo	Samurai, trans. Mark Teeuwen, Kate Wildman Nakai, Miyazaki Fumiko,
Ann Walthall, and John Breen, ed. w ith an introduction by Mark Teeuwen and
Kate Wildman Nakai (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 372–76.
9. Regine Mathias, “Picture Scrolls as Historical Sources on Japanese Min-
ing,” in Mining,	Monies,	and	 Culture	in	Early	Modern	Societies:	East	 Asian	and	Global
Perspectives, ed. Nanny Kim and Keiko Nagase-Reimer (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 292.
10. Nagahara Keiji and Kozo Yamamura, “Shaping the Process of Unification:
Technological Progress in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan,” Journal	of
Japanese	Studies 14, no. 1 (Winter 1988): 79–80.
11. Other versions of the Sado gold mining scrolls are discussed in Mathias,
“Picture Scrolls,” and Todd Hamish, “The British Librar y’s Sado Mining Scrolls,”
British	Library	Journal 24, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 130–43.
12. Kobata A., “The Production and Uses of Gold and Silver in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century Japan,” Economic	History	Review 18, no. 2 (1965): 248.

200
Notes
13. Kobata, 248.
14. See Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, “Cycles of Silver: Global Eco-
nomic Unity through the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” Journal	 of	World	 History 13,
no. 2 (2002), especially pp. 393–99.
15. Flynn and Giraldez, 397.
16. It is reproduced in Hase Akihisa, ed., Nihon	 meisho	fū zoku	 zue 16 (Tokyo:
Kadokawa shoten, 1982), 204–53 .
17. For a discussion of the histor y of such environmental damage, see Brett
Walker, chap. 3 in Toxic	Archipelago:	A	History	of	Industrial	Disease	in	Japan (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2010).
18. Nagahara and Yamamura, “Shaping the Process of Unification,” 82–83.
19. Hirase Tessai, Nihon	 sankai	 meibutsu	 zue, in Nihon	 meisho	fū zoku	 zue , ed.
Hase Akihisa, (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1982), 16:215.
20. Conrad Totman, Japan:	 An	 Environmental	 History (London: I. B . Tauris,
2014), 103.
21. Conrad Totman, The	 Green	 Archipelago :	 Forestry	 in	 Pre-industrial	 Japan
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 56–57.
22. Totman, Green	Archipelago, 19, 68.
23. Totman, Green	Archipelago, 89.
24. Totman, Green	Archipelago, 113.
25. Totman, Green	Archipelago, 83–115.
26. William H. Coaldrake, The	Way	of	the	Carpenter:	 Tools	and	Japanese	Archi-
tecture (New York: Weatherhill, 1990), 62, 141–45.
27. Totman, Green	Archipelago, 183.
28. Yotsuyanagi Kasho, Urushi	 no	 bunka-shi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
2009), 156.
29. Hasegawa Seiichi, Hirosaki-han , Nihon rekishi sōsho (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
kobunkan, 2004), 205.
30. Tsugaru-nuri is a modern category first coined to designate works dis-
played at the 1873 Vienna International Exposition. Hasegawa, Hirosaki-han ,
204–5 .
31. This work, attributed to Haritsu, is discussed in Barbra Teri Okada, Sym-
bol	 and	 Substance	 in	 Japanese	 Lacquer:	 Lacquer	 Boxes	 from	 the	 Collection	 of	 Elaine
Ehrenkranz (New York: Weatherhill, 1995), 98–101 .

201
Notes
32. On Wajima wares, see Yotsuyanagi, Urushi	no	bunka-shi , 161–80.
33. Mark Ravina, Land	and	Lordship	in	Early	Modern	Japan (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 1998), 81.
34. Fuyuki Isao, Shitsugei	 no	 tabi (Tokyo: Unsōdō, 1986), 14. For a detailed,
illustrated account of tapping procedures, see Sawaguchi Goichi, Nihon	shikkō	no
kenky ū (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha, 1966), 133–39.
35. See Andrew M. Watsky, Chikubushima:	Deploying	the	Sacred	Arts	in	Momoyama
Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004); and Anton Schweizer, Ōsaki
Hachiman:	Architecture,	Materiality,	and	Samurai	Power (Berlin: Reimer, 2016).
36. Kitano Nobuhiko et al., “Momoyama bunkaki ni okeru rinyū urushinuriryo
no ryūtsū to riyō ni kansuru chōsa,” Hōzon	rigaku 47 (2008): 37–52.
37. Arlen Heginbotham and Michael Schilling, “New Evidence for the Use of
Southeast Asian Raw Materials in Seventeenth-Century Japanese Export Lacquer,”
in East	Asian	Lacquer:	Material ,	Culture,	Science,	and	Conservation , ed. Shayne Rivers,
Rupert Faulkner, and Boris Pretzel (London: Archetype Publications, 2011), 99.
38. Heginbotham and Schilling, 99.
39. Miyazaki, Nōgy ō	zensho, 13:13–14.
40. Miyazaki, 12:47–48.
41. Kunisaki Jihei, Kamisuki	 Chōhōki:	 A	 Handy	Guide	 to	 Papermaking, trans.
Charles E. Hamilton (Berkeley, CA: Book Arts Club, 1948), 2. This is a facsimile of
the original with translations on facing pages. For a printed transcription of the
Japanese text, see Kamisuki	 taigai ,	 Kamisuki	 ch ōh ōki ,	 Shifu , in Edo	 kagaku	 koten
sōsho, ed. Kume Yasuo (Tokyo: Kōwa shuppan, 1976), 5:21–31.
42. Jugaku Bunshō, Nihon	no	kami , Nihon rekishi sōsho 14 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
kōbunkan, 1967), 282–83.
43. For an overview of papermaking, with samples, see Sukey Hughes,
Washi:	The	World	of	Japanese	Paper (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1978). See also
Jugaku, Nihon	no	kami .
44. Ishiyama Hiroshi and Higuchi Hideo, eds., Shichijū ichiban	shokunin	utaa-
wase,	 Shokunin	 zukushie,	 Saiga	 shokunin	 burui , in Edo	 kagaku	 koten	 sōsho (Tokyo:
Kōwa shuppan, 1977), 213.
45. Kazuko Hioki, “Investigation of Historical Japanese Paper: An Experiment
to Recreate Recycled Paper from 18th–19th Century Japan,” Book	and	Paper	Group
Annual 33 (2014): 46, accessed June 20, 2019, resources.conser vation-us.org.

202
Notes
46. Hioki, 44–45.
47. William Hauser, Economic	 Institutional	 Change	 in	 Tokugawa	 Japan (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 118–20. Kinai comprised the prov-
inces (kuni) of Izumi, Kawachi, Settsu, Yamashiro, and Yamato and included
Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara.
48. Thomas C. Sm ith, Th e	 Agrarian	 Origins	 of	 Modern	 Japan (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1959), 80.
49. William B. Hauser, “The Diffusion of Cotton Processing and Trade in
the Kinai Region in Tokugawa Japan,” Journal	 of	Asiatic	Studies 4, no. 33 (August
1974): 638.
50. Cited in Ian James McMullen, “Kumazawa Banzan and Jitsugaku,” in Prin-
ciple	and	Practicality:	Essays	in	Neo-Confucian	and	Practical	Learning, ed. William Theo-
dore de Bary and Irene Bloom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 357.
51. The lion motif may have been inspired by a painting (popularized in
printed form) by the Chinese émigré artist Sō Shiseki (in Chinese, Shen Nanpin;
1682–1765), who had lived in Nagasaki between 1731 and 1733. Gotoh Bijutsukan,
comp., Gennai-yaki:	Hiraga	Gennai	no	manazashi (Tokyo: Gotoh Bijutsukan, 2003),
94–96.
52. Cited in Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Concepts of Nature and Technology in
Pre-industrial Japan,” East	Asian	History 1 (June 1991): 92. For the original text, see
Gennai-yaki:	Hiraga	Gennai	no	manazashi, 156–57.
53. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Vessels	of	Influence:	China	and	the	Birth	of	Por-
celain	in	Medieval	and	Early	Modern	Japan (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2012), 140.
54. Louise Allison Cort, Seto	and	Mino	Ceramics:	Japanese	Collections	in	the	Freer
Gallery	of	Art (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 1992), 175.
55. On Ekken and jitsugaku , see Okada Takehiro, “Practical Learning in the
Chu Hsi School: Yamazaki Anzai and Kaibara Ekken,” in Principle	and	Practicality,
ed. William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1979), 231–305.
56. Federico Marcon, Th e	 Knowledge	 of	 Nature	 and	 the	 Nature	 of	 Knowledge	 in
Early	Modern	Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 140–52.
57. On this issue, see Luke S. Roberts, Mercantilism	in	a	Japanese	 Domain:	The
Merchant	 Origins	 of	Economic	 Nationalism	 in 1 8th-Century	Tosa (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998), 1–12 .

203
Notes
58. Louise Allison Cort, “A Tosa Potter in Edo,” in The	Artist	as	Professional	in
Japan , ed. Melinda Takeuchi (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004),
103–12 .
59. On his collection, see Shimonaka Hiroshi, ed., Saishiki	Edo	hakubutsugaku
sh ū sei (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1994), 121–33; and Marcon, Knowledge	 of	 Nature,
184–96.
60. Nature, shizen in modern Japanese, is a problematic term in the context
of early modern Japan. For discussion of this issue as well as challenges to the
idea of Japanese love of nature, see Pamela J. Asquith and Arne Kalland, eds.,
Japanese	Images	of	Nature:	Cultural	Perspectives (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1997); and
Morris-Suzuki, “Concepts of Nature and Technology,” 81–97.
61. Totman, Green	Archipelago, 174.
62. Totman, 179.
63. Totman, 179.
64. For an excellent discussion of the complex issue of trees in the premod-
ern cultural imagination, see Fabio Rambelli, Buddhist	Materiality:	A	Cultural	His-
tory	 of	 Objects	 in	 Japanese	 Buddhism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2007), 129–71.
65. Hirase, Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue, 210.
66. For a photograph, see Jenny Balfour-Paul, Indigo:	 Egyptian	 Mummies	 to
Blue	Jeans (London: British Museum Press, 2011), 106.
67. Literary historian Haruo Shirane calls this “secondary nature.” See his
Japan	 and	 the	 Culture	 of	 the	 Four	 Seasons (New York: Columbia University Press,
2012), 1–9.
68. On the characterization of lacquer as “material of the sacred,” see Wat-
sky, Chikubushima , 143–96.
chapter two. picturing the early
modern craftscape
1. Mary Elizabeth Berry, Japan	in	Print:	Information	and	Nation	in	the	Early	Mod-
ern	Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 15.
2. The identity of its author is unknown, but a printed inscription at the end of
the third of the seven volumes reading “Maki-eshi Saburō hitsu” (written/painted
by the master lacquerer Saburō) identifies its illustrator. Stylistic differences

204
Notes
suggest that he was most likely responsible only for those illustrations in the first
three volumes. Asakura Haruhiko, ed., Jinrin	 kinmō	zui , Tōyō bunko 519 (Tokyo:
Heibonsha, 1990), 321–24. All page references are to the Heibonsha edition.
3. It is reproduced in Ishikawa Matsutarō, ed., Onna	daigaku	sh ū , Toyo bunko
302 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1977), 29–59. The illustrations and transcriptions of the
accompanying texts discussed here are reproduced in Emori Ichirō, ed., Edo	jidai
josei	seikatsu	ezu	daijiten , vols. 3 and 4 (Tokyo: O zorosha, 1993). All references are
to this publication. Most writings focus only on the nineteen behavioral precepts
and ignore the pictorial material and commentaries. Marcia Yonemoto’s The	Prob-
lem	of	Women	in	Early	Modern	Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016)
is a rare exception. I am much indebted to her work.
4. It has traditionally been attributed to the naturalist and educator Kaibara
Ekken (1630–1714), a strong advocate of women’s and children’s education, but
modern scholarship dismisses this attribution. Martha C. Tocco, “Women’s Edu-
cation in Tokugawa Japan,” in Women	 and	 Confucian	 Cultures	 in	 Premodern	 China ,
Korea ,	and	Japan , ed. Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan Piggott (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2003), 199–200.
5. These two publications are reproduced in Hase, Nihon	 meisho	fū zoku	 zue
16:204–53 and 16:257–328. Although Sankai	meisan	zue is sometimes referred to as
Nihon	 sankai	 meisan	 zue, the word Nihon does not appear on the cover. All page
references are to this publication.
6. There is a large literature on shokunin , but the following are especially
helpful: Endō Motoo, Nihon	 shokunin	 shi	 no	 kenky ū , 6 vols. (Tokyo: Yūzankaku,
1985), and Ishida Hisatoyo, Shokunin	 zukushi-e , Nihon no bijutsu 132 (Tokyo:
Shibundō, 1977). For a good overview of the artist/craftsperson issue, see also
Melinda Takeuchi, introduction to The	 Artist	 as	 a	Professional	 in	Japan (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 1–16.
7. Larry Shiner, Th e	Invention	of	Art:	A	Cultural	History (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001), 19.
8. On niwayaki , see Cort, Seto	and	Mino	Ceramics, 143–47, and Morgan Pitelka,
Handmade	 Culture:	 Raku	 Potters,	 Patrons,	 and	 Tea	 Practitioners	 in	Japan (Honolulu:
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 140–47.
9. On these oshie, see Patricia Fister, “Merōfu Kannon and Her Veneration in
Zen and Imperial Circles in Seventeenth-Century Japan,” Japanese	Journal	of	Reli-

