Washi Season, Kozo Fiber Preparation 2007

Winter is the best season for washi (Japanese papermaking) and January in particular is the best time to prepare Kozo fiber. Fortunately, our trip back coincided with the fiber prep. at both the Washi Taiken Center and up at Richard's, two places I've been learning and exploring washi the past few years.

First, I spent one day with everyone at the Center stripping the bark off. The one year shoots from the kozo tree are cut and bundled (pictured above) and then steamed. The bark seperates a bit from the inner core and usually with some cold water thrown on the bark starts to shrink. You can see the white ends of the branches more now as they come out of the steam pot below.

The outer bark is then peeled off the kozo and seperated according to size etc. The bark is dried, washed and the process is far from over as the black bark must also be scraped off to reveal the pale green inner bark which forms the heart of washi.



I had fun working with everyone and chatting with Hisane (above). And still more fun was to be had at Richard's annual bark-off party the following weekend. A big crew gathered to help peel the bark off and then scrape the next layer, the black bark off too. The day ended with a feast and great party.

Food prepared by Richard's wife, Ryoko, a fabulous cook as well as amazing textile artist. The above photo is lunch, which Craig and I arrived just in time for.

One of the steamers for the kozo at Richard's. This year was the first time the bark-off has been held at Richard's new studio and was hence a little experimental, leaving lots of lessons for next year and years to come.

Everyone hard at work.


Motai loves these events, his good energy always creates the best celebrations afterwards too. After dinner, we started up some good fun. All of us quite spontaneously formed a human chain, massaging the person in front of you and dancing around in a circle. Then we decided to start a game of catch with qi/chi/ki, a ball of energy was tossed about the room, each person reacted so differently, I'd say many people had never done this kind of thing before and didn't quite know what to make of it!

One older man turned up to this event who we all did not know (pictured below in center, next to Richard). He worked and ate and laughed with the rest of us, but we never did figure out how he knew about the bark-off party deep in the mountains, nor did we learn anything about him, including his name. When we went around the group giving self-introductions he just introduced himself as the President. Each time the ball of qi came round to him, he carefully placed it on the back of his palm and passed it to Richard. It was so intriguing. Later, Craig (a lover of food/water/ice fights) turned the energy to ice which we passed around, which is what you can see in the picture below.


After everyone went home, the three couples Richard & Ryoko, Paul & Maki, and Craig & I stayed and had our own dance party. We did some crazy dancing with a scarf, tried some Scottish and celtic dancing and Paul started the washi dance, shifting and shaking as when you form paper. It may have been that last jiggling mixed with lots of sho-chu and sake that caused Paul to have a few spews just before bed.


We stayed up there a few days, Richard continued with the rest of the fiber preparation and I set about trying to make paper for the wedding invitations. Below is some images of me making my favorite washi, cloud paper.