Japanese washi paper is a favorite material for printmakers and artists all over the world. Its tactile presence adds a warm, handmade element to their work. There’s a paper studio in rural Tokushima prefecture that has made collaboration with artists a big part of its modus operandi. Flexibility and openness to innovation has been the key to its survival in an industry where global competition has made it impossible to get by merely maintaining tradition.
Interview: Claire Tanaka
Translation: Claire Tanaka
Mr. Fujimori, how many years have you been doing this?
Well, I’m 61 now. I started making paper when I was 22, so it’ll be 39 years now.
Did you start after you graduated from university?
Everyone thinks about their future when they’re in university, right? Should I get a job in a company? Or should I take over the family business? So during the summer holidays of my third year, I travelled to paper workshops all over the Tohoku region in northeastern Japan. I was going to school in Osaka, and I thought, “If I go back to Tokushima, I’ll never have another chance to visit Tohoku.” My own family was in the paper business, so I made a plan to visit paper workshops all over Tohoku. Back then, there were places that were doing well, and others that were not doing so well, on the verge of quitting.
So what was the deciding factor for you?
There was a paper maker in Shiroishi City, Miyagi, named Endo. When I saw that workshop, I could tell that they had an extreme sense of pride and confidence in the paper they made. I was just twenty years old, but he took me into his home and sat me by the fire and talked to me for over an hour. About his own work, about paper. I thought, “Ooh, if I live like this, I could make washi paper my life’s work.” And that was when I decided to return to Tokushima and take over the family business.
When you decided to enter the family business at 22, did you have to learn everything from scratch?
After I came back, everyone else in the workshop was in their forties and fifties. Much older. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, to study with. To compensate for that, I went and bought a ton of old books about washi. I was the son of the owner, so I was supposed to be the one telling them what to do. I had to tell these guys who were older and wiser than me “please do this,” so in order to build up the theory and knowledge to back up my orders, I read books. I also went around to other paper workshops to study, about once or twice a year. There were no other paper makers my age, so even when I went around to sell my paper, everyone treated me like a son. (laughs) And they taught me so many things; “make paper like this” and “don’t make paper like that.” But back then, the biggest problem we faced was the fact that no one had ever heard of Awa Washi.
How did you overcome that?
One thing we did was we held a workshop here once a year, and we also got invited to hold workshops overseas. We’d bring our papermaking tools and go to America and Europe, get twenty people or so together, and teach about papermaking for about a week. That’s how we got people overseas to know about Awa Washi. I started doing that when I was around thirty, for about ten years.
So instead of focusing on Japan, you spread your wings overseas?
The most fun is, first of all you get to take a trip overseas. Also, you go over to teach about how to make paper and suddenly you’re “sensei,” you know? Everyone is all, “A sensei who can’t speak English is coming from Japan.” So they find someone to be an interpreter for you. You get to be a sensei. Being called “sensei”, after one day, you’ll never be able to quit. “Sensei” is great. (laughs)
You’ve been going overseas for thirty years now. How have things changed since you started?
Industry-wise, since I started introducing Japanese paper to America and Europe, Japan has had a lot of structural growth, and paper has gotten expensive. The exchange rate went from 340 yen to the US dollar, to 260 yen, and now it’s what, 110 yen or so? What used to be cheap for them got more expensive. And washi became a luxury item. It became something that only artists used. And then people in Thailand started to make paper similar to washi. That started about fifteen years ago. They had already been producing kozo, the material used to make washi, to export to Japan. But they thought, “Just producing the raw material and sending it to Japan doesn’t earn us much money.” And so they started making washi to export to Japan. And of course it costs a lot less, right? That’s how people around the world started to get a different attitude towards asian handmade paper. Now India is going all out making handmade paper. The region of production is moving around. But thanks to that, my job became clearer. In Japan, we should make paper only we can make. I make archival paper now, for preserving cultural artifacts. Also, we make specialty paper for artists, for printmakers, as well as for use in inkjet printers. We also make paper for bookbinders and people using letterpress printers.