205
Notes
gious	Studies 34, no. 2 (2007): 417–44, and Elizabeth Lillehoj, Art	and	Palace	Politics
in	Early	Modern	Japan 15 8 0s–1 6 8 0s (Leiden: Brill 2011), 150–51.
10. For a reproduction and discussion of this scroll and its printed versions, see
Ishiyama and Higuchi, Shichijūichiban	shokunin	utaawase,	Shokunin	zukushie,	Saiga
shokunin	burui, in Edo	kagaku	koten	sōsho (Tokyo: Kōwa shuppan, 1977), vol. 6, and
Iwasaki Kae et al., eds., Shichijūichiban	shokunin	utaawase, Shinsen	kyōkashū ,	Kokon
kyokushū , in Shin	Nihon	koten	bungaku	taikei , vol. 61 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1993).
11. Cited in Yasuko Tabata, “Women’s Work and Status in the Changing
Medieval Economy,” in Women	and	Class	in	Japanese	History, ed. Hitomi Tonomura,
Anne Walthall, and Wakita Haruko (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies,
University of Michigan, 1999), 104, 106.
12. On these screens, see Matthew Philip McKelway, Capitalscapes:	 Folding
Screens	 and	 Political	 Imagination	 in	 Late	 Medieval	 Kyoto (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 2006).
13. For a breakdown of these subspecialties, see Endō, Nihon	 shokunin	 shi
josetsu ,	Nihon	shokunin	shi	no	kenky ū 1, 163–65.
14. Asakura, Jinrin	kinmō	zui , 114–17.
15. Iwasaki, Shichijū ichiban	shokunin	utaawase, 16.
16. William Harry Samonides, “The Kōami Family of Maki-e Lacquerers”
(PhD diss., Harvard University, 1991), 53.
17. Michael Cooper, ed., This	 Island	 of	Japon :	 João	 Rodrigues’	 Account	 of 1 6th-
Century	Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973), 308.
18. James L. McClain, Kanazawa:	 A	 Seventeenth-Century	Japanese	 Castle	 Town
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 52.
19. Coaldrake, Way	of	the	Carpenter, 14–15.
20. Lee Butler, citing Ōta Hirotarō and Itō Yōtarō, eds., Shōmei (Tokyo:
Kajima shuppan, 1984), 308–9, in “Patronage and the Building Arts in Tokugawa
Japan,” Early	Modern	Japan (Fall–Winter 2004): 42.
21. Asakura, Jinrin	kinm ō	zui , 203.
22. Koizumi, Traditional	Japanese	Chests, 103.
23. Asakura, Jinrin	kinmō	zui , 147–48.
24. Asakura, 147. For a more detailed discussion of this technique, see Chris-
tine M. E . Guth, “The Aesthetics of Rayskin: Materials, Making and Meaning,”
Impressions 37 (2016): 89–105.

206
Notes
25. Asakura, Jinrin	kinmō	zui , 174, 210.
26. Asakura, 147, 175.
27. Pitelka, Handmade	Culture, 126–27.
28. Asakura, Jinrin	kinmō	zui , shows a woman fan maker (173), a doll maker
(185), a papermaker (208), dyers (222–24), a weaver (291), and a braider (243).
29. Asakura, 172.
30. This is the argument, for instance, of Yonemoto’s Problem	of	Women .
31. Yonemoto, 90.
32. For reproductions, see Emori, Edo	 jidai	 josei	 seikatsu	 ezu	 daijiten ,
3:260–75.
33. Hiroko Kurokawa, “Traditional Japanese Forms and Patterns,” in Ency-
clopedia	 of	 East	 Asian	 Design , ed. Haruhiko Fujita and Christine Guth (London:
Bloomsbury, 2020), 212–13.
34. Emori, Edo	jidai	josei	seikatsu	ezu	daijiten , 3:266.
35. It is reproduced, transcribed, and discussed in Ishiyama and Higuchi,
Shichijūichiban	shokunin	utaawase.
36. Kunisaki, Kamisuki	Ch ōh ōki:	A	Handy	Guide	to	Papermaking, 2. For a printed
transcription of the Japanese text, see Kamisuki	taigai,	Kamisuki	ch ōh ōki,	Shifu , in
Edo	kagaku	koten	sōsho, ed. Kume Yasuo (Tokyo: Kōwa shuppan, 1976), 5:21–31.
37. Translated in Gary P. Leupp, Servants,	Shophands,	and	Laborers	in	the	Cities
of	Tokugawa	Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 138. For the
original text, see Ihara Saikaku, Saikaku	 shokoku	 banashi (Tokyo: Miyai shoten,
2009), 9–11 .
38. See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Sericulture and the Origins of Japanese Indus-
trialization,” Technology	and	Culture 33, no. 1 (January 1992), especially pp. 107, 114.
39. Morris-Suzuki, 111.
40. Jinrin	kinmō	zui identifies watatsumi , preparing the cotton wadding, as a
separate profession, noting that it was usually carried out by women and that
even old women could work at it in their homes. Asakura, Jinrin	kinmō	zui, 240.
41. Hayami Akira, “Industrial Revolution versus Industrious Revolution,” in
Population ,	Family	and	Society	in	Pre-modern	Japan:	Collected	Papers	of	Hayami	Akira
(Folkestone, UK: Global Oriental, 2009), 64–72.
42. Penelope Francks, Rural	 Economic	 Development	 in	 Japan:	 From	 the
Nineteenth	Century	to	the	Pacific	War (London: Routledge, 2006), 69.

207
Notes
43. Susan B. Hanley and Kozo Yamamura, Economic	and	Demographic	Change
in	 Pre-industrial	 Japan 16 00 –18 68 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1977), 83.
44. See Thomas C. Smith, Native	 Sources	 of	 Japanese	 Industrialization , 1 7 5 0 –
19 2 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 71–102.
45. Susan B. Hanley, Everyday	Things	in	Premodern	Japan:	The	Hidden	Legacy	of
Material	Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 17.
46. Murai Masuo, “Kinsei shoki shokunin no zaikata,” in Kinsei	fū zoku	zufu
12 :	 Shokunin , ed. Amino Yoshihiko and Ishida Hisatoyo (Tokyo: Shogakkan,
1983), 126–27, 129.
47. Endō, Kinsei	shokunin	no	sekai,	Nihon	shokunin-shi	no	kenkyū 3:134–37.
48. Between 1750 and 1850, there was a 10 percent decline in the population
of the major cities of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka. Francks, Rural	Economic	Development
in	Japan , 38.
49. Totman, Japan :	 An	 Environmental	 History , 164; Francks, Rural	 Economic
Development	in	Japan , 35–45.
50. See Matsue Shigeyori, Kefukigusa , ed. Takeuchi Waka (Tokyo: Iwanami
shoten, 1972), 157–87.
51. On its authorship, see Hase, Nihon	meisho	fū zoku	zue, 423–24.
52. Hase, 425.
53. Hase, 225.
54. Kijishi were also known as hikimonoshi (turners), and their lathes were
referred to as rokuro, the same term used for a potter’s wheel. Endō, Nihon
shokunin-shi	josetsu ,	Nihon	shokunin-shi	no	kenky ū 1:296–97.
55. Hase, Nihon	meisho	fū zoku	zue, 227.
56. Hase, 131.
57. Miyazaki, Nōgyo	zensho, 13:107–8.
58. Hase, Nihon	meisho	fū zoku	zue, 320. It is noteworthy that Kenkadō owned
a copy of this Chinese publication. For further discussion, see chapter 5.
59. Hase, Nihon	meisho	fū zoku	zue, 321.
60. For good introductions to Japan’s bast fiber textiles, see Louise Allison
Cort, “The Changing Fortunes of Three Archaic Japanese Textiles,” in Cloth	 and
Human	Experience, ed. Annette B. Weiner and June Schneider (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 377–414, and Sharon Sadako Takeda,

208
Notes
“Offertory Banners from Rural Japan: Echigo Chuimi [sic] Weaving and Wor-
ship,” Textile	 Society	 of	 America	 Symposium	 Proceedings (1996), 38–47, accessed
August 21, 2017, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/861.
61. Adapted from Suzuki Bokushi, Snow	Country	Tales:	Life	in	the	Other	Japan ,
trans. Jeffrey Hunter with Rose Lesser (New York: Weatherhill, 1966), 66. For the
original text, see Hokuetsu	seppu (Sanjō: Nijima shuppan, 1971), 64.
62. Hase, Nihon	meisho	fū zoku	zue, 322.
63. See Suzuki, Snow	Country	Tales, 66.
64. Takeda, “Offertory Banners from Rural Japan,” 43.
65. Takeda, 40.
66. Rousmaniere, Vessels	of	Infl uence, 135.
67. Hase, Nihon	meisho	fū zoku	zue, 317.
68. Hase, 320.
69. Jennifer Robertson, “Japanese Farm Manuals: A Literature of Discovery,”
Peasant	Studies 11, no. 3 (Spring 1984): 183.
chapter three. craft organizations
and operations
1. For another perspective on workshop management, see Yoshiaki Shimizu,
“Workshop Management of the Early Kano Painters, ca. 1530–1600,” Archives	of
Asian	Art 34 (1981): 32–47.
2. This is Mary Elizabeth Berry’s rendering of the term shokunin . See Berry, The
Culture	of	Civil	War	in	Kyoto (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 174–79.
3. For an excellent case study of this system in the context of the Raku pro-
duction world, see Pitelka, chap. 4 in Handmade	Culture.
4. For an in-depth study of the history of ie, see Kozo Yamamura and
Murakami Yasusuke, “Ie Society as a Pattern of Civilization,” Journal	of	Japanese
Studies 10, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 279–363.
5. For an excellent discussion of the considerable role of women in rural ie,
see Anne Walthall, “The Family Ideology of Rural Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth
Century Japan,” Journal	of	Social	History 23, no. 3 (Spring 1990): 471–78.
6. Christine R. Yano, in “The Iemoto System: Convergence of Achievement
and Ascription,” in Transactions	 of	 the	 International	 Conference	 of	 Orientalists	 in
Japan (Tohō gakkai) 37 (1993): 72–83.

209
Notes
7. Andrew J. Pekarik, Japanese	Lacquer, 1 6 0 0 –19 0 0 :	Selections	from	the	Charles
Green field	 Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), 96; Kōami
Iyo, “Mume ga e suzuribako nikki, Yuishitsu-shin,” Bijutsu	 kenkyū 99 (1940):
105. This statement might be contrasted to the more famous one about the rela-
tive value of innate talent (shitsuga) versus training (gakuga) recorded in the
Secrets	 of	 the	 Way	 of	 Painting (Gad ō	 yōketsu; 1680), w ritten by Kano Yasunobu
(1614–1685). For the passage in question, see Karen Gerhart, “Issues of Talent and
Training in the Seventeenth-Century Kano Workshop,” Ars	Orientalis 31 (2001):
115–16.
8. Shimizu, “Workshop Management of the Early Kano Painters,” 37.
9. Pitelka, Handmade	Culture, 73–74 .
10. Kichizaemon opened a new workshop on land owned by the Ogata on
Aburanokōji Street; it is still the Raku headquarters today. Pitelka, Handmade
Culture, 76–77.
11. Kono Motoaki, “The Organization of the Kanō School of Painting,” in
Fenway	Court (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1993), 23.
12. On Kōetsu, see Felice Fischer, ed., The	 Arts	 of	Hon’ami	 Kōetsu:	Japanese
Renaissance	Master (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000).
13. Pitelka, Handmade	Culture, 74.
14. McClain, Kanazawa , 40.
15. Henry D. Smith and Amy G. Poster, Hiroshige:	One	Hundred	Famous	Views
of	Edo (New York: George Braziller/Brooklyn Museum, 1986), entry no. 75.
16. Endō, Kenchiku ,	kink ō	shokunin	shiwa , 5:141–44 .
17. Tsuji Tatsuya, Kyōh ō	kaikaku	no	kenky ū (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1963), 257–58.
18. McClain, Kanazawa , 40, 126.
19. Nakai Nobuhiko and James L. McClain, “Commercial Change and Urban
Growth in Early Modern Japan,” in The	Cambridge	History	of	Japan , ed. John W. Hall
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 4:556.
20. Masayuki Tanimoto, “Introduction and Diffusion: How Useful and Reli-
able Knowledge Created the Industrial Development in Early Modern Japan,”
Technology	and	Culture (forthcoming).
21. See Kathleen S. Uno, “The Household Division of Labor,” in Recreating
Japanese	Women , 1600–1945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1991), 17–41.

