Uchiwa, traditional hand-held fans that generally are made in the same shape as a Ping-Pong paddle, have long had practical uses in Japan.
“We use them to light fires for meat grills, to cool ourselves and so on, so it’s really something that’s systematically part of everyday life,” said Tokisato Yamada, the president of the Kagawa Prefecture Fan Cooperative, an organization that employs 30 local artisans to produce uchiwa and establishes norms to make and promote the fans.
Yet outside of Japan, uchiwa — the word is pronounced OO-chee-wa and spelled the same whether singular or plural — are primarily considered decorative items. Mr. Yamada noted, for example, that uchiwa were exhibited on several occasions at the design fair Maison & Objet in Paris. “Most of the uchiwa are made from very, very fine paper,” he said. “We apply thick and durable paper as well as thin paper. And the way the light passes through them gives a different and beautiful luminosity.”
Uchiwa are different from the folding fans most people know. The various uchiwa styles are made from a single piece of bamboo, split into ribs to hold the paper taut; they cannot be folded nor do they fit in a pocket.
Ninety percent of all uchiwa are produced in Marugame, a small city of about 100,000 residents on Shikoku island, off the southwestern coast of Japan’s major island of Honshu and part of Kagawa prefecture.
“The Marugame uchiwa fans have a deceivingly powerful design,” Joanna Kawecki, the editor in chief of Ala Champ Magazine and the founder of the design brand IMI Japan, wrote in an email. “Their characteristically flat or rounded handles allow for aerodynamic maneuvering, whilst the Japanese washi paper allows for subtle light to beautifully filter through.”
Castles and Sweets
One day in late October, I headed to the port city of Marugame, a five-hour train journey from Tokyo.
I was already well acquainted with uchiwa as I lived in Marugame for a year when I moved to Japan in 2009. Back then, I remember seeing uchiwa everywhere. Uchiwa decorated city structures such as bridges, and many were sold in souvenir shops.
Little had changed: One of the city’s mascots, called Uchikko, is the embodiment of a fan, and uchiwa were all around — as was the elderly woman selling ichigo daifuku, a strawberry confectionery, in the old shopping arcade, and Marugame castle, a small structure perched on top of a hill.
The castle is the city’s main tourist attraction, but there is also a small uchiwa museum, standing on the shore of the Seto Inland Sea. The exhibition space is contained on one level: Its main room displays uchiwa in many colors, and two or three artisans at a time use the workshop area to demonstrate how the fan is made; a small side room displays a chronology of its history. Admission is free, but for 1,000 yen ($6.70), a visitor can make an uchiwa.
On the day I visited, Akiyoshi Hasegawa, an artisan employed by the cooperative, was working on a piece of bamboo that was about 30 centimeters long (a foot). He put it into a small machine equipped with a blade and, with repeated motions, divided it into the narrow strips that would become the fan’s ribs, but he left the lower part whole to become the handle.
He then held the piece against his body with one hand and, using the other, pushed all the strips to a 90-degree angle, first to one side and then to the other. (He asked me to try bending them, which was very hard work, although he noted using the right technique was actually more important than physical power.)
The bends are what make the strips open and, like magic, we had the structure for a fan.
“The opening of the bamboo structure is always done by hand,” Mr. Hasegawa said, adding, “there’s only one moment when I use a small electrical tool, to make a hole in the structure of the base.” Once the hole had been made, he passed a thin bamboo bar through it — a decorative element at the base of the handle — and twined thread around the central part of the bar. (The finishing method and the type of thread vary according to the uchiwa style being made.)
After adjusting the ribs so they retained the desired shape, they would be covered with glue and then with paper, and then be decorated as the artisan wished. Cutting and splaying the bamboo took Mr. Hasegawa just a few minutes, but he said it could take anywhere from several hours to several weeks to complete the decoration, depending on the project.
Mr. Hasegawa, 74, has made uchiwa for only about 20 years. He had worked at a shipbuilding yard in Marugame, but he contracted a serious illness and had to stop working for several years. “Then I decided to look for an activity that would allow me to rehabilitate my hands, because I had problems using them,” he said. “The museum organizes regular uchiwa-making workshops, so I came here to learn. And then I became a craftsman.”
In addition to spending time at the museum, he said, he makes uchiwa at home. “I have all the tools I need at home and my work table,” he said, gesturing to a low wooden table in the museum workshop that he built himself, and tools such as knives and a bamboo cutter.
There is even a small bamboo forest next to his house that belongs to a friend, which is where Mr. Hasegawa sources his bamboo.
There are a number of criteria for making Marugame uchiwa, and one of them is using a particular species of bamboo, Phyllostachys bambusoides, commonly called madake. It is one of the 650 most common species of bamboo and is found all over Japan, including in the bamboo forest belonging to Mr. Hasegawa’s friend. “We start by soaking the bamboo in water for three or four days to make it swell up a bit, so it’s easier to work with,” Mr. Hasegawa said as he handed me a fresh bamboo strip, which still felt a bit damp and was very fragrant, with a grassy and earthy scent.
Mr. Yamada, who had been at the museum demonstration, then brought me and my photographer to the main bamboo grove that the cooperative’s artisans use, about an hour’s drive from the city. It was green, dense and lush, and was located next to a small shrine; a very serene setting.
“There isn’t really a particular season to harvest bamboo,” Mr. Yamada said. “After it’s cut, there’s no need to store the bamboo for too long either, because there are around 30 craftsmen working, so their production capacity is such that it’s enough. In fact, they cut the bamboos themselves for their own use.”
Still Useful
Why did Marugame become the center of uchiwa production?
“There are several theories,” Mr. Yamada said. “One is that Kagawa isn’t a prefecture where there’s much economic activity because there are very few natural resources. So the local lord asked some unemployed samurai to start doing this kind of work.” He was referring to the beginning of the Tokugawa era (1603-1868), when Japan was unified and wars were no longer authorized — although there are no records from the time of samurai being without work.
“Today,” he added, “even if we have air conditioning and electric fans, it’s still an object that’s useful today and easy to use.” Uchiwa are also fairly economical, generally selling for ¥3,000 to ¥10,000.
But like many of Japan’s craft sectors, most of the people making uchiwa are older — the cooperative’s artisans, for example, range from 41 to 81 — and young people find it difficult to live on their earnings.
“The training course used to learn the basic techniques lasts roughly four weeks,” Mr. Yamada said. “And yes, there are young people entering this industry, but the problem is that the income from this activity is not enough to support their economic needs today.”
That was the reason why, a few years ago, Mr. Yamada had the cooperative start to focus on marketing uchiwa: the hope that one day sales could provide sufficient income for young people who might want to enter the industry. “It’s a product that has to provide a living for the craftsman, and therefore we should sell them at a price that allows them to have a normal life,” he said. “And not just for uchiwa, but also for the whole craft industry.”
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