The beautiful hearts of craftsmen aiding people’s sympathetic good wishes

“In things and materials are wishes of the sender and the maker.” By no means a belief, some Japanese people think so even without a word. And this idea manifests the beauty of Japanese cuisine or the beauty of many Japanese crafts. Because the core of this idea corresponds to purity, and the purity must be transformed into the beauty.

I will try to depict it comprehensively and visibly so as that you can catch the mood of it during your travels in Japan, so I chose the case of how to wrap a gift.

In western society when people give a gift to another person, they wrap it in decorative paper with a ribbon. Of course In Japan people do the same as birthday gifts or X’mas gifts as well. However if a gift is for a significant celebration like a marriage, how to wrap a gift turns to the traditional Japanese method rigidly.  

The picture above depicts promising gifts from the parents of a groom to the parents of a bride. It’s difficult for you to see it directly, but you can see a special envelope for celebration in a stationery shop.

This is used with the envelope including a gift of money to celebrate a person getting married. The role of the white envelope paper is to purify the contents (for example, money). On the other hand, the role of the red, gold and white strings is to protect an envelope from outside invisible stains and to tie the relationship between the recipient and the partner. In other words, the white paper and strings play the role of protecting the sender’s wish (for the recipient to become happy) that he gave in his gift. Moreover I would like you to look at the joint place of the strings. This place is called “musubi” (knot) in Japanese. Musubi is a very significant key-word in Shinto (Japanese indigenous religion). Musubi is to encounter someone and to link with him or her. Then the forms of musubi of mizuhiki are complex and don’t easily come undone, on the other hand if a knot of a ribbon easily come undone.

“Mizuhiki”

These various colorful strings which tie an envelope or a gift-box are called “mizuhiki” in Japan. Mizuhiki is so strong that it is difficult to be broken by your hands. The purpose of mizuhiki is to tie the relationship between the recipient and something and to protect an envelope from outside invisible stains. For maintaining something tied mizuhiki must be strong. For protecting from outside invisible strains mizuhiki must be sacred, in Japan a sacred protecting thing is rope, then mizuhiki is a superfine rope in fact. Moreover mizuhiki must be so beautiful that mizuhiki has various colors.

As a result, how to produce mizuhiki is very meticulous. The core of mizuhiki is Japanese paper. Japanese paper is stronger than western paper. The core of mizuhiki is made by twisting Japanese paper in order to make it stronger. And mizuhiki is produced by winding superfine colored thread around the core.

Besides, mizuhiki has to make a complex musubi, then various musubi of mizuhiki were created.

Artistic mizuhiki in Kanazawa

For approximately five centuries how to use mizuhiki is to tie something and mizuhiki was plainer even in the Edo period. In the Meiji period Sokichi Tsuda, who was a craftsman of mizuhiki in Kanazawa, created artistic three-dimensional mizuhiki. As the top picture of this blog he created a crane and turtle (crane and turtle are symbols of long life in Japan) and flowers by mizuhiki. His artistic and three-dimensional mizuhiki was so popular that his mizuhiki radiated in Japan. These are called “Kaga-mizuhiki” or “Tsuda-mizuhiki”.

You can see artistic mizuhiki (Kaga-mizuhiki or Tsuda-mizuhiki) in Kanazawa.

Kanazawa Mizuhiki

Rokusuke Tsuda, who is the fifth generation craftsman of Tsuda-mizuhiki, produces Tsuda-mizuhiki(Kaga-mizuhiki) with his father who is the fourth generation craftsman. Rokusuke said;

“”The mind sympathizing with a person” and “the mind respecting others” are the most important postures of mind making crafts. I would like to help people who want to send their good wishes to others by my mizuhiki even if it has little energy. Besides, I would like to send the beautiful heart of the Japanese and the beautiful heart of Kanazawa.”

By the way, the legend of the beginning of mizuhiki is interesting. Approximately seven hundred years ago China traded their merchandised materials with surrounding countries including Korea, Vietnam and Japan. The boxes of these materials were tied by red and white ropes. Japanese people who received them considered the meaning of the red and white ropes. In short they recognized that these were a message and wished of the senders. It was the origin of mizuhiki and red and white became the basic colors of mizuhiki. I can imagine the the scene where the people were considering and looking at the boxes tied by the red and white ropes. They had the spirituality that “in things and materials were wishes of the sender and the maker” naturally. Of course there wasn’t this spirituality in China, as a result under rational thinking, the recognition of Japanese people was a big mistake. However whether it was a mistake or not was off the point. “In things and materials are wishes of the sender and the maker” is a significant idea of Japanese crafts and craftsmen and this idea has created many small cultures.