You invite people from overseas to come to your shop, and you go abroad to do workshops and get people to know about the paper you make. Do you also get ideas from the people you meet?
Yes. We have a visiting artist program here. We help them with their art projects, and while we’re working together, we get ideas and learn techniques. If we didn’t have the outside stimulus, if we tried to figure things out all by ourselves, nothing would get accomplished around here.
Do you have a specific example?
We made the paper for Gregory Colbert’s photography works. The paper is really big; five meters by three meters or so. You can’t make it the same way you make smaller pieces of paper, so we had to think about how to make it. Most places would just say “we can’t do it,” and that would be the end of the story. But if you give it a try, if you think hard and try different things, you can do it. Making that paper, it was so heavy that we had to use a crane to lift the frames.
The open plan style of your workshop enables you to do that kind of thing, I imagine. I really get a sense of freedom here.
We built this place twenty years ago now. Out of one month, we only make traditional Awa washi for maybe one week. The other three weeks are all spent making contemporary stuff. New things based on traditional techniques. No one knows about Awa paper, so we had to work really hard to figure out how to get our name known. If we’d just stuck to traditional papermaking, there probably wouldn’t have been many people who took an interest in us.
What are your thoughts on problems with finding a successor for rural traditional businesses?
It hurts to be asked that. I’m sixty-one now. Normally, I should already have a successor lined up. But I’ve got three daughters. The oldest is married and living in Tokyo. The second one is living in Bangkok and getting married to an American this autumn. The youngest is living in Kobe, but she doesn’t seem to have much interest in the family business. What do you think I should do? I think a parent’s work, particularly culture-related work, it all depends on how it is valued, what kind of reputation the business has. Also, what kind of lifestyle is the parent living. Those are the factors by which the children decide if they’re going to take over the family business or not. There’s an economic factor as well, but it’s also about what kind of satisfaction can be gained from the work. They can tell that by watching their parents. I think children watch their parents and that’s how they decide what to do, wouldn’t you agree?
How do people find out about this place?
Right now there’s a girl here from Scotland participating in a week-long workshop. She got an award from her school and they told her “take this money and use it to participate in a workshop somewhere.” Her older classmates and teachers told her that she should come here. After doing this for twenty years, we get those kind of personal introductions quite a lot.
Doing it by word of mouth for twenty years. You really get a sense of the value of each encounter.
In the end, over the course of one life, the people you can really talk to, I mean they don’t just walk by but really stop and talk. People who influence you and you influence them back as you go through life. There aren’t many people like that. Maybe not even a hundred. In that sense, I do think each encounter is valuable. I started working when I was twenty-two, and it seems there was always someone at each joint, each turn, each time something changed. When I think back, the reason I’m here now, the way I am, is because of those people I met along the way. I realize that now. At the time, I probably said some rude things and was rather disrespectful, though.
Finally, is there anything you’d like to say?
I’ve been thinking about this recently, but we’ve got a lot of problems in this industry. The issue of finding a successor, the fact that there aren’t many people to go harvest kozo in the woods, how it’s getting hard to access materials. But if you have a solid goal and you’re able to innovate, there is no other job as wonderful, as interesting, as this one!
Awagami Factory
Kawahigashi 136, Yamakawa-cho, Yoshinogawa City, Tokushima Prefecture
Yoichi Fujimori
Born in 1947. President, Awagami Factory.
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PingMag MAKE is the sister site to PingMag. We use an interview format to put the spotlight on a wide range of people active in rural areas. We document the voices of these unknown heroes and broadcast them to the world. It’s the Japan-based magazine about people and making things, coming out once a week. We’re passing on the passion, ideas, skills, and life stories of people who are building today and exploring tomorrow: craftsmen, engineers, entrepreneurs, and inventors. Stay tuned!
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