210
Notes
22. Thomas C. Smith, “Peasant Time and Factory Time in Japan,” Past	and
Present 111 (May 1986): 170.
23. Smith, 178.
24. Walthall, “Family Ideology of Rural Entrepreneurs,” 463.
25. Walthall, 465.
26. Walthall, 465.
27. Karen Wigen, The	Making	of	a	Japanese	Periphery, 1750–1920 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995), 86–88.
28. See Ritsuō	 zaiku:	 Ogawa	 Haritsu (Kyoto: Kyoto Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan,
1991) and Tahira Namiko, “Shibata Zeshin ni okeru Haritsu-zaiku no eikyō: Sono
engen to shite no chugoku shikki o nentō ni,” Nezu	Bijutsukan	Shikun 7 (2016): 41–52.
29. Samonides, “Kōami Family of Maki-e Lacquerers,” 52–53 .
30. For a discussion of these documents, see Samonides, 30–50.
31. Yukio Lippit, Painting	 of	 the	 Realm:	 The	 Kano	 House	 of	 Painters	 in
Seventeenth-Century	Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012), 157.
32. The Yuishitsu	 shin (Single-minded concentration) is partially translated
by Andrew J. Pekarik, in Japanese	Lacquer, 96–97. For the original text, see Kōami,
“Mume ga e suzuribako nikki, Yuishitsu-shin,” 101–6.
33. J. Mark Ramseyer, “Thrift and Diligence: House Codes of Tokugawa Mer-
chant Families,” Monumenta	Nipponica 34, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 210.
34. Pekarik, Japanese	Lacquer, 96. For the original text, see Kōami, “Mume ga
e suzuribako nikki, Yuishitsu-shin,” 105.
35. Pekarik, 96; Kōami, 105.
36. Pekarik, 123.
37. This section is not translated by Pekarik. Kōami, 106.
38. Pekarik, 97; Kōami, 105.
39. Mume	ga	 e	suzuribako	 nikki (Diary of making a writing box with a plum
blossom design) is translated in Pekarik, Japanese	Lacquer, 120–23. For the origi-
nal text, see Kōami, “Mume ga e suzuribako nikki, Yuishitsu-shin,” 101–4 .
40. Pekarik, 121; Kōami, 101.
41. Komatsu Taishū has argued that Kōdaiji-style lacquers went through
three phases, first during Hideyoshi’s lifetime through 1598, then for twenty-
five years following his death till 1624, and lastly through the Genroku era
(1688–1704). See his “Kōdaiji maki-e no hennen ni kansuru ichi shiron: Maki-e

211
Notes
dentō yōshiki tono kankei chūshin ni,” Kokka , no. 1285 (2002): 7–17. See also
Haino Akio, “The Momoyama Flowering: Kōdaiji and Namban Lacquer,” in East
Asian	 Lacquer:	 The	 Florence	 and	 Herbert	 Irving	Collection , ed. James C. Y. Watt and
Barbara Brennan Ford (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 163–73.
42. Koike Tomio, “Hatsune no chōdo ni tsuite,” in Hatsune	 no	 Chōdo, ed.
Tokugawa Bijutsukan (Nagoya: Tokugawa Bijutsukan, 2005), 108–9.
43. Koike, 110.
44. Th is senry ū , from the collection Yanagidaru (1765), is cited in Sugama
Sachiko, “Edo jidai buraido-kō,” in Konrei	no	iro	to	katachi:	Kinsei	kōgei	no	hana , ed.
Sugama Sachiko and Kogō Shoji (Kyoto: Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan, 1997), 19. My
thanks to Tomoko Kikkawa-Sanchez for bringing this poem to my attention.
45. Samonides, “Kōami Family of Maki-e Lacquerers,” 46–47.
46. The makie lacquerer Hara Yōyūsai (1769–1845) is another example.
Although the social networks to which he belonged have not been studied sys-
tematically, tantalizing hints of his ties with Danjurō VII and Sakai Hōitsu are
provided in Hara	Yōy ūsai:	Edo	Rinpa	no	makieshi , comp. Gotoh Bijutsukan (Tokyo:
Gotoh Bijutsukan, 1999).
47. Haino Akio, Ogawa	 Haritsu :	 Edo	 kōgei	 no	 iki ,	 Nihon	 no	 bijutsu 10 (Tokyo:
Shibundō, 1998), 53–54.
48. On Itchō, see Miriam Wattles, Th e	Life	and	Afterlives	of	Hanabusa	Itch ō,	Art-
ist	Rebel	of	Edo (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
49. On this work, see Kobayashi Yūko, “Ogawa Haritsu to Dokuraku	tozensh ū
(kenkyū noto),” Kokka 1256 (1999): 29–34.
50. Haino, Ogawa	Haritsu , 33.
51. Haino, 23.
52. Kobayashi Yūko, “Ogawa Haritsu to Hirosaki hanchō nikki,” Kokka 1259
(1999): 27.
53. Kobayashi, “Ogawa Haritsu to Hirosaki hanchō nikki,” 27.
54. On the range of exhibits in public misemono, see Andrew L. Markus,
“Carnival of Edo: Misemono Spectacles from Contemporary Accounts,” Harvard
Journal	of	Asiatic	Studies 45, no. 2 (December 1985): 499–541.
55. See Komatsu Taishū, “Gi to shajitsu no seikai: Edo goki no kōgei,” in
Nihon	bijutsu	zenshū , vol. 20, Ukiyoe	Edo	kaiga	IV,	kōgei	II, ed. Kobayashi Chu et al.
(Tokyo: Kodansha, 1991), fig. 101 and text on p. 228.

212
Notes
56. Haino, Ogawa	Haritsu , 38.
57. Pekarik, Japanese	 Lacquer, 87, citing Saitō Gesshin, Bukō	 nenpyō, Tōyo
bunko 116 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1968), 1:221. The 1720s date in Pekarik’s text is
erroneous.
58. For a reproduction, see Haino, Ogawa	Haritsu , fig. 3.
59. As observed by Wattles, chap. 6 in Life	and	Afterlives	of	Hanabusa	Itchō .
60. See Tahira, “Shibata Zeshin ni okeru Haritsu-zaiku no eikyō,” 41–52.
61. Haino, Ogawa	Haritsu , 73.
62. The term Ritsu ō	zaiku was used already in Haritsu’s lifetime in connection
with a commission from Danjurō II. See Haino, Ogawa	Haritsu , 54.
63. It is part of a set that includes a document box. For a reproduction of the
Chinese model, see Haino, Ogawa	Haritsu , 48.
64. Utamaro’s Gifts	 of	the	Ebb	Tide (Shiohi no tsuto) of 1789 features many of
the same shells depicted with a similar degree of naturalism. For reproduction of
this book, see w w w.Fitzwilliam.cam.ac.uk.
65. See, for instance, Pekarik, Japanese	Lacquer, 98.
66. Recent scholarship has increasingly endorsed the view that these Rinpa
artists designed rather than made the many lacquers attributed to them. On
Kōetsu, see Yamazaki Tsuyoshi, “The Kōetsu Style in Lacquerware,” in The	Arts	of
Hon’ami	 Kōetsu :	 Japanese	 Renaissance	 Master, ed. Felice Fischer (Philadelphia:
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000), 109. On Hōitsu, see McKelway, Silver	Wind:
The	Arts	of	Sakai	Hōitsu	(1761–1828) (New York: Japan Society, 2012), 103–4. See
also Richard L. Wilson, Th e	Art	of	Ogata	Kenzan:	Persona	and	Production	in	Japanese
Ceramics (New York: Weatherhill, 1991), 23–32.
chapter four. tacit knowledge
1. On apprenticeship in the crafts, see Endō, Nihon	shokunin	shi	josetsu , 131–
50. For training in painting, see Jordan and Weston, Copying	the	Master	and	Steal-
ing	His	Secrets. See also Thomas P. Rohlen and Gerald K. LeTendre, eds., Teaching
and	 Learning	 in	 Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and John
Singleton, ed., Learning	 in	 Unlikely	 Places:	 Varieties	 of	 Apprenticeships	 in	 Japan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
2. Richard Sennett, Together:	 The	 Rituals,	 Pleasures	 and	 Politics	 of	Cooperation
(London: Penguin Books, 2012), 205.

213
Notes
3. Translated by Pekarik in Japanese	Lacquer, 97; Kōami, “Mume ga e suzurib-
ako nikki, Yuishitsu-shin,” Bijutsu	kenkyū 99, 105.
4. See Bourdieu, Logic	of	Practice.
5. This section is based on my article “Models, Modeling, and Knowledge
Exchange in Early Modern Japan,” Res	 Anthropology	and	Aesthetics 71/72 (Spring/
Autumn 2019): 253–64 . © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard
College.
6. Rupert Cox, The	Zen	Arts:	An	Anthropological	Study	of	the	Culture	of	Aesthetic
Form	in	Japan (London: Routledge/Curzon, 2003), 23.
7. Richard Schechner, Between	 Th eatre	 and	 Anthropology (Philadelphia: Uni-
ver sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 35.
8. Takamura Kōun, Bakumatsu	isshin	kaikodan (Tokyo: Iwanami bunko, 1995),
33. For more on Kōun, see Christine M.E . Guth, “Takamura Kōun and Takamura
Kōtarō: On Being a Sculptor,” in The	 Artist	 as	 Professional	 in	 Japan , ed. Melinda
Takeuchi (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 152–79.
9. Coaldrake, Way	of	the	Carpenter, 24–25.
10. Takamura, Bakumatsu	isshin	kaikodan , 34.
11. Yamakawa Kikue, Women	 of	 Mito	 Domain :	 Recollections	 of	Samurai	 Family
Life, trans. w ith an introduction by Kate Wildman Nakai (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2001), 35.
12. The term is from Mauss, “Techniques of the Body,” 455–77.
13. Yamakawa, Women	of	Mito	Domain , 31–32.
14. On the importance of cultivating skills for marriage and upward mobil-
ity, see Yonemoto, Problem	of	Women , 81–82.
15. Anne Walthall, “The Life Cycle of Farm Women in Tokugawa Japan,” in
Recreating	Japanese	Women , 1 6 0 0 – 194 5, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1991), 45–46, and Shiga Tadashi, Josei	ky ōiku	shi (Tokyo:
Fukumura shuppan, 1968), 276–82.
16. The length and width of a tan varied depending on region and time
period. These are modern dimensions.
17. For layouts, see Emori, Edo	jidai	josei	seikatsu	ezu	daijiten , 4:109–15.
18. Cited in Yonemoto, Problem	of	Women , 67–68. Emori, Edo	jidai	josei	seikatsu
ezu	daijiten , 4:112.
19. Kanaji Isamu, Shōtoku	Taishi	shink ō (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1979), 208–9.

214
Notes
20. Yamakawa, Women	 of	Mito	 Domain , 36. On the hari	kuyō, see Christine
M. E . Guth, “Theorizing the hari	 kuyō: The Ritual Disposal of Needles in Early
Modern Japan,” in Encountering	Things:	 Design	 and	Theories	 of	Things, ed. L eslie
Atzmon and Prasad Boradkar (London: Bloomsbury, 2017): 65–80.
21. See Fumiko Cranston, “Takagamine Colony: Kōetsu at Takagamine,” in
The	Arts	 of	Hon’ami	Kōetsu :	Japanese	 Renaissance	 Master, ed. Felice Fischer (Phila-
delphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000), 120–37.
22. Adapted from Yonemoto, Problem	of	Women , 67. For the original text, see
Emori, Edo	jidai	josei	seikatsu	ezu	daijiten , 4:102.
23. See Coaldrake, Way	of	the	Carpenter, 3–8, and Lippit, Painting	of	the	Realm ,
159–60.
24. Cited in Andrew Gordon, Fabricating	 Consumers:	 Th e	 Sewing	 Machine	 in
Modern	Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 80.
25. For a discussion of this development in the context of Raku ceramics, see
Pitelka, chap. 5 in Handmade	Culture.
26. Scholars disagree on the role of Esoteric Buddhism in the fostering
of secrecy in the arts. See Maki Isaka Morinaga, Secrecy	 in	 Japanese	 Arts:
“Secret	Transmission”	as	a	Mode	of	Knowledge (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005),
3–4 .
27. Mark Teeuwen, “Introduction: Japan’s Culture of Secrecy from a Com-
parative Perspective,” in Th e	 Culture	 of	 Secrecy	 in	 Japanese	 Religion , ed. Bernard
Scheid and Mark Teeuwen (London: Routledge, 2006), 1–2.
28. Hosokawa Hanzō Yorinao, Karakuri	kinm ō	zui (Edo, 1796).
29. On this subject, see Karakuri	Ningy ō :	An	Exhibition	of	Ancient	Festival	Robots
from	Japan (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1985) and Timon Screech, The	Western
Scienti fi c	 Gaze	 and	 Popular	 Imagery	 in	 Later	 Edo	 Japan :	 Th e	 Lens	 within	 the	 Heart
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 65–93.
30. Hase, Nihon	meisho	fū zoku	zue, 16:320.
31. Cited in Teeuwen, “Introduction: Japan’s Culture of Secrecy,” 8.
32. Pamela H. Smith, Th e	Body	of	the	Artisan :	Art	and	Experience	in	the	Scientifi c
Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 16.
33. For another take on “material consciousness,” see Sennett, Craftsman ,
119–46.
34. Paraphrased from Coaldrake, Way	of	the	Carpenter, 25–26.

