Kyo Karakami
About Kyo Karakami
Karakami is paper originally imported from China. It generally refers to paper that came from China, although it can also mean foreign paper, as in “karamono,” which refers to paper made in a foreign country.
Karakami was imported during the period of the Japanese envoys to China during the Tang Dynasty, and was used from a time when Japanese paper was not yet available.
In the Tempyo period (710-794), Japanese karakami was produced domestically to replace the karakami that was no longer imported due to the abolition of the Tang Dynasty envoys.
Eventually, karakami used by aristocrats as a paper for writing poems and waka poems and for sutra copying began to be decorated with patterns. This paper was called monkarakami, and the karakami used for fusuma (sliding door) paper was the prototype for this paper.
After imports were halted, it is assumed that karakami was first produced domestically as art paper, and as production volume was secured, it was expanded to use for fusuma (sliding doors) and shoji (paper sliding doors).
Karakami was often used as shoji paper before fusuma paper.
History of Kyo Karakami
In the Nara period, when karakami shoji screens did not exist, people called sokoushi were responsible for the work similar to that of today's kara-koji.
The sokoushi were responsible for preparing the sutra paper and preparing the copied sutras into sutra scrolls. The paper was cut to the prescribed size, ruled, and dyed, and the scrolls were made into scrolls.
Later, specialists in drawing ruled lines on paper came to be called sutra makers, and their work expanded to include the preparation of sutra scrolls. In the Nara period, sutra makers were called “sutra makers” for the work they did, similar to the work of a tailor.
In the Nara period, a sutra copyist was called a sutra copyist, but it is thought that the term “sutra copyist” became lumped together with “set decorator” with the passage of time.
The process of printing karakami seems to have been included in the multiple processes involved.
Today, the skills of the soushigushi are preserved through the Federation and other organizations, while sutra makers are called omotogushi, and there is a separate kara-gami workshop, where craftspeople study the techniques of their respective specialties.