Japanese Straw, Rush & Natural Fibre Crafts

About this book

Japan ran on grass for a thousand years — and this is the guide to that whole world. Japanese Straw, Rush & Natural Fibre Crafts covers 200 entries in a single uniform format: every entry gives the Region, Material & Origins, The Craft & How It Is Made, How to Recognise & Judge It, and Buying, Care & Experience. Every entry runs to more than 200 words of substance, written fresh for this book.

Rice and wheat straw, igusa rush from Yatsushiro and shichitoi sedge from Kunisaki; the sacred shimenawa rope, waraji sandals, mino rain capes and the straw bales of the sumo ring; the tatami taken apart — straw core, igusa facing, heri edge — and followed into goza, pillows, slippers and lampshades; then the ancient bast cloths — karamushi ramie, shinafu linden, kuzufu kudzu, fujifu wisteria, bashofu banana. The working knowledge fills the rest: the price ladders of straw, tatami and fibre cloth, the sixty-second check of scent, bend, weave and edge, the honest chapters on humidity, mould, mites and pets, plant quarantine for taking straw home, and the field and workshop journeys worth travelling for.

No photographs: recognition is taught as four physical checks — scent, bend, weave and edge — because those are the tests a buyer can actually perform in a shop, a field or a listing's description.

Companion, kept separate: the woodwork, washi and textiles volumes treat their own materials. This book is the dried-grass deep dive — straw, rush and natural fibre themselves, and the growers, weavers and makers whose hands turn them into Japan's everyday craft.