Japan's Lamps, Lanterns & Lighting Craft

About this book

The only English guide that takes the lamp itself as its whole subject. Two hundred entries read Japanese lighting the way its makers and keepers do — source first, then body, shade and keeping: the framed andon that turned a flame into furniture; the chōchin whose bamboo spiral folds flat and blooms round; the stone tōrō whose firebox has sheltered the same small flame for a thousand years; the bronze lantern pierced so light draws its own pictures; the oil dish, the gas lamp, the washi globe and the LED lantern now living inside the ancient fireboxes. Eight parts move from forms and materials through the benches of the making — splitting, coiling, pasting, carving, casting, wiring — to the makers, towns, museums and trade behind the lamps, the design of the glow itself, the buyer's craft of testing and converting, and the keeper's calendar of lighting, trimming and storing.

Every entry follows one uniform four-field structure, so the two-hundredth lamp is as easy to interrogate as the first. The book asserts no shop's current prices, hours or event dates, and no antique's value or provenance; every entry closes by pointing to the official source for current details. Customs are reported as customs, legends as legends. The festivals belong to their own volumes; this is the book of the device.