Washi & Japanese Paper

About this book

One famous paper town — or two hundred paper regions, mills and techniques in one guide? Washi & Japanese Paper covers 200 entries in a single uniform format: every entry gives the Region & Materials, the Origins, How to Recognise it in a shop, and Buying & Experience — where to buy, what to check, and how to live with the sheet afterwards.

Echizen's thousand-year villages and Tosa's featherweight tengujo trusted by conservators worldwide; kozo, mitsumata and gampi — the three bast fibres and how to tell them apart by light, edge and tear; nagashizuki flowing forming, board drying and the living neri that makes thin strong sheets possible; eggshell torinoko, ledger papers built for centuries, lace-like rakusui and gold-flecked celebration sheets; and the working knowledge that protects a buyer — the sixty-second paper routine, hand-versus-machine honesty, the price ladder and what each rung actually buys, storage, framing, repair, and paper-town trips from Ogawa to Ino.

No photographs: the recognition fields are written for the hand and eye instead — backlight, fingertip, deckle edge, tear — because those are checks a buyer can actually perform in a shop or demand of a listing.

Companion, kept separate: Japanese Traditional Crafts surveyed paper as one family in a five-material survey. This book is the washi deep dive — regions, fibres and techniques across the whole field, every entry written fresh.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.