215
Notes
35. J.J. Rein, Th e	 Industries	 of	 Japan (1889; reprint, London: Curzon Press,
1995), 344.
36. Monica Bethe, “Reflections on Beni: Red as a Key to Edo-Period Fashion,” in
When	Art	Became	Fashion:	Kosode	in	Edo-Period	Japan, ed. Dale Carolyn Gluckman and
Sharon Takeda (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1992), 136–39.
37. Tim Ingold, Making:	 Anthropology,	 Archeology ,	 Art	 and	 Architecture (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2013), 6.
38. Th e	 Secret	 World	 of	the	Japanese	 Swordsmith (1997), accessed June 7, 2019,
https://w w w.youtube.com/watch?v=igDDKX9mXbw. For a detailed description
of the process, see Colin M. Roach, Japanese	Swords,	Cultural	Icons	of	a	Nation:	The
History ,	 Metallurgy ,	 and	 Iconography	 of	 the	 Samurai	 Sword (Tokyo: Tuttle, 2010),
31–47. On Yoshihara, see Leon and Hiroko Kapp and Yoshindo Yoshihara, Modern
Japanese	Swords	and	Swordsmiths	from 1 8 6 8 to	the	Present (Tokyo: Kodansha Inter-
national, 2002), 105–8.
39. Roach, Japanese	Swords, 38.
40. This bowl is discussed briefly in Haino, Ogawa	 Haritsu , 49 –52, and
Pitelka, Handmade	Culture, 128–31.
41. On these techniques, see Richard L. Wilson, Inside	 Japanese	 Ceramics:	 A
Primer	of	Materials,	Techniques,	and	Traditions (New York: Weatherhill, 2005), 64–71.
42. Wilson, Art	of	Ogata	Kenzan , 116.
43. Wilson, Art	of	Ogata	Kenzan , 75–77.
44. Pamela H. Smith, “Ways of Making and Knowing: Craft as Natural Phi-
losophy,” in Ways	 of	Making	and	Knowing:	 The	 Material	Culture	of	Empirical	Knowl-
edge, ed. Pamela H. Smith, Amy R. W. Meyers, and Harold J. Cook (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2014), 18.
45. Wilson, Art	of	Ogata	Kenzan , 291.
46. Wilson, 220.
47. Wilson, 226–27.
chapter five. technology, innovation, and
craft mastery
1. Walker, Toxic	Archipelago, 29.
2. On Nobuhisa’s ties to the Manpukuji temple in Hirosaki, opened in 1679,
see Kobayashi, “Ogawa Haritsu to Hirosaki hanchō nikki,” 26.

216
Notes
3. On this and other early modern technologies, see Kikuchi Toshiyori, ed.,
Zufu	Edo	jidai	no	gijutsu , 2 vols. (Tokyo: Kōwa shuppan, 1988).
4. Cort, Seto	and	Mino	Ceramics, 100.
5. Rousmaniere, Vessels	of	In fluence, 140–41.
6. Kunisaki describes the varieties of the tororo plant, when to uproot it, its
cost, and how much to add to each vat. See Kunisaki, Kamisuki	chōh ōki:	A	Handy
Guide	to	Papermaking, 44–46.
7. Tahira, “Shibata Zeshin ni okeru Haritsu-zaiku no eikyō.”
8. See John Guy, Woven	Cargoes:	Indian	Textiles	in	the	East (New York: Thames
& Hudson, 1998).
9. Fujita Kayoko, “Japan Indianized: The Material Culture of Imported Tex-
tiles in Japan 1550–1850,” in The	Spinning	World:	A	Global	History	of	Cotton	Textiles
12 00–1850, ed. Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi, Pasold Studies in
Textile History 16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 197.
10. Asakura, Jinrin	kinm ō	zui , 222.
11. Fujita, “Japan Indianized,” 197.
12. Sung Ying-Hsing, T’ien-k ’ung	 K’ai-wu :	 Chinese	 Technology	 in	 the	 Seven-
teenth	Century , trans. E -tu Zen Sun (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univer-
sity Press, 1966).
13. Dagmar Schäfer, The	Crafting	of	the 1 0,0 0 0 Things:	Knowledge	and	Technol-
ogy	in	Seventeenth-Century	China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 3.
14. Song Yingxing, Tenkō	 kaibutsu , Tōyō bunko 130 (Tokyo: Heibonsha,
1981), 375.
15. Sung, T’ien-k’ung	K’ai-wu , 145.
16. Patricia J. Graham, Tea	of	the	Sages:	The	Art	of	Sencha (Honolulu: University
of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), 124–32; Nakamura, Kimura	Kenkad ō	no	saron , 532–34; Oka
Yoshiko, Kinsei	 kyoyaki	 no	 kenky ū (Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 2011), 359–61; for an
English translation of the Tao	shuo, see Stephen Bushell, Description	of	Chinese	Pot-
tery	 and	 Porcelain ;	 Being	 a	 Translation	 of	 the	 T’ao	 shuo (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1910).
17. On glass bottles, see Martha Chaiklin, Cultural	Commerce	and	Dutch	Com-
mercial	Cultures:	The	 Influence	 of	European	 Material	Culture	 on	Japan, 17 00–1850
(Leiden: Research School CNWS, 2003), 126–31.
18. Chaiklin, Cultural	Commerce	and	Dutch	Commercial	Cultures, 145.

217
Notes
19. Morris-Suzuki, “Sericulture and the Origins of Japanese Industrializa-
tion,” 105.
20. Morris-Suzuki, 114–15.
21. Francesca Bray, “Technics and Civilization in Late Imperial China: An
Essay in the Cultural Histor y of Technology,” Osiris, 2nd series, vol. 13, Beyond
Joseph	Needham:	Science,	Technology	and	Medicine	in	East	and	Southeast	Asia (1998): 13.
22. Bray, “Technics and Civilization in Late Imperial China,” 28.
23. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Th e	 Technological	 Transformation	 of	 Japan	 from	 the
Seventeenth	 to	 the	Twenty -First	Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 35.
24. Mark Mulligan and Yukio Lippit, The	Thinking	Hand :	Tools	and	Traditions	of
the	Japanese	Carpenter (Cambridge, MA: Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies,
Harvard University, 2014), 30.
25. Kiyoshi Seike, The	Art	of	Japanese	Joinery (New York: Weatherhill, 1977), 9.
26. See William H. Coaldrake, Architecture	 and	 Authority	 in	 Japan (London:
Routledge, 1996), 193–207.
27. Shively, “Sumptuary Regulations and Status,” 129.
28. Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, “Kosode Techniques and Designs,” in
Kosode: 16th–19th	Century	Textiles	from	the	Nomura	Collection (New York: Japan Soci-
ety and Kodansha International, 1984), 31–32.
29. Richard L. Wilson, Th e	Potter’s	Brush:	The	Kenzan	Style	in	Japanese	Ceramics
(Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithso-
nian Institution, 2001), 81.
30. For descriptions and photographs of the many techniques, see Arimatsu
Narumi	 shibori , Nihon no tewaza 3 (Tokyo: Genryūsha, 2006). See also Yoshiko
Iwamoto Wada, Shibori:	The	Inventive	Art	of	Japanese	Shaped	Resist	Dyeing:	Tradition ,
Techniques,	Innovation (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1983), 28–34.
31. On this series, see Rupert Faulkner, Hiroshige	 Fan	 Prints (London: V&A
Publications, 2001), 132–33 . The only other known print represents a woman
painter trained in the Kano school known as Onna Yukinobu. For other prints
featuring Oroku combs, see Sebastian Izzard, Hiroshige/Eisen:	The	Sixty -Nine	Sta-
tions	 of	 the	 Kisokaid ō (New York: George Braziller, 2007), 84–85, and Sarah E.
Thompson, Utagawa	Kuniyoshi:	The	Sixty -Nine	Stations	of	the	Kisokaid ō	Road (Bos-
ton: Museum of Fine Arts; San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2009), 86–87.

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233
	 1.1 .	 Tapper	preparing	to	draw	sap	from	a	lacquer	tree	 2 2
	 1.2.	 Sado	gold	mines	 28–29
	 1.3 .	 Mining	tools,	from	Illustrated Famous Specialties of the Mountains and Seas of
Japan	(Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue)	 3 2 –3 3
	 1.4 .	 Katsushika	Hokusai,	“In	the	Mountains	of	Tōtōmi	Province”	(Tōtōmi
sanchū),	from	series	Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji	(Fugaku
sanjūrokkei)	 36–37
	 1.5 .	 Oval	Tsugaru-nuri	inkstone	box	with	Chinese	recluse	Lin	Bu	greeting	a
crane	 39
	 1.6.	 Spouted	red	lacquer	Wajima	ware	bowl	 4 0
	 1.7.	 Kunisaki	Jihei,	Cutting	kō zo,	from	A Handy Guide to Papermaking
(Kamisuki	chōhōki)	 44
	 1.8.	 Fragment	of	cloth	of	plain	silk	and	cotton	weave	with	stripes	 4 6
	 1.9.	 Indigo	vats	at	Higeta	Indigo	House,	Mashiko,	Tochigi	Prefecture	 4 7
	1.10.	 Square	plate;	stoneware	with	overglaze	enamels	(Sanuki	ware,	Gennai
type)	 50
	 2.1 .	 Utagawa	Hiroshige	I,	“Dyers’	Quarter,	Kanda	(Kanda	Kon’ya-chō),”	from
series	One Hundred Famous Views of Edo	(Meisho	Edo	hyakkei)	 5 8
illustrations

234
Illustrations
	 2.2 .	 Detail	of	views	inside	and	outside	the	capital	(Rakuch ū	rakugaizu)	 64
	 2.3 .	 Carvers	of	signboards	and	decorative	woodwork,	from	Illustrated
Encyclopedia	of	Humanity	(Jinrin	kinmō	zui)	 69
	 2.4 .	 Infant’s	patchwork	kimono	 73
	 2.5 .	 Making	kumihimo,	from	Treasury	of	Greater	Learning	for	Women	(Onna
daigaku	takarabako)	 74
	 2.6.	 Detail	of	a	furisode	(outer	kimono)	with	allover	kanoko	shibori	(sō	kanoko)	 76
	 2.7.	 Modern	mizuhiki	knot	on	a	money	envelope	for	a	wedding	gift	 7 7
	 2.8.	 Tachibana	Minkō,	Fan	making,	from	Various	Classes	of	Artisans	in	Colored
Pictures	(Saiga	shokunin	burui)	 78 –7 9
	 2.9.	 Kitagawa	Utamaro,	Feeding	chopped	mulberry	leaves	to	larvae,	from
twelve-part	series	Women	Engaged	in	Sericulture	(Joshoku	kaiko
tewaza-gusa)	 8 2
	2.10.	 Kitagawa	Utamaro,	Reeling	silk	from	cocoons,	from	twelve-part	series
Women	Engaged	in	Sericulture	(Joshoku	kaiko	tewaza-gusa)	 8 3
	2.11 .	 Nikkō	lathe-turned	lacquerwares,	from	Illustrated	Famous	Specialties	of	the
Mountains	and	Seas	of	Japan	(Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue)	 8 9
	2.12.	 Papermaking,	from	Illustrated	Famous	Specialties	of	the	Mountains	and	Seas
of	Japan	(Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue)	 9 2 –9 3
	2.13.	 Collecting	lacquer	sap,	from	Illustrated	Famous	Specialties	of	the	Mountains
and	Seas	of	Japan	(Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue)	 94 –9 5
	2.14.	 Bleaching	Echigo	cloth	on	snow,	from	Illustrated	Famous	Products	of
Mountain	and	Sea	(Sankai	meisan	zue)	 9 8 –9 9
	2.15.	 Making	Echigo	cloth,	from	Illustrated	Famous	Products	of	Mountain	and	Sea
(Sankai	meisan	zue)	 100 –101
	2.16.	 Ojiya	chijimi	(crepe),	detail	of	kimono	with	paulownia	flowers	in
bloom	 102
	2.17.	 Nabeshima	porcelain	plate	with	underglaze	blue	and	overglaze
polychrome	enamels	 1 03
	2.18.	 View	of	Arita	porcelain	production,	from	Illustrated	Famous	Products	of
Mountain	and	Sea	(Sankai	meisan	zue)	 104–10 5

235
Illustrations
	 3.1 .	 Kano	Yoshinobu,	View	of	lacquer	workshop,	from	Pictures	of
Craftsmen	 11 0
	 3.2 .	 Raku	Sō’nyū	V,	Raku	teabowl	 114
	 3.3 .	 Tachibana	Minkō,	Weavers	in	Nishijin,	from	Various	Classes	of	Artisans	in
Colored	Pictures	(Saiga	shokunin	burui)	 118 –119
	3.4 .	 Tachibana	Minkō,	Making	motoyui ,	from	Various	Classes	of	Artisans	in
Colored	Pictures	(Saiga	shokunin	burui)	 122 –12 3
	 3.5 .	 Kōdaiji-style	lacquer	pouring	vessel	 12 9
	 3.6.	 Kōami	Chōjū,	Hatsune	lacquer	dowry	set	 13 1
	 3.7.	 Ogawa	Haritsu,	makie	writing	box	with	relief	inro	design	 13 5
	 3.8.	 Ogawa	Haritsu,	makie	writing	box	with	seashell	pattern	 13 6
	 4.1 .	 Utagawa	Kuniyoshi,	Wisdom	(Chi),	from	series	Mirror	of	Feminine	Virtue	for
a	Thousand	Ages	(Teisō	chiyo	no	kagami)	 14 4
	 4.2 .	 Hosokawa	Hanzō	Yorinao,	Tea-ser ving	automaton,	from	Illustrated
Compendium	of	Clever	Machines	(Karakuri	kinmō	zui)	 1 5 0 –15 1
	 4.3 .	 Tamaya	Shobei	IX,	tea-ser ving	automaton	doll	 1 52
	4.4 .	 Sword	maker	Yoshihara	Yoshindo	forging	a	sword	 15 6
	 4.5 .	 Ogawa	Haritsu,	lacquer	teabowl	 15 9
	 4.6.	 Workshop	of	Ogata	Kenzan,	set	of	five	camellia-shaped	side	dishes
(muk ōzuke)	with	camellia	patterns	 1 62
	 5.1 .	 Sixteen-chamber	climbing	kiln	(noborigama)	 16 9
	 5.2 .	 Pouch	of	sarasa	printed	cotton	cloth	 172
	 5.3 .	 Making	large	pots,	from	Exploitation	of	the	Works	of	Nature	(Tenkō
kaibutsu)	 174
	5.4 .	 Tachibana	Minkō,	Glassblower,	from	Various	Classes	of	Artisans	in	Colored
Pictures	(Saiga	shokunin	burui)	 17 8 –179
	 5.5 .	 Model	of	interlocking	wood	bracketing	complex	in	Engakuji	Relic	Hall
(Shariden)	 18 2
	 5.6.	 Detail	of	stencil-printed	imitation	tie-dyed	(kata	kanoko	shibori)	and
embroidered	outer	kimono	( furisode)	 18 4

236
Illustrations
	 5.7.	 Ogata	Kenzan,	plates	of	the	twelve	lunar	months	 18 6 –18 7
	 5.8.	 Utagawa	Kunisada,	“Narumi:	Woman	Doing	Arimatsu	Shibori
Tie-Dyeing,”	from	series	Fifty-Three	Pairings	for	the	Tōkaid ō	Road
(Tōkaidō	gojūsan	tsui)	 1 8 9
	 5.9.	 Utagawa	Hiroshige,	“Kiso	no	Oroku	Combs,”	from	series	Compendium	of
Famous	Artisans	(Meiyo	shokunin	zukushi	no	uchi)	 19 1

237
ac tor-net work theory (Latour), 16
Adamson, Glenn, 10
adoption, 113
ae sthetics, 9, 10, 1 2, 18, 141; of lacquer-
ware, 124; of nature, 54; of textiles, 3,
75; of swords, 157–58; tea ceremony,
154
agric ulture: c om mercial crop s, 84;
management, 42; manuals, 106;
tools, 2 5, 31; new crop s, 52. See also
c ot ton; farmers; indigo
am ateu r ideal, 138
Aoki Mok ubei, 175
Aoto z ōshi (Book of Aoto), 191
Aoyama Chise, 143, 145
apprenticeship: as ec onom ic relationship,
139; and embodied practice, 13–14;
gender and, 70, 146; and the ie
system, 112; a nd m anipulation of
tools, 165; as socialization, 146; tacit
knowledge in, 139–40; of wood
carver Takamura Kōun, 142–43
Arai Hakuseki, 26
arashi shibori (stor m) patter n, 188
a rchitect ural proje ct s, 180, 181, 183. See
also building trades; c a rp enters
Arimatsu textiles, 188
Arita porcelain, 51, 91, 104–5fig. , 106,
149–53, 158, 170
arms and armor, 67, 75. See also swords
a rtisans (shokunin): assu med to be m ale,
12, 17, 111; body movements of, 68,
140, 194; class of, 11, 61, 65, 12 4;
concentrated in cities, 57; contrasted
with saiku , 65; dissemination of
information about, 59; divi ne origins
of skills, 148; festivals and rituals,
146–47; hierarchies of, 11, 61, 65–66,
68; in Japan and other parts of the
world, 13; as “p eople of skill,” 208n2;
as pictorial genre, 62–63; publications
on, 59–60; ra nge of profe ssions,
60–61, 63–65; spe cialization of, 67–68
asa (ramie and hemp), 24, 38, 45
Asaok a Okisada, Kōga bikō (Notes on
a ncient pai ntings), 113
Ashikaga shogu ns, 12 4; Ashikaga
Yoshimasa, 1 26
Index

238
Index
Asia n alder, 190–91
authorial self-c onsciou sne ss, 134
autom ata (karakuri	saikumono), 133–34,
1 49; tea-ser vi ng automaton, 149,
150–51fig. , 152fig.
Awa Province, 47
Awashima, deity of, 147
Azuchi Castle, 31
bamboo, 2 5–26
Bashō, 132
bedding, 23
bent wood , 5
Berry, Mary Elizabeth, 59, 208n2
bijin (beautiful women), p erforming craft
work, 84
bijutsu (fine art), 11
bijutsu	kōgei	(art crafts), 197–98n5
black smiths, 85, 116
body: and material consciousness, 155, 194;
m ind and, 14, 147, 195; movements,
68, 140, 155–56, 194; “te chniques of,”
in needlework, 143–45; as vehicle for
knowledge transfer, 13, 140–4 1
bot a nical st udies, 51–52
Bourdieu , Pierre, 14, 140
braid making, 72–75, 74fig. , 206n28
Bray, Fra nce sca, “ritual technologies,” 180
brush m akers, 147
bucket m akers, 116
Buddhism, 25, 146, 147, 148, 2 14 n26
Buddhist icons, carvers of, 142
buffalo horn, 199n6
building trades, 66–67. See	also architec-
tural project s; c arpenters; saw yers
bussangaku (production st udies), 87
Buyō Inshi, 26
ca lligraphy, 11 4, 1 47
camphor trees (kusu), 25
c apitalism, 14, 24–25, 17 7
c ar pe nters (daiku): fem ale, 80; knowl-
edge of feng	shui , 180; master (t ōryō),
66–67, 182, 192; m aterial consciou s-
ness of, 153; rituals of, 146–47; as
saiku and shokunin , 65; salaries set by
shogunate, 116; standardization of
building practices, 181, 192; tools of,
14 2, 181–82; in urban oc cupational
dist rict s, 11 5, 116. See	also lathe
sp eci alists; saw yers; woodc ar vers
castle building, 31, 66
cedar (sugi), 25, 31, 34, 67
c elebrity craft makers, 12. See	also
Hon’am i Kōet su; Ogat a Ke nzan;
Ogat a Kōri n
ceramics: Chinese, 49; and Chinese and
Korean immigrants, 106, 167; dishes,
23, 102, 171, 185; Gennai-yaki, 49–51,
50fig.; Odo ware, 52–53; potters in
hierarchy of artisans, 11; product
differentiation, 185; publications on,
175; samurai potters, 62; for tea
ceremony, 50–51; in Tenkō	kaibutsu ,
173, 174fig.; of Tosa domain, 52–53;
using mold s, 185; women in, 70, 80;
workshops, 80, 116, 161. See	also
porcelain; Raku wa re; stonewa re
Chaya Shirōjirō, 147
chayazome	dyeing technique , 1 47
Chigusa, 5
chijimi (ramie crep e): E chigo, 91, 96;
Ojiya, 97, 102fig.
Chikubushima Shrine, 41
children: as makers, 61; and textile work,
96, 145
China, trade with, 52
Chinese and Korean immigrants, 106,
167–68
Chinese culture, 167–68

239
Index
chirimen (silk crep e), 11 5–16, 117, 146
Chiyohime, 130, 181
Chōjiyamachi, 116, 161
chōnin (people of the quarter), 61, 72, 116,
145
Chōzaemon, 115
Chronicles	of	Japan	(Nihonshoki), 25
classification, 52, 68, 87, 107
clay: carrying and kneading by women,
80; kaolin, 26, 106; Kenzan’s
investigation of, 162–63; manual
gestures used on, 114fig., 160; roof
tiles, 31; sources of, 26, 45, 51, 52–53,
11 5, 163; white slip, 163
clock s, 1 49
clothing: cold-we ather ga rment s, 81,
206n40; of commone rs, 2 4, 45, 46,
85, 91, 183; cotton, 23–24, 45, 73fig. ,
85, 116, 188; and fashion, 24; made by
women, 72; made f rom ba st fibers,
25, 42, 91; for New Year, 24; silk, 183;
and social class, 12, 23–24, 154, 183;
su m mer ga rments, 24, 91. See	also
textiles
combs, 84, 190–91, 191fig .
com mercial net work s, 15, 48
commoners: clothing of, 24, 45, 46, 85,
91, 183; as consumers, 23, 192
connoisse u rship, 11 4, 125
consume r-oriented information, 70,
107
copies of celebrated work s, 6, 12 6–27
copper, 25, 26, 27, 29
cosmology, 90, 180
cotton: for clothing, 2 3–2 4, 85; cloth
patterns, 45, 46fig.; cultivation of,
24, 26, 41, 45, 91; dyeing of, 46–48,
85; household weaving of, 45, 84;
Indian and Southeast Asian chintzes,
49, 171, 172fig. , 175; infant’s kimono,
73fig.; processing of, 45; shibori, 188;
wadding, 23, 206n40; yukata a nd
tenugui , 1 16, 188
Cox, Rup ert, 140–4 1
craft: culture, 7, 9, 11, 15; definitions of,
9–10, 11, 197n n4–5; hand m ade and
made with tools, 10; kōgei and mingei ,
11, 12, 15, 197n n4–5; lineage s, 5;
national heritage sy stem, 12; in
Renais sance Eu rope, 10–11; as techne ,
61. See	also artisans
craft houses. See ie
cra ft organizations. See guild sy stem
cra ft workshops. See workshops
crepe: ramie (chijimi), 91, 96, 97, 102fig.;
silk (chirimen), 115–16, 1 17, 1 46
c u rio sities (misemono), 133, 161. See	also
automata
cypress wood (hinoki), 5, 25, 31, 34, 67
daimyo, 53, 66, 133, 154; and craft
industrie s, 35–38, 115, 12 4; Edo,
34; Owari, 51, 130, 188. See	also
Tok ugawa shogu nate; Tsuga r u
Nobuhisa
Date Yoshimura, 133
deerskins, 26, 199n6
deforest ation, 31. See	also forest s
designer-m a kers, 137, 185. See	also Ogawa
Hōritsu; Ogata Kenza n
drawlo om s (takarabata), 1 15, 168
dyeing techniques, 71, 75, 147, 183, 184fi g. ,
188
dyers: indigo, 55, 63, 71, 85; rural, 85;
women, 7 1
dyes: “fake,” 154; indigo, 55, 71, 85;
plants for, 26, 41; red and pu rple,
41, 154, 17 1, 183. See	also
indigo
dye shops, 46, 71, 1 16

240
Index
ea rly modern Japa n, 13, 14–15
Echigo: ble aching Echigo cloth on snow,
96, 98–99fig.; crepe (chijimi), 96, 97,
120; ramie of, 91–96; weaving of
cloth, 96–97, 100–101fi g.
Echizen, paper of, 88–90
ecological damage, 24, 30, 38, 54
Edo, 66, 85, 116, 206n48
Edo Castle: bu r ni ng of, 34; medicinal
garden, 52
Edo Murasaki dye, 154, 183
embodied k nowledge, 13, 140–4 1, 14 5,
1 48, 155, 194–95 . See	also tacit
knowledge
embroidery, 2–3, 71, 1 45, 184fi g.	See	also
nee d lework
Engakuji, model of wood bracketing in
Relic Hall, 182fig.
etiquette books (ōraimono), 59
Europe an glass, 175, 176
ev identiary le a rni ng, 5 1, 154. See	also
investigating things; practical
studies
expositions, 11, 12, 53, 200n 30
Fangshi	mopu , 135–36
fans, 72, 76–77, 78–79fig. , 117
farmers: clothing of, 24; craft making
by-employ ment, 84, 120; goods in
household s of, 23; off-sea son
sericulture, 80–81; use of rice straw
to make things, 61–62
farm families (nōka), 117–20
feng	shui , 180
fertilizer, 34, 41, 45, 54
filial piety, 71
fine art s, 10–11, 197–98n5
fires, 34, 66, 116, 117, 126
Five Highways, 48
five metals (gokin), 25, 30
flora and fau na, 49, 52, 87, 107, 136
folk crafts, 12, 15
forests, 26, 31, 34, 35, 54 . See	also timber
Franck s, Penelop e, 84
Freer Gallery of Art, 5
fresh-water cont ainers (mizusashi), 4–5
Fudeya Myōki, 147
Fuji, Mount, 31, 35; Hoku sai’s Thirty-Six
Views, 34–35, 36–37fig.
Fujiwara no Teika, 185
Fukui, Mr. (tatami maker), 1–2
furniture, 23, 25; dimensions of, 181
ganpi	(Wikstoemia	canescens), 4 2–43
gate ways (of wa rrior re sidences), 183
gender. See women i n c rafts;	women’s
work
genealogies, 112, 113, 115, 120, 12 4–2 5
Gennai-yaki, 49–51, 50fig .	See	also Hiraga
Gennai
glass, 175, 176
glassblowing, 176, 178–79fig.
gold: enamels, 106; mining, 27, 28fig., 30;
spri nkled, i n makie lacquer, 67, 68,
109, 124, 125, 127, 128–30, 129fig. ,
136; sumptuary laws c oncerning, 183
grasses, 4 1
guild system, 1–2, 17, 85, 116–17
haikai poet ry, 131–32
haiku, 86
Haino Akio, 132
hai r orna ment s, glass, 176
hair ties (motoyui), 42, 84, 121; making of,
by Tachibana Minkō, 122–23fig.
Hanabu sa Ippō, 132
Hanabu sa Itchō, D okuraku	tozenshū
(Random collection of a spinning
top), 132
Hanley, Susa n, 84

241
Index
Hara Yōyūsai, 211n46
Haritsu/Ritsuō–style craft, 12 4, 135, 158,
2 12 n62. See	also Ogawa Haritsu
Hasegawa Mitsunobu, 86
Hatsune dowry set, 128, 130, 131fig. , 181
Hayami Akira, 84
Hei nouchi lineage, 67
Hei nouchi Yoshimasa, 67
hemp, 24, 38, 41, 91, 126
Hermès, 4
Hideyoshi, 31, 115, 128, 167
Higeta I ndigo House (Mashiko), 47–48,
47fig.
highway system, 48, 86, 188, 190
Hiraga Gennai, 49–51, 53, 62, 177, 195;
Gennai-yaki, 49, 50fig.
Hirase Tes sai. Se e Nihon	sankai	meibutsu
zue
Hirosaki domain, 132, 133, 161, 167;
temple s, 168, 2 15n 2. See	also Tsugar u
daimyo
Hirosaki	hanchō	nikki	(Hirosaki domain
diary), 133
Hizen porcelain, 59, 97–102, 103fig. , 106
hobbyists, teaching of, 3, 6
Hōkōji temple (Kyoto), 31, 35
Hoku riku K aidō, 97
Hoku sai, Thirty-Six	Views	of	Mount	Fuji ,
34–35, 36–37fig.
Hon’am i Kōet su, 12, 113–14, 147
Hōryūji, 146
Hosokawa Han zō Yorinao, te a-ser v ing
automaton, 150–51fi g.
household goods, 23, 40, 45, 84. See	also
c eram ics; scre ens; tansu; tat ami mats
house style (kafu), 120, 185; and indi-
vidual style, 111, 138
Ichikawa Danjurō II, 132, 212n62; Chichi
no	on	(A father’s gratitude), 132
Ichikawa Danjurō VII, 211n46
Ichise Kohe e, 4–5
ie (house/household): as admi nist rative
unit for craft workshops, 111, 112;
branch lineage s, 115; guilds and, 116;
house style, 120; impact on craft
practitioners, 17; master-disciple
relationships, 113; patronage of, 12 4,
125; record s a nd genealogies, 120,
124; rural, 117–20; as social system,
194; succession in, 112; urban, 2,
115–16; women’s role in, 194, 208n5.
See	also workshops
Ihara Saikaku, Saikaku	shokoku	banashi
(Saikaku’s tales from many coun-
tries), 80
Iida castle town, 121
Ikuno silver mines, 27
Illustrated	Compendium	of	Clever	Machines ,
tea-ser v ing automaton, 149,
150–51fig.
Illustrated	Encyclopedia	of	Humanity. Se e
Jinrin	kinmō	zui
Illustrated	Famous	Products	of	Mountains	and
Seas. Se e Sankai	meisan	zue
Illustrated	Famous	Specialties	of	the
Mountains	and	Seas	of	Japan . Se e Nihon
sankai	meibutsu	zue
Importa nt Inta ngible Cultural Property, 12
import substitution, 49, 170, 171
India, cotton from, 49, 171, 172fig. , 175
indigo: commercial cultivation of, 26, 42,
46–48; dyers, 55, 63, 71, 85; gods of,
55; Japa nese va riety, 46; transported
as cakes, 48; used for dyeing cotton,
46–48, 188; vats of, 47, 47fig.
Ingold, Tim, 154
ink sticks, 134, 158–59
innovation: a nd creative adaptation, 192,
195; Europe an, 180; failures, 177;

242
Index
innovation (continued)
immigrants and, 168; in materials,
154; of Ogawa Ha ritsu, 158, 171; in
papermaking, 170; in porcelain
techniques, 170–7 1; promoted in print
media, 190; in sericulture, 176–77;
technological, 166, 169–71, 180; in
textile dyei ng a nd weaving, 183, 188.
See	also technological transfer
inro, 133, 134, 135fig. , 159
international trade, 27–28, 49, 52,
171, 180
“In the Mountains of Tōtōmi Province”
(Katsu shika Hok usai), 34–35,
36–37fig.
investigating things (kaibutsu), 25, 48, 53,
173. See	also practical studies
iron, 25, 30, 65, 156; oxide, 185
itinerants, 88
ivory, 26, 68
Iwami silver mines, 27–28
Iwate Prefecture, 6, 21, 23, 30
Izumiyama, 106, 170
Japa ne se craft exceptionalism, 12–13
Jean-L ouis Scherrer, 4
Jingdezhen, 175
Jinrin	kinmō	zui	(Illust rated encyclop edia
of humanity): concern with urban
a rea s, 60, 85; consumer-or iented
information in, 70; contrasted with
Sankai	meisan	zue , 91; image s, 68–70,
69fig. 203–4n2; occupational
inventory, 59, 63–68, 171; women in
cra fts, 71, 206n 28
jitsugaku .	See practical st udies
Joh nson, Paul Christopher, “r itualized
se cre tism,” 153
Jōhōji plant ation (Iwate Prefectu re), 6
joinery, 4–5, 67, 127, 182, 182fig.
Kabuki theater, 131–32, 191
Kaibara Ekken, 5 1–52, 204 n4; Yamato
honz ō (Medicinal herbs of Japa n), 52
Kamisuki- chōhōki	(A handy guide to
paperm aking; Kunisaki Jihei), 42–43,
44fig. 77–80
Kamiya Sōji, 147
Kanazawa, 85, 115, 117
Kanda district (Edo), 57, 58fig. , 116
Kano Einō: family lineage compiled by,
12 4–2 5; Honcho	gashi	(Painting in our
land), 197n4
Kano Motonobu, 113
kanoko	shibori , 72, 75, 183; outer kimono
with, 76fig., 184fig.
Kano school pai nting, 113, 217n31
Kano Ya su nobu, Secrets	of	the	Way	of
Painting	(Gadō	yōketsu), 2 09n7
Kano Yoshinobu, v iew of lacquer
workshop from Pictures	of	Craftsmen ,
109–11, 110fi g.
kaolin, 26, 106
karada	de	oboeru (reme mbe r with the
body), 140
kara -nuri lacquer wa re, 38
Kariganeya, 7 1, 113, 115, 147
Karitsu (disciple of Ogawa Haritsu), 133
Kasama Kyōzan, 134–35
kata (patterns), 140, 14 1–42
kata	kanoko patter ns, 183, 184fi g.
Kat sushika Hoku sai. See Hok usai
Kefukigusa	(Grasses like wi nd-blow n fu r),
86
Kenzan-yaki, 185. See	also Ogata
Kenzan
Kichizaemon. See Raku house; Raku
Sō’nyū V (Kichizaemon)
kilns: climbing, 167, 168–69, 169fig.;
garden, 62; “gre at” (ōgama), 167; of
Hizen and Hirado, 97–102; Matsuu ra,

243
Index
102; Nabe shima, 51, 52–53, 102, 171;
for porc elai n, 106
kimono: embroidered, 3; furisode with
a llover kanoko	shibori , 76fi g.;	furisode
with tie-dyed imitation, 184fig.;
infant’s, 73fig.; production of yarn
for, 97
Kimura Kenk adō, 53, 87, 173, 175, 207 n58
Kinai region, 45, 202n47
Kiryū weavers, 117, 149, 166
Kisok aidō Road, 48, 190
Kitagawa Utamaro: Gifts	of	the	Ebb	Tide
(Shiohi no t suto), 2 12 n64; Women
Engaged	in	Sericulture, 82 fi g. , 83fi g.
Kita no Mandokoro, 128
kiwari proportions, 67, 14 2, 181
Kōami (lineage of lacquerers): a rchitec-
tural projects, 127; bridal dowry
good s, 12 8–30, 136; cha racterized a s
lacking in i nnovation, 136–37;
Chōan, 12 7; Chōsei, 12 7; commission
to reproduce w riting box, 1 26–27;
family records, 17, 121, 124–25, 127;
house style, 138; Kōdaiji makie , 128;
labor saving techniques, 1 27–2 8, 130;
meibutsu writing boxes and other
makie article s, 1 25, 126; shogunal
pat ronage, 12 1, 12 4, 1 25. See	also
Kōami Chōjū; Kōami Nagasuku
Kōami Chōjū, Hatsune dowry set, 128,
130, 131fig. , 181
Kōami Michikiyo, 126
Kōami Nagasuku: as case study of
work shop operations, 17, 111; a nd the
comm ission to reproduce writing box,
126–2 7, 137; compilation of fa mily
records, 12 4–25; as head of family
work shop, 124, 137; inst ructions for
suc cessors, 112–13, 139–40; Mume	ga	e
suzuribako	nikki	(Diary of making a
writing box with a plu m blossom
design), 126, 210n39; Yuishitsu-shin
(Singled-minded concentration),
112–13, 125–26, 209n7, 2 10n32
Kōchi wares, 50–51
Kōdaiji lacquer wa re, 128, 181, 210n 41;
pouring vessel, 129fig.
Kōdaiji temple (Kyoto), 128
kōgei (craft), 1 1–13, 197 nn4–5; mingei (folk
crafts), 12, 15
Koizumi Kazuko, 22–23
kokueki (prospe rity of the count ry), 52
Komat su Taishū, 210n 41
Komazawa, 5
Kon’ya-chō (Kanda district, Edo), 116
Kōra lineage, 67
Korea, p otters f rom, 106, 167
kosode, 4 5
kōzo (Broussonetia	papyrifera), 2 5, 4 1–4 3,
45, 90;	cutting kōzo by Kunisaki
Jihei, 44fig.
Kumazawa Banzan, 49
kumihimo.	See braid making
Kunisaki Jihei, Kamisuki- chōhōki	(A
handy guide to papermaking), 42–43,
44fig., 77–80
Kyobashi (Edo), 1 16
Kyōhō-era reform s, 116
Kyokutei Bakin, 191
Kyoto: cera mics, 158; craft district s,
115–16; decline in population after
1750, 85, 206n48; economic growth,
85; famous products, 185; rebuilding
of, 63, 66; textiles, 106, 188; work-
shop s, 4, 161. See	also Nishijin weavers
Kyushu: ceramics and kilns, 59, 91, 167,
168, 198n7; forest s of, 26; sarasa , 17 1;
tech nological transfer s through, 167.
See	also	Arita porc elain; Hizen
porcelain; Nabeshima domainal kilns

244
Index
lacquer: extraction of, 21, 22fig. , 38, 40;
importation of, 41, 199n6; inadequacy
of term, 5–6; as luxury resource, 22,
23, 40, 41; as “material of the sacred,”
55; poly merization of, 141, 160; sc ent
of, 141; sources of, 6, 90; taxation of,
38; thitsi and urushi, 5–6, 4 1; as
theme, 15; uses of, 21, 40–41; wood
c ontainer for, 6–7; workshops, 17, 38,
41, 88, 109–11, 110fig. , 113. See	also
lacque rers; lacquer wa re; lac t ree s
lacquerers: Ka no Yoshinobu’s v ie w from
Pictures	of	Craftsmen , 109–11, 110fi g.;
knowledge of materials, 6, 153;
Living National Treasure Mu rose
Kazumi, 5–6; makie- shi,	nurimono-
shi, and tsuimono-shi, 5, 68; Master
Lacquerer Sabu rō, 203–4 n2; physical
movement s, 1 41; of Takaga mine, 147;
techniques, 126; training and
practice, 1 40; use of term saiku for,
65. See	also Kōami (lineage); Kōami
Nagasuk u; Ogawa Haritsu
lacquer wa re: Chinese-style, 38, 68, 171;
Haritsu/Ritsuō–style, 124, 135, 158,
212n62; Kōdaiji style, 128, 129fig. ,
181, 210n41; regional styles, 38; Rinpa
school, 113, 212 n66; Tsugar u-nu ri,
38, 39fig. , 133, 200n30; Wajima
ware, 38, 40fig. See also makie
lacque r
lac tre es: cu ltivation of, 6, 21, 35–40;
extraction of lacquer, 21, 22fig., 38,
40; of Hirosaki domain, 133;
knowledge of, 153; as natural
resource, 25; sap of, 141; tapping of,
90, 93–94fig.
lathe specialists (kijishi), 88, 89fig. ,
207n54
Latou r, Br u no, actor-network theory, 16
Li Shizhe n, materia	medica publication, 51
literacy, 1 42
literati painters, 138
Living National Treasures, 5, 12
local product s, 49, 86, 87, 17 1, 180. Se e
also meibutsu; regional crafts; rural
craft production
looms, 66, 115, 168
m adder (akane) dye, 4 1, 17 1
maebiki	oga (one-ma n ripsaws), 35
Maeda domain, 66
Maeda Tsunanori, 115
makie	lacque r: defined, 2 3; “flat”
(hiramakie), 128; historically
import a nt pieces, 6, 125, 126–2 7;
Kano Yoshinobu’s v iew from Pictures
of	Craftsmen , 109–11, 110fi g.; Kōami
lineage, 12 4–27, 136–37; Kōdaiji style,
128, 129fig., 210n41; as symbol of
st atu s, 1 1, 23, 12 4; takamakie
tech nique, 130; work shop s, 12 5,
130–31. See	also Ha ra Yōyūsai; Kōami
(lineage); Kōami Nagasuku; Murose
Kazumi; Ogawa Haritsu
m arket e conomy, 48, 63, 70, 107, 130
m arketing, 15, 18, 51, 1 21, 188, 190
m ar riage, bet we en rival hou ses, 113
m aterial s: c onsciousne ss of, 18, 153–57,
161, 163–64, 194–95, 2 14 n33; port able
and nonportable, 44–45; and
re sou rc e depletion 2 4; subjective
properties of, 154. See	also nat u ral
resources
materia	medica , 51
mathematical knowledge, 142
Matsuu ra, 52–53; kilns of, 102
Mauss, Ma rc el, 14
me asu rements, 14 2, 146, 181, 146, 213n16
medicinal gardens, 52
meibutsu (famous products), 86–87, 107,
185–86; Kenzan ceramics, 185; Kōami

245
Index
makie	lacque rs, 12 5; marketing and
publicity, 190–92; Nikkō wooden
utensils, 88, 89fig.
meisan (famous products), 86, 87, 107. S ee
a lso meibutsu
meisho (famous place s), 87
mercha nt s: cla ss of, 61–62; network s, 1 5,
48; paper, 42; overlap with artisans,
61; role in supply chain, 24, 45, 48;
sake, 53; subcontracting with farm
household s, 85, 97
Merle au-Ponty, Mau rice, 14
metals: five metals (gokin), 25, 30; used as
c u rre ncy, 27. See	also copper; gold a nd
silver; mines and mining
met alworking, 11, 2 7, 31, 57, 65
michi (way), of sewi ng, 1 47–48
Mikuni Kaidō, 97
Mindful	Hand ,	The (ed. Robe rts, Schaffer,
Dear), 14
mines and mining: convict labor, 27; iron
dep osits, 30; pollution, 30; Sado
mines, 27, 28–29fig.; shrines at mine
entra nce, 54; silver and gold, 2 7–30;
stone for p orc elai n, 106, 170; sur vey
m i ni ng tech nique, 27; tool s, 30,
32–33fig.
mingei (folk crafts), 12, 15
Mino, 12 1, 168, 169
Mirror	of	Eternal	Feminine	Virtue	(Teisō
chiyo k aga mi; Utagawa Ku niyoshi),
143–45, 144fig.
misemono (cu riosities), 133, 161
Misuyaba ri, 70
mitate (parodic t ra nsform ations), 161
mitsumata	(Edgeworthia	papyrifera),
42–43
Miura Genchū, w ife of, 188
Miyazaki Yasuda: manual for tapping
lacque r, 21; Nōgyō	zensho	(Complete
compendium of agriculture), 41, 52
mizuhiki (twisted pape rs), 72, 75–76, 117,
121; knot on money envelope
(modern), 77fig.
Mochizuki Hanzan, 134–35
modula r de sign sy stem, 181
morality: of the ruler, 49; women’s, 143,
148
Morita Kyūemon, 52–53
Morris-Su zuki, Te ssa, 180
Motoyashiki (Mino), 169
motoyui (paper hair ties), 42, 84, 121;
ma king of, by Tachibana Minkō,
122–23fig.
mulberry trees, 25, 41, 81, 176; feeding
chopped mulberry leaves to larvae,
82fig.; paper, 43, 62, 84, 121
Murose Kazumi, 5–6
mushrooms, 34, 87
musume	yado (young women’s lodge),
145
Nabeshima domainal kilns, 51, 52–53,
102, 17 1
Nagaku sa Embroidery Workshop, 2–4
Nagakusa Sumie, 2–3
Nagasaki, 49, 68, 167, 176, 202n 51. See	also
Hizen
Naka mu ra Z en’emon, 176–77
Nakasendō, 48, 97
Narumi textiles, 188; pri nt by Utagawa
Kunisada, 189fig.
Narutaki, 161, 185
nat ural history move ment, 48, 136
natural resources, 25–26; collection and
display, 53; craft makers and, 194;
imported, 26; management, 26–2 7,
34, 35–39, 48, 54; surveys, 49, 52;
transport, 48; See	also fore sts; mi ne s
and mining
nat ural science s (honz ōgaku), 49, 87
nat ure (shizen), 54, 55, 203n60

246
Index
ne ed le s: embroidery, 2–3; as gendered
technology, 2; makers of, 70; in
Neo-Conf ucia n moral e conomy, 143;
offered to deity of Awashima, 147;
shape of eye, 2–3; used by tatami
m akers, 1–2
needlework, 15, 72, 143–45, 144fig.	See
also embroidery; sewing
Neo-Conf ucianism: behavior of women,
59–60; practical studies and
investigating things, 16, 48–49, 173;
a nd women’s work, 70–72, 1 43–45
net suke, 26, 134
net work s, 15–16, 48, 131–32, 175, 2 11n 46;
transport, 97, 121
Nezu Mu seu m, 133
niche m a rket s, 18, 188, 190
Nihon	sankai	meibutsu	zue	(Illustrated
famous specialties of the mountains
and seas of Japan; Hirase Tessai):
coverage of rural and urban areas, 60,
86–87; dissemination of useful
knowledge, 106–7; on lacquer
tapping, 90, 93–94fig.; on mining,
29–30, 54, 86; Nikkō tray and bowls,
88, 89fig.
Nihonshoki (Chronicle s of Japa n), 2 5
Nikkō woodworker s, 88, 89fi g.
Ninsei. See Nonomu ra Ninsei
Nishijin dist rict (Kyoto), 7 1, 115–16, 117;
Nagaku sa Embroidery Workshop, 2
Nishijin weavers: adoption of d rawloom
w ith pattern tower, 168; migration
from Kyoto to Kiryū, 117, 149, 166;
monopoly on lu xury silks, 117; in
print by Tachibana Minkō, 118–19fig.
niwaki (garden kilns), 62
noborigama (climbing kiln), 167, 168–69;
sixteen-cha mber, 169fi g.
Nōgyō	zensho	(Agricultural c ompendium),
90
Noh theater, 148
Nonomura Ninsei, 116, 161, 163
Nonomura Seiemon, 161
nuno (bast fiber textiles), 91. See	also
hemp; ramie
Obak u (Huangbo) se ct, 167
obi ties ( obijime), 75
oc cupational diversity, 5, 17, 50–60, 107
Oda Nobu naga, A zuchi Castle of, 31
Ogata family: clothing house Kariganeya,
71, 113, 115, 147; Raku house, 112, 113,
115, 209n10
Ogat a Kenza n: belonged to mercha nt
class, 62; as celebrity designer-
maker, 12, 185; earthenware trays
with twelve lunar months, 185,
186–87fig.; experimentation and
innovation, 162–64, 195; pai nterly
approach to de coration, 161–62, 185;
and Rinpa school, 113–15; signatu re
of, 185; st and ardization and
differentiation in cera mic s of, 185,
192; a nd Tōkō	hitsuyō, 161, 162–63;
workshop of, 1 16, 161–62, 162 fig.
Ogata Kōrin, 12, 62, 71, 113–15, 185
Ogata Sōtaku, 147
Ogawa Eiha, 133
Ogawa Ha ritsu (R itsuō): att ribution of
works, 135–36; autom at a and
cu riosities, 133–34, 137; background
and biography, 62, 132, 134; case
st udy of, 17, 111; a s de signer-ma ker,
137–38; disciples of, 134–35;
illust rations for Chichi	no	on	(A
father’s gratitude), 132; illust rations
for D okuraku	tozenshū	(Random
collection of a spinning top), 132;
innovations of, 158–61; lacquer style,
121–2 4, 135, 158, 212 n62; makie
writing box with relief inro design,

247
Index
134, 135fig.;	makie	writing box with
se ashell patter n, 135–36, 136fi g. ,
2 12 n63; material c on sciousne ss of,
163–64, 195; pat ronage of Tsuga ru
Nobuhisa, 38, 131, 132–33; signat ure s
of, 134, 135; teabowl m ade of
papier-mâché covered in l acquer, 15,
133, 159–61, 159fig.; workshop of, 121,
133
Ogawa Sōri, 133
ohariya (needle lodge), 14 5
Ojiya chijimi (crepe), 97; detail of kimono
with paulownia flowers, 102fig.
Okuda Eisen, 175
oku	dōgu (good s for display in women’s
cha mbers), 12 8–30
One	Hundred	Famous	Views	of	Edo (Meisho
Edo hyakkei), 58fig.
Onna	daigaku	takarabako	(Treasury of
greater lea rning for women), 59–60,
71–75, 74fig. , 80, 147, 204nn3–4
Onna	manzai	takarabunkō	(Collected works
on women’s treasures of a thousand
years), 1 46
Onna Yukinobu, 217n31
Ont a Valley potters, 198n7
Oroku combs, 84, 190–91, 191fi g.
Osaka, 45, 85, 206n48
Ōsaki Hachiman Shrine, 41
oshie (relief pictu res), 62
Ota Nanpō, 190
overglaze enamel, 102, 103fig. , 106, 136,
149, 158, 161, 162fig., 171
Owari domain, 51, 130, 188
paper mercha nts, 42
paper re cycling, 43–44
paperm aking: E chizen, 88–90; from
Illustrated	Famous	Specialties,
92–93fig.; imported materials, 6;
innovation i n 170; introduction of,
170; Kamisuki- chōhōki	(A handy guide
to papermaking), 42–43, 44fig. ,
77–80; by Nichiren Buddhists, 147;
process of, 43, 90, 170; related
industrie s, 120–21; in Shinano
Province, 120–21; in Ueda domain,
85; urban workshops, 43, 45;
va rieties of pape r, 42–43; women i n,
12, 43, 77–79. Se e al so kōzo ;	mizuhiki;
motoyui
papier-mâché, 159–60; teabowl covered
in lacquer, 15, 133, 159–61, 159fi g.
pat ronage, 111, 1 20, 12 1, 12 4, 125, 131–32,
137
Pekarik, Andrew, 126
performi ng a rt s, 140–41. See	also Kabuki
theater
poetry competitions, 62–63, 71
polishing stone s, 158
pollution, 30
porcelain: Arita, 51, 91, 104–5fig. , 106,
149–53, 158, 170; banquet dishe s,
102; from China, 27, 175; glaze and
ena mels, 102, 106, 149–53, 1 58,
17 1; innovation in, 170–71; kilns,
106; luxury, 53; from Nabeshima
kilns, 51, 52–53, 102, 103fig. , 171;
production i n Hizen, 59, 97–102,
103fi g. , 106; publications on,
90–91; in Sankai	meisan	zue ,
97–102, 106; sources of, 26, 51,
53, 106, 170
practical studies (jitsugaku), 16, 25, 48,
51–52, 53–54
print media: printing press, 177; texts and
manuals on crafts, 59, 148–49,
173–75, 190–92, 195; woodblock
printing, 17, 59, 167, 177
product differentiation, 18, 180, 183–85
professionalization and sp ecialization,
67–68, 70, 138

248
Index
profe ssional secre cy, 1 48–53, 161, 163, 170
Pye, David, 10
Rakuchū	rakugaizu	(Views i nside and
outside the capital), 63, 1 58; detail,
64fig.
Rak u house, 11 2, 113, 11 5, 208n3, 209n10;
Raku Sō’nyū V (Kichizaemon), 113,
114fig., 209n10
Rak u potters. See Ogat a fa mily; Ogata
Kenzan
Raku ware: by amateurs, 62, 70, 114; of
Chōzaemon, 115; Ogawa Haritsu’s
lacq uered teabowl simulating, 15,
133, 159–61, 159fig.; social and
c ultural distinction of, 161; teabowls
with matte finish, 113, 114fig.;
text-based k nowledge, 2 14 n2 5
ram ie (Boehmeria	nivea), 4 1, 91–9 6; asa ,
24, 38, 45
Ravi na, Mark, 38–39
rayskin, 26, 67–68, 70, 199n6
regional crafts, 38, 85–86, 91, 97, 120–21,
133, 190; Arita porcelain, 51, 91,
104–5fi g. , 106, 149–53, 158, 170;
textiles, 117, 188. See	also rural craft
production
re gional inventorie s, 87
re gional product s. S ee meibutsu
residential architecture, 31
resource depletion, 24, 26, 51
“restored behavior” (Schech ner), 141
rice c ultivation, 31, 54, 57
rice st raw, 61–62
Rinpa school, 113–15, 2 12 n66
rituals and festivals, 54–55, 88, 146–47;
r itual technologies (Bray), 180
Roberts, Lissa, 14
Rod rigues, João, 65–66
Roku (Orok u) combs, 84, 190–91, 191fi g.
roofers, 65, 85, 116
Rousmaniere, Nicole Coolidge, 170
r u ral craft production: black smiths, 85;
as by-employ ment, 84; collaboration
w ith mercha nts, 85; Echigo cloth,
91–97, 98–99fi g.; itinerants a nd, 88;
lacquer tapping, 93–94fi g.; pap er-
ma king, 85; publications, 87, 107;
sm al l-sca le a nd industrial-sc ale, 91;
Ueda domain, 85; weaving, 45, 84 .
See	also regional crafts
rural economies, 14, 57–59, 84
Sabu rō (master lacquerer) 203–4 n2
Sado mines, 27; gold mining sc rolls,
28–29fig. , 199n11
Sahei (Raku heir), 113
Saiga	shokunin	burui	(Various classe s of
artisans in colored pictures), 76, 176,
178–79fig.; fan making, 78–79fig.
saiku/saikunin (practitioners of fi ne
craftmanship), 11, 63–65, 68
Sak ai (city), 115, 168
Sakai Hōitsu, 211n46
sa ke production, 87–88, 97
sameshi (rayskin sp eci ality), 68. See	also
rayskin
samurai status, 67; artisans of, 49, 62, 121,
12 4, 132, 145
Sankai	meisan	zue	(Illustrated fa mou s
products of mountain and sea): on
Arita porcelain production i n Hizen,
80, 97–102, 104–5fi g. , 106, 149–53;
cont ribution of Kimura Kenk adō,
87–88; compa red with Nihon	sankai
meibutsu	zue, 87, 90–91; on crafts and
comestibles, 60, 87; Echigo cloth, 96,
98–99fig., 100–101fig.; emphasis on
tools a nd technologies, 175; Nikkō
tray and bowls, 88; published to
disseminate useful knowledge,
106–7; title of, 87, 204n5

249
Index
sankin	kōtai	sy stem, 48
Santo Kyōden, Orokugushi	Kiso	no	Adauchi
(Oroku combs and revenge in Kiso),
190–91
Sanuki ware, Gennai type, 50–51, 50fig.
sappa nwood, 26, 154, 183, 199n6
sarasa , 171; pouch, 172fi g.
Sarasa	benran (Comp endium of sarasa
designs), 17 1
saws, 13, 35, 181
saw yers (kobiki), 67, 116
Schechner, Richard, “restored beh avior,”
141
screens, 23, 60, 63, 64fig., 110fig., 158
Seike Kiyoshi, 182
Senke te a schools, 113, 161
Sennett, Richa rd, Th e	Craftsman , 13
Sen no Rikyū, 5, 161
Sen Sōshitsu IV, 115
senryū (humorous verse), 130, 2 11n 44
sericulture: in novations in, 176–77; as
off-sea son occ upation, 80–81;
support from domai nal authorities,
38, 176; women in, 81, 82fig., 83fig.
See	also silk
sew ing, 14 3; “way” of, 147–48. See	also
nee d le work
sheep fa rming, 17 7
shells, 135–36, 2 12 n64
Shibata Z eshin, 134
shiboku	sansō (four t ree s and three
grasses), 4 1
Shichijūichi	shokunin	utaawase	(Poet ry
c ompetition among various
professions in seventy-one rou nds),
62–63, 7 1
Shinano Province, 91, 120–21
Shiner, La rry, Th e	Invention	of	Art , 61
Shinto, 54, 75, 146
shipbuilders, 66
Shirane, Ha r uo, 203n67
Shobutsu	ruisan , 52
shogu n’s palac e, women’s qu arters
worker s, 72
shokunin (artisan class), 11, 61, 65, 124. See
also artisans
shokunin	utaawase (poet ry comp etitions
among various profe ssions), 62–63, 7 1
Shōmei, 67
Shōtoku Taishi, 146–47
signatu re s a nd seals, 134, 135, 185, 194
signboard ca r vers, 68, 69fi g.
silk: bro cade, 106, 115; from China, 2 7,
168; and cotton weave with st ripes,
46fig.; crepe, 117, 146; domestic, 25;
embodied k nowledge of, 195; as
fabric of the elite, 23; imported from
Siam, 199n6; Nishijin, 1 15–16, 117;
robe s, 183; shibori -dyed, 188. See	also
sericulture
silkworms, 166, 177. See	also sericulture
silver: ena mels, 106; export s to China, 2 8;
global price of, 28–29; in makie
lacquer, 130, 136; mi ni ng, 2 7–28, 30;
sumptuary laws, 183
slip, 160, 162fig. , 163
smelting, 30–31, 4 4
Smith, Pamela, 14 153, 163
Smith, Thomas, 45, 120
Sō Shiseki (Shen Nanpin), 202n51
social networking, 131–32, 175, 211 n46
soft power, crafts and, 5
Sōken	kishō, 134
Song Yingxi ng, Tenkō	kaibutsu	(The works
of heaven and the inception of
things), 173–75, 174fig.
Southeast Asia, resources imported from,
26, 154, 199n6
spe cialization and profe ssionalization,
67–68, 70, 138, 182
spe ct acle s, 176
st anda rdization, 180–81, 192, 195

250
Index
status distinctions, 11, 23, 68, 180,
182–83 . See	also sumptuary laws
ste el, 30–31, 155–57
stencil pri nting, 192
stone wa re: ca mellia-shaped side dishe s
with camellia patterns, 162fig.;
decoration of, 161; in Kyushu, 168;
Shidoyaki and Gennai-yaki, 49–51;
squ a re plate with overglaze enamels,
50fig. , 202n51. See	also ceramics;
porcelain
subc ontracting, 85, 97
sumptuary laws, 23, 154, 183, 192, 193
Suntory Museum, 135
Susanoo no Mikoto, 25
Suzuki Bok ushi, Hokuetsu	seppu	(Snow
country tales), 96, 120
Suzuki Kanezō, 188
sword guards (tsuba), 65, 133
sword s: c utting edge, 157–58; hammeri ng
of steel for, 157; hilts of, 26, 67, 70;
met als for, 2 5; polishing of, 158;
sc abbards, 67–68; sp ecialization in,
67–68
sword smiths, 31, 1 55–58, 156fi g.
Tachibana Minkō: fan making, 78–79fig.;
glassblower, 178–79fig.; m aking
motoyui, 122–23fig.; weavers in
Nishijin, 118–19fig.
tacit knowledge, 139–40, 143, 155, 162.
See	also embodied k nowledge
Tahira Namiko, 171
Takaga mine, 147
Takamura Kōun, apprenticeship of,
1 42–43
Takarai Kikaku, 131–32
talent, 14, 112, 209n7
Tale	of	Genji , 130; sc ene s on Hat sune
dowry set, 130, 131fig.
Tamaya Shobei IX, tea-ser vi ng automaton
doll, 152fig.
tansu (wooden che sts), 23, 67, 181
tatami makers, 1–2, 6, 66, 116
Tat a mi Makers’ Guild, 1–2
tatami mats, 1, 23, 31, 181
Tawaraya painting workshop, 113
Tawaraya Sōtat su, 1 13–14
taxation, 38–39, 66, 90, 117
teabowls: papier-m âché covered in
lacquer, 15, 133, 159–61, 159fig .;
whe el-thrown, 161
tea ceremony: ae sthetics of, 154; Kōchi
ware, 50; names of things, 87; Raku
ware, 113, 114fig.; schools, 5, 113, 161;
vessels for, 4, 5, 15, 161
tea trees, 41
techne, 61
“tech niques of the body” (Mauss), 1 45
technological transfer, 18, 167–68, 173,
175–77, 192. See	also in novation
technologies, 166–67, 17 7–80, 182
temple s, wood for, 31–32, 54
ten crafts (jūshoku), 5
Terashima Ryōan, Wakan	sansai	zue
(Illustrated Sino-Japa nese e ncyclo-
pedia), 171
textiles: aesthetics of, 3, 75; Arimatsu,
188; crepe, 91, 96, 97, 102fig. , 115–16,
117, 146; Kiryū, 117, 149, 166;
innovation as marketing st rategy in,
188; measurement and cutting, 146;
Narumi, 188, 189fig.; Nishijin, 117,
118–19fig, 168; nuno (bast fiber), 91;
patterns, 75, 183, 188; stencil
printing, 184fig. , 192; women and
children involved in, 12, 96, 145. See
also clothing; cotton; Echigo; ramie;
silk; weaving
thitsi lacquer, 4 1

251
Index
Tiangong	kaiwu	(The works of heaven and
the inception of things), 90–91,
207n58
tie-dye, 75, 183, 184fig. , 188
timber, 26, 31–35, 153. See	also wood
timber-f ra me c onst ruction, 181
Tōfukumon’in, Empress, 62
Tōkaidō Road, 48, 188
Tōkō	hitsuyō	(Essentials for the p otter),
161, 162–63
Tok ugawa Iemitsu, 130
Tok ugawa Ieyasu, 28, 147
Tok ugawa Mitsutomo, betrothal of, 130
Tok ugawa shogu nate: and craft guilds,
116–17; dyers to, 116; hierarchy
instituted by, 61; mort ua ry complex
of, 88; Owari branch, 188; as pat rons,
121, 124; sumptuary regulations, 154
Tokugawa Yoshimune, 52
Tokyo National Museum, 134
tools, 10, 165, 175; agricultural, 25, 31;
carpentry, 142, 181–82; mining, 30,
32–33fig.
tororo	plant, 170, 216n6
Tosa Mitsunobu, 113
Tosa painting style, 113
Tot ma n, Con rad, 54
touri sm, 88, 107
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 31, 115, 128, 167
trade sec ret s, 1 48–53, 161, 163, 170
traditional crafts (dentō	kōgei), 3, 7, 11–13,
166, 197 n5
transmission of k nowledge, 3, 18, 53,
1 41, 1 48–49, 167, 171. See	also pri nt
media
transport net works, 97; packhor se, 1 21.
See	also highway system
Treasury	of	Greater	Learning	for	Women
(Onna daigaku takarabako), 59–60,
71–75, 74fig. , 80, 147, 204nn3–4
trees, 2 5, 35–38, 4 1. See	also fore sts; lac
trees; mulberry trees; timber
Tsuchida Sōtaku, 147
Tsuchiya dye workshop, 116
Tsugaru domain, 35, 38, 168
Tsuga r u Nobuhisa, 38, 131, 132, 133, 136,
215 n2
Tsugaru Nobumasa, 38, 176
Tsuga r u-nu ri lacquer wa re, 38, 133,
200n30; oval inkstone box with
Chinese recluse, 39fig.
Ueda domain, 85
u mbrella s, 1 21
Urasenke school of tea, 5
urbanization, 14, 16, 24, 85
urushi (urushiol/Japa nese lacquer), 5–6,
21, 4 1. See	also l acquer
Ushigome Chie, 147–48
Utagawa Hiroshige: “K a nd a, Kon’ya-
chō,” 58fig. , 1 16; Oroku comb maker
from Compendium	of	Famous	Artisans ,
190, 191fig.; portrayal of female craft
makers, 190, 191fig. , 217n31
Utagawa Kunisada, “Na r umi” from
Fifty-Th ree	Pairings	for	the	Tōkaidō
Road, 188, 189fig.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Wisdom (Chi) from
Mirror	of	Eternal	Feminine	Virtue ,
143–45, 144fig.
Vienna I nter national Exp osition (1873),
11, 200n30
visuality, 141, 193
Wajima, lacquerware of, 38, 40fig.
Wakan	sansai	zue (Illust rated Sino-
Japa ne se encyclop edia), 17 1
wa rrior class, 31, 48, 125, 154, 183. See	also
Tok ugawa shogu nate

252
Index
Wata nabe Sa nsei, 97
we av ing: of cotton, 4 5, 84; of Echigo
cloth, 96–97, 100–101fi g.; fragment
of cloth of plain silk and cotton with
stripes, 46fig.; Kyoto and Kiryū, 117,
149, 166; looms for, 66, 115, 168; by
men, 71; in rural households, 45, 84;
silk, 115, 117; by women, 45, 96–97,
1 43. See	also loom s; Nishijin weavers
Wigen, Ka ren, 120
women i n crafts: apprenticeships, 70,
146; Arita porcelain, 106; carpentry,
80; documented in prints a nd
publications, 17, 71, 76, 77, 81–84;
Echigo cloth, 96; at home, 70–71,
206n40; ie system and, 194; pap er
decorations and fa ns, 75–77,
78–79fig.; papermaking, 77–80;
physic al labor, 80; practice and
guidance, 143; preparing cotton
wadding, 2 06n40; seric ulture,
80–81, 82fig., 83fig.; weaving, 45,
96–97, 143. See also Treasury	of	Greater
Learning	for	Women; women’s work
women’s dow ry good s, 1 28–30, 136
women’s work, 59, 71–72, 1 43, 147–48
wood: agency of, 16; for fuel, 31, 34, 54;
for temples, 31–32, 54; overuse of, 31.
See	also timber
woo dblock pri nting, 17, 59, 167, 17 7
wood bracketing, model of, 182fi g.
woodcarvers, 68, 69fig., 142–43
workshops: ceramics, 80, 116, 161; codes
and practical matters, 125; districts
of, 115; dye, 46, 71, 116; Edo, 116;
embroidery, 2–4; familial, 111, 112;
Kōami, 17, 111, 124; Kyoto, 4, 161;
lacquer, 17, 38, 4 1, 88, 109–11, 110 fig. ,
113, 125, 130–31; of Ogat a Ken za n,
116, 161–62, 162 fi g.; of Ogawa Ha ritsu,
121, 133; papermaking, 43, 45; and
patronage, 16; tatami, 116; as
tech nology, 166; urba n, 57, 115–16;
women’s membership rest rictions,
81. See also ie
world expo sitions, 12; Vienna (1873), 11,
200n30
Yamakawa Kikue, 143
Yamamura, Kozo, 84
Yamauchi Toyom asa, 52
Yonezawa, 38–39
Yosa Bu son, 176
Yoshihara Yoshindo, 1 55–58, 156fi g. , 163
Yoshiwara brothel dist rict, 131–32
yukata , 116, 188
Zhu Xi school, 48–49
Zhu Ya n, Tao	shuo/Tōsetsu (Discussions on
cera m ic s